preach to others;
the truth which had saved him was the truth which he must proclaim. And
that truth, which had ended Ruskin's own scruples, was that the basis of
art is moral; that art cannot be merely pleasant or unpleasant, but must
be lawful or unlawful, that every legitimate artistic enjoyment is due
to the perception of moral propriety, that every artistic excellence is
a moral virtue, every artistic fault is a moral vice; that noble art can
spring only from noble feeling, that the whole system of the beautiful
is a system of moral emotions, moral selections, and moral appreciation;
and that the aim and end of art is the expression of man's obedience to
God's will, and of his recognition of God's goodness.

Such was the solution of Ruskin's scruples respecting his right of
giving to art the time and energies he might have given to moral
improvement; and such the aesthetical creed which he felt bound, by
conviction and by the necessity of self-justification, to develop into
a system and to apply to every single case. The notion of making beauty
not merely a vague emanation from the divinity, as in the old platonic
philosophies, but a direct result, an infallible concomitant of moral
excellence; of making the physical the mere reflexion of the moral, is
indeed a very beautiful and noble idea; but it is a false idea. For--and
this is one of the points which Ruskin will not admit--the true state
of things is by no means always the noblest or the most beautiful; our
longing for ineffable harmony is no proof that such harmony exists: the
phantom of perfection which hovers before us is often not the mirage
of some distant reality, but a mere vain shadow projected by our own
desires, which we must follow, but may never obtain. In the soul of all
of us exists, oftenest fragmentary and blurred, a plan of harmony and
perfection which must serve us as guide in our workings, in our altering
and rebuilding of things; but we must not expect that with this plan
should coincide the actual arrangements of nature; we must beware lest
we use as a map of the earth into which we have been created the map of
the heaven which we seek to create; for we shall find that the ways are
different, we shall go astray bewildered and in bitterness, we shall sit
down in despair in this country which is evil where it should have been
good, arid where it should have been fruitful, and we shall uselessly
weep or rage until all the time for our journey