.

Since art may be true or untrue, it may also be universal or
particular, profound or superficial, in its apprehension of reality.
This difference has operated to define a scale of importance in art, so
far as the interest of society is concerned. There is at least a
measure of truth in Taine's graduated scale by which he estimates the
greatness of art according as it represents the fashion of the day, the
type of the generation, the type of the age, the type of the race, or
man himself in his immutable nature.[18] That art will be the most
effective instrument of moral enlightenment which reflects the
experience of mankind in the basal and constant virtues, giving quality
and distinction to truths which might otherwise suffer from their very
homeliness and familiarity.

There is a kindred consideration to which Tolstoy, undiscerning as he
is in most of his criticism of art, has very justly called attention.
In the broad sense, art is liable to untruth from reflecting
exclusively the bias of a certain temperament. The following
description {208} of a class of contemporary dramas is not wholly inapt:

They either represent an architect, who for some reason has not
fulfilled his former high resolves and in consequence of this climbs on
the roof of a house built by him and from there flies down headlong; or
some incomprehensible old woman, who raises rats and for some unknown
reason takes a poetic child to the sea and there drowns it; or some
blind people, who, sitting at the sea-shore, for some reason all the
time repeat one and the same thing; or a bell which flies into a lake
and there keeps ringing.[19]

That a tendency to cultivate acquaintance with the curious and rare,
and communicate it to a narrow group of initiated persons, is
characteristic of modern times, and that on the whole it is a symptom
of decadence, Tolstoy has, I believe, proved. At any rate, the effect
of such a tendency in art can not fail to be morally injurious, since
life is not represented proportionately. Art has much to do with the
vogue and prestige of ideas. Thus, for example, though the
problem-play may be faithful to life where it deals with life, if the
stage be given over wholly to this form of drama, there will almost
inevitably result a false conception of the degree to which the
incidents selected are representative of social conditions on the whole.

There is one further source of moral error in connection with this