cleverness has a fascination for weak
minds."[243-1] The religion of beauty failed in that it addressed the
esthetic emotions, not the reasoning power. Art does not promote the
good; it owes no fealty to either utility or ethics: in itself, it must
be, in the negative sense of the words, at once useless and immoral.
"Nature is not its standard, nor is truth its chief end."[244-1] Its
spirit is repose, "the perfect form in perfect rest;" whereas the spirit
of religion is action because of imperfection. Even the gods must know
of suffering, and partake, in incarnations, of the miseries of men.

In the religion of culture what can we blame? That it is lacking in the
impulses of action through the isolation it fosters; that it is and must
be limited to a few, for it provides no defense for the weaknesses the
many inherit; that its tendency is antagonistic to religion, as it cuts
away the feeling of dependence, and the trust in the unknown; that it
allows too little to enthusiasm ever to become a power.

On the other hand, what momenta of true religious thought have these
ideals embraced? Each presents some. Physical vigor, regarded as a sign
of complete nutrition, is an indispensable preliminary to the highest
religion. Correct thought cannot be, without sufficient and appropriate
food. If the nourishment is inadequate, defective energy of the brain
will be transmitted, and the offspring will revert ancestrally to a
lower plane of thought. "It thus happens that the minds of persons of
high religious culture by ancestral descent, and the intermarriage of
religious families, so strangely end in the production of children
totally devoid of moral sense and religious sentiment--moral imbeciles
in short."[245-1] From such considerations of the necessity of physical
vigor to elevated thought, Descartes predicted that if the human race
ever attain perfection it will be chiefly through the art of medicine.
Not alone from emotions of sympathy did the eminent religious teachers
of past ages maintain that the alleviation and prevention of suffering
is the first practical duty of man; but it was from a perhaps
unconscious perception of the antagonism of bodily degeneration to
mental progress.

So, too, the religion of beauty and art contains an indefeasible germ of
true religious thought. Art sees the universal in the isolated fact; it
redeemed the coarse symbol of earlier days by associating it with the
emotions of joy, instead of f