st be _true_. What I mean by this most important qualification I
must now endeavor to make plain. Art, in so far as it is a means of
representation, deals either with physical nature, as in landscape and
figure painting, or with types and incidents of human life, as in
dramatic painting and in the greater part of poetry. In either case it
may, like thought, either reflect or distort the structure of reality.
Now the real structure of human life is moral; consisting only in a
variety of instances of the one law that _the wages of sin is death_.
To represent life otherwise is to falsify it, precisely as to represent
bodies without solidity and gravity is to falsify physical nature. But
in representing physical nature art does not, as science does, {206}
formulate merely its geometrical or dynamical skeleton; to do so would
be contrary to the intent of art to represent things in their
perceptual concreteness. Similarly art does not represent abstract
virtues. Nevertheless, if it is not to depart from the truth art must,
at the same time that it conveys the color and vividness of life, also
conform to its proper laws, and demonstrate the consequences of action
as they are. And the same standard of clearness and fidelity, which
requires that great art shall reveal nature as it is, not to the
superficial or imitative observer but to the thoughtful and penetrating
mind, requires also that it shall throw into relief the profounder and
more universal forces of life.

Great art, therefore, is of necessity enlightening. But it is possible
that untruth should parade in the dress and under the auspices of art,
and so work to the confusion of the moral consciousness. If art were
only realistic in the full sense, an unequivocal representation of the
laws of life, it would invariably justify and support the moral will;
it would be idealistic. It is the art of desultory and irresponsible
fancy that is a source of danger. There is a species of romantic art
that is guarded by its very excess of fantasy; it being impossible to
mistake it for a representation of life. But where romantic art is not
thus clear in its motive, it becomes what is called "sensational" {207}
art, in which the wages of sin are not paid; in which imprudence,
infidelity, and a mean ambition are made to yield success, freedom, and
glorious achievement. The realities are violated, with the consequence
that resolve is weakened and the intelligence bewildered