In the third place, Lanier holds that a moral intention on the part
of an artist does not interfere with the naturalness or intrinsic beauty
of his work; that in art the controlling consideration is rather moral
than artistic beauty; but that moral beauty and artistic beauty,
so far from being distinct or opposed, are convergent and mutually helpful.
This thesis he upholds in the following eloquent and cogent passage:
"Permit me to recall to you in the first place that the requirement
has been from time immemorial that wherever there is contest
as between artistic and moral beauty, unless the moral side prevail,
all is lost. Let any sculptor hew us out the most ravishing combination
of tender curves and spheric softness that ever stood for woman;
yet if the lip have a certain fulness that hints of the flesh,
if the brow be insincere, if in the minutest particular the physical beauty
suggest a moral ugliness, that sculptor -- unless he be portraying
a moral ugliness for a moral purpose -- may as well give over his marble
for paving-stones. Time, whose judgments are inexorably moral, will not
accept his work. For indeed we may say that he who has not yet perceived
how artistic beauty and moral beauty are convergent lines which run back
into a common ideal origin, and who therefore is not afire
with moral beauty just as with artistic beauty -- that he, in short,
who has not come to that stage of quiet and eternal frenzy
in which the beauty of holiness and the holiness of beauty mean one thing,
burn as one fire, shine as one light, within him; he is not yet
the great artist."* By copious quotations Lanier then shows
that "many fine and beautiful souls appear after a while
to lose all sense of distinction between these terms, Beauty, Truth, Love,
Wisdom, Goodness, and the like," and concludes thus: "And if this be true,
cannot one say with authority to the young artist, -- whether working
in stone, in color, in tones, or in character-forms of the novel:
so far from dreading that your moral purpose will interfere