but very paltry evils:
the evils of misconceiving the relations between various masters and
various schools, and the causes of various artistic phenomena; the evils
of misappreciating a work or a form of art, of preferring an inferior
picture, or statue or piece of music, to a superior one; the evils of
buying fluttering St. Theresas of Bernini rather than noble goddesses
of Scopas; of ornamenting our houses with plaster dragons, grimacing
toothless masks, and meagre lines of lintel and clumsy agglomerations
of columns, rather than with the leaf and flower moulding, the noble
arches and dainty cornices of mediaeval art; the evils in short of not
understanding quite well or of not appreciating quite correctly. Very
important evils within the limited sphere of our artistic interests, and
which we must not neglect to eradicate; but evils such as cannot deeply
trouble our whole nature, or seriously damage our whole lives. Such is
the case with the aesthetic systems, with the truths and errors of men
like Winckelmann, Lessing, Hegel, or Taine; but it is not so with the
aesthetic system of Ruskin. For the theories of all other writers on
art deal only with the meaning and value of one work or school of art
compared with another work or school; they deal only with the question
how much of our liking or disliking should we give to this art or to
that; they are all true or false within the region allotted to art. But
the theories of Ruskin deal with the comparative importance of artistic
concerns and the other concerns of our lives: they deal with the
problem, how much of our thoughts and our energies we have a right to
give to art, and for what reasons we may give any portion of them: it
deals with the question of the legitimacy not of one kind of artistic
enjoyment more than another, but of the enjoyment of art at all.

The question may at first sight seem futile from its very magnitude:
unnecessary because it has so long been answered. In the first moment
many of us may answer with contempt that the thinking men and women of
to-day are not ascetics of the Middle Ages, nor utilitarians of the 18th
century, nor Scotch Calvinists, that they should require to be taught
that beauty is neither sinful nor useless, that enjoyment of art is not
foul self-indulgence nor childish pastime. And so at first it seems. The
thinking men and women of our day are not any of these things, and do
not require to be answered these questions. But tho