agency, while on the other hand the homeliness, and even animal quality,
of the material thing, brings to man, with a poignancy and an appeal
that are incalculable, the spiritual thing that, in its absolute
essence, would be so far beyond his ken and his experience and his
powers of assimilation that it would be inoperative.

This is the true Humanism; not the fictitious and hollow thing that was
the offspring of neo-paganism and took to itself a title to which it had
no claim. Held tacitly or consciously by the men of the Middle Ages,
from the immortal philosopher to the immortal but nameless craftsman, it
was the force that built up the noble social structure of the time and
poised man himself in a sure equilibrium. Already it had of necessity
developed the whole scheme of religious ceremonial and given art a new
content and direction through its new service. By analogy and
association all material things that could be so used were employed as
figures and symbols, as well as agencies, through the Sacraments, and
after a fashion that struck home to the soul through the organs of
sense. Music, vestments, incense, flowers, poetry, dramatic action, were
linked with the major arts of architecture, painting and sculpture, and
all became not only ministers to the emotional faculties but direct
appeals to the intellect through their function as poignant symbols. So
art received its soul, and was almost a living creature until matter and
spirit were again divorced in the death that severed them during the
Reformation. Thereafter religion had entered upon a period of slow
desiccation and sterilization wherever the symbol was cast away with the
Sacraments and the faith and the philosophy that had made it live. The
bitter hostility to the art and the liturgies and the ceremonial of the
Catholic faith is due far less to ignorance of the meaning and function
of art and to an inherited jealousy of its quality and its power, than
it is to the conscious and determined rejection of the essential