young man distracted attention from his spiritual virtues to his physical
perfections. A similar maladjustment of the means of plastic art to the
purposes of religion would have been impossible in Hellas, where the
temples of Eros and of Phoebus stood side by side; but in Christian
Florence the craftsman's skill sowed seeds of discord in the souls of the
devout[8].

This story is but a coarse instance of the separation between piety and
plastic art. In truth, the difficulty of uniting them in such a way that
the latter shall enforce the former, lies far deeper than its powers of
illustration reach. Religion has its proper end in contemplation and in
conduct. Art aims at presenting sensuous embodiment of thoughts and
feelings with a view to intellectual enjoyment. Now, many thoughts are
incapable of sensuous embodiment; they appear as abstractions to the
philosophical intellect or as dogmas to the theological understanding. To
effect an alliance between art and philosophy or art and theology in the
specific region of either religion or speculation is, therefore, an
impossibility. In like manner there are many feelings which cannot
properly assume a sensuous form; and these are precisely religious
feelings, in which the soul abandons sense, and leaves the actual world
behind, to seek her freedom in a spiritual region.[9] Yet, while we
recognise the truth of this reasoning, it would be unscientific to
maintain that, until they are brought into close and inconvenient contact,
there is direct hostility between religion and the arts. The sphere of the
two is separate; their aims are distinct; they must be allowed to perfect
themselves, each after its own fashion. In the large philosophy of human
nature, represented by Goethe's famous motto, there is room for both,
because those who embrace it bend their natures neither wholly to the
pietism of the cloister nor to the sensuality of art. They find the
meeting-point of art and of religion in their own humanity, and perceive