has fulfilled
itself. Enjoyment makes the artist. He has gone on before us, reaching
into the abyss of possibility; but he has reached more mightily. He
begins to know what is promised in the universal attraction, in this
eager turning of all faces toward our future. There is a centre from
which no eye can be diverted, for it is the beam of sight. Look which
way you will, that centre is everywhere. The universe is flooded with a
ray from it, and the light of common day on every object is a refraction
or reflection of that brightness.

Shallow men think of Ideality as another appetite, to be fed with pretty
baubles, as the body is satisfied with meat and sleep; but the
representative of that august impulse feels in it his immortality, and
by all his lovely allegories, mythologies, fables, pictures, statues,
manners, songs, and symphonies, he seeks to communicate his own feeling,
that by specific gravity man must rise. It is no wonder, then, that we
love Art while it offers us reinforcement of being, and despise the
pretenders, for whom it is pastime, not prophecy.

For, in spite of all discouragement from the materialists, men
stultified by trade or tradition, we have trusted the high desire and
followed it thus far. We felt the sacredness of life even in ourselves,
and there was always reverence in our admiration. We could not be made
to doubt the divinity of that which walked with us in the wood or looked
on us in the morning. The grasses and pebbles, the waters and rocks,
clouds and showers, snow and wind, were too brother-like to be denied.
They sang the same song which fills the breast, and our love for them
was pure. The men and women we sought, were they not worthy of honor?
The artist comes to bid us trust the Ideal Tendency, and not dishonor
him who moves therein. He is no trifler, then, to be thrust aside by the
doctors with their sciences, or the economists with production and use.
He offers manhood to man and womanhood to woman.

We have named Ideality a love of life. Nay, what is it but life
itself,--and that loving but true living? What word can have any value
for us, unless it is a record of inevitable expansions in character. The
universe is pledged to every heart, and the artist represents its
promise. He sings, because he sees the manchild advancing, by blind
paths it may be, but under sure guidance, propelled by inextinguishable
desires toward the largest experience. He is no longer afraid of old
b