I know
also that a star may give more light than the moon,--but that is up
in its own heavens and not here on earth. I know that it is not light
and shade which make a complete globe, but, as well, the local and
neutral tints. Thus, my friends, you perceive that I am neither for
building a wall, nor for contriving windows so as to exclude light,
air, and earth. As much as any of you, I am for every man's sitting
under his own vine, and for his training, pruning, and eating its
fruit how he pleases. Let the artist paint, write, or carve, what and
how he wills, teach the world through sense or through thought,--I
will not dissent; I have no patent to entitle me to do so; nay, I
will be thoroughly satisfied with whatsoever he does, so long as it
is pure, unsensual, and earnestly true. But, as the mental is the
peculiar feature that places man apart from and above animals,--so
ought all that he does to be apart from and above their nature;
especially in the fine arts, which are the intellectual perfection of
the intellectual. And nothing short of this intellectual
perfection,--however much they may be pictures, poems, statues, or
music,--can rank such works to be works of Fine Art. They may have
merit,--nay, be useful, and hence, in some sort, have a purpose: but
they are as much works of Fine Art as Babel was the Temple of
Solomon.
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