practical impulses, and the evoking of this quiet and
contemplative mood, the love of nature and the love of art are the most
reliable means.

But art promotes liberality of spirit in an even more definitely moral
sense. For art, like all forms of culture, and like the service of
humanity, {211} provides for the highest type of social intercourse.
The aesthetic interest is one of those rare interests which are common
to all men without being competitive. All men require bread, but since
this interest requires exclusive possession of its objects, its very
commonness is a source of suspicion and enmity. Similarly all men
require truth and beauty and civilization, but these objects are
enhanced by the fact that all may rejoice in them without their being
divided or becoming the property of any man. They bring men together
without rivalry and intrigue, in a spirit of good-fellowship.
"Culture," says Matthew Arnold, "is not satisfied till we _all_ come to
a perfect man; it knows that the sweetness and light of the few must be
imperfect until the raw and unkindled masses of humanity are touched
with sweetness and light."

'This,' he continues, 'is the _social idea_; and the men of culture are
the true apostles of equality. The great men of culture are those who
have had a passion for diffusing, for making prevail, for carrying from
one end of society to the other, the best knowledge, the best ideas of
their time; who have labored to divest knowledge of all that was harsh,
uncouth, difficult, abstract, professional, exclusive; to humanize it,
to make it efficient outside the clique of the cultivated and learned,
yet still remaining the _best_ knowledge and thought of the time, and a
true source, therefore, of sweetness and light.'[20]

{212}

Art, both in the creation and in the enjoyment of it, is thus true to
the deepest motive of morality. It is a remoulding of nature to the
end that all may live, and that they may live abundantly.

IX

I have sought to place before you what art may contribute to life. It
will have become plain that while art is the natural and powerful ally
of morality, it does not itself provide any guarantee of proper
control; in the interests of goodness, on the whole, no man can
surrender himself to it utterly. The good-will is not proved until, as
Plato said, it is _tried with enchantments_, and found to be strong and
true. Goodness can not be cast upon a man like a spell; it is