In _Measure for Measure_ and _Faust_ we can see the matter reduced to a
narrower issue still. In both these plays we can see at once that one
moral judgment at least, not to name others, is before all things
pre-supposed in us. This is a hard and fixed judgment with regard to
female chastity, and the supernatural value of it. It is only because we
assent to this judgment that Isabella is heroic to us; and primarily for
the same reason that Margaret is unfortunate. Let us suspend this
judgment for a moment, and what will become of these two dramas? The
terror and the pity of them will vanish instantly like a dream. The
fittest name for both of them will be '_Much Ado about Nothing_.'

It will thus be seen, and the more we consider the matter the more
plain will it become to us--that in all such art as that which we have
been now considering, the premiss on which all its power and greatness
rests is this: The grand relation of man is not first to his brother
men, but to something else, that is beyond humanity--that is at once
without and also beyond himself; to this first, and to his brother men
through this. We are not our own; we are bought with a price. Our bodies
are God's temples, and the joy and the terror of life depends on our
keeping these temples pure, or defiling them. Such are the solemn and
profound beliefs, whether conscious or unconscious, on which all the
higher art of the world has based itself. All the profundity and
solemnity of it is borrowed from these, and exists for us in exact
proportion to the intensity with which we hold them.

Nor is this true of sublime and serious art only. It is true of cynical,
profligate, and concupiscent art as well. It is true of Congreve as it
is true of Sophocles; it is true of _Mademoiselle de Maupin_ as it is
true of _Measure for Measure_. This art differs from the former in that