have well seen that my own convictions were established
finally on some of the points in question. But I must, in conclusion,
tell you something that I _know_;--which, if you truly labour, you will
one day know also; and which I trust some of you will believe, now.

During the minutes in which you have been listening to me, I suppose
that almost at every other sentence those whose habit of mind has been
one of veneration for established forms and faiths, must have been in
dread that I was about to say, or in pang of regret at my having said,
what seemed to them an irreverent or reckless word touching vitally
important things.

So far from this being the fact, it is just because the feelings that I
most desire to cultivate in your minds are those of reverence and
admiration, that I am so earnest to prevent you from being moved to
either by trivial or false semblances. _This_ is the thing which I
KNOW--and which, if you labour faithfully, you shall know also,--that in
Reverence is the chief joy and power of life;--Reverence, for what is
pure and bright in your own youth; for what is true and tried in the age
of others; for all that is gracious among the living,--great among the
dead,--and marvellous, in the Powers that cannot die.

LECTURE III

THE RELATION OF ART TO MORALS

66. You probably recollect that, in the beginning of my last lecture, it
was stated that fine art had, and could have, but three functions: the
enforcing of the religious sentiments of men, the perfecting their
ethical state, and the doing them material service. We have to-day to
examine, the mode of its action in the second power--that of perfecting
the morality, or ethical state, of men.

Perfecting, observe--not producing.

You must have the right moral state first, or you cannot have the art.
But when the art is once obtained, its reflected action enhances and
completes the moral state out of which it arose, and, above all,
communicates the exultation to other minds which are already morally
capable of the like.

67. For instance, take the art of singing, and the simplest perfect
master of it (up to the limits of his nature) whom you can find;--a
skylark. From him you may learn what it is to "sing for joy." You must
get the moral state first, the pure gladness, then give it finished
expression; and it is perfected in itself, and made communicable to
other creatures capable of such joy. But it is incommunicable to those
who are