definitions, the
unmistakable laws of science, are not to be found in art. Whatever art
has touched acquires a concrete sensuous embodiment, and thus ideas
presented to the mind in art have lost a portion of their pure
thought-essence. It is on this account that the religious conceptions
of the Greeks were so admirably fitted for the art of sculpture, and
certain portions of the mediaeval Christian mythology lent themselves
so well to painting. For the same reason the metaphysics of
ecclesiastical dogma defy the artist's plastic faculty. Art, in a
word, is a middle term between reason and the senses. Its secondary
aim, after the prime end of presenting the human spirit in beautiful
form has been accomplished, is to give tranquil and innocent
enjoyment.

* * * * *

From what has gone before it will be seen that no human being can
make or mould a beautiful form without incorporating in that form some
portion of the human mind, however crude, however elementary. In other
words, there is no work of art without a theme, without a motive,
without a subject. The presentation of that theme, that motive, that
subject, is the final end of art. The art is good or bad according as
the subject has been well or ill presented, consistently with the laws
of beauty special to the art itself. Thus we obtain two standards
for aesthetic criticism. We judge a statue, for example, both by
the sculptor's intellectual grasp upon his subject, and also by his
technical skill and sense of beauty. In a picture of the Last Judgment
by Fra Angelico we say that the bliss of the righteous has been more
successfully treated than the torments of the wicked, because the
former has been better understood, although the painter's skill in
each is equal. In the Perseus of Cellini we admire the sculptor's
spirit, finish of execution, and originality of design, while we
deplore that want of sympathy with the heroic character which makes
his type of physical beauty slightly vulgar and his facial expression
vacuous. If the phrase 'Art for art's sake' has any meaning, this
meaning is simply that the artist, having chosen a theme, thinks
exclusively in working at it of technical dexterity or the quality of
beauty. There are many inducements for the artist thus to narrow his
function, and for the critic to assist him by applying the canons of
a soulless connoisseurship to his work; for the conception of the
subject is but the start