lture.

Art is the truly popular philosophy. Our picture-gazing and view-hunting
only express the feeling that our science is too abstract, that it does
not attach us, but isolates us in the universe. What we are thus
inwardly drawn to explore is not the chaff and _exuviae_ of things, not
their differences only, but their central connection, in spite of
apparent diversity. This, stated, is the Ideal, the abrupt contradiction
of the actual, and the creation of a world extraordinary, in which all
defect is removed. But the defect cannot be cured by correction, for
that admits its right to exist; it is not by exclusion that limitation
is overcome,--this is only to establish a new limitation,--but by
inclusion, by reaching the point where the superficial antagonism
vanishes. Then the ideal is seen no longer in opposition, but everywhere
and alone existent. As this point is approached, the impulse to
reconstruct the actual--as if the triumph of truth were staked on that
venture--dies out. The elaborate contradiction loses interest, earliest
where it is most elaborate and circumstantial, and latest where the
image has least materiality and fixity, where it is only a reminder of
what the actual is securely felt to be, in spite of its stubborn
exterior.

The modern mind is therefore less demonstrative; our civilization seeks
less to declare and typify itself outwardly in works of Art, manners,
dress, etc. Hence it is, perhaps, that the beauty of the race has not
kept pace with its culture. It is less beautiful, because it cares less
for beauty, since this is no longer the only reconcilement of the actual
with the inward demands. The vice of the imagination is its inevitable
exaggeration. It is our own weakness and dulness that we try to hide
from ourselves by this partiality. Therefore it was said that the images
were the Bible of the laity. Bishop Durandus already in the thirteenth
century declared that it is only where the truth is not yet revealed
that this "Judaizing" is permissible.

The highest of all arts is the art of life. In this the superficial
antagonisms of use and beauty, of fact and reality, disappear. A little
gain here, or the hint of it, richly repays all the lost magnificence.
We need not concern ourselves lest these latter ages should be left
bankrupt of the sense of beauty, for that is but a phase of a force that
is never absent; nothing can supersede it but itself in a higher power.
What we lament as de