of agnostic principles. It is impossible, save at the cost of affectation
or of ignorance, to escape from the spirit of the age. It is in the air we
breathe, and, whether we are fully conscious thereof or not, our lives and
thoughts must needs be tinctured by it.

Now, art is creative; but Mephistopheles, the spirit that denies, is
destructive. A negative attitude of mind is not favorable for the
production of works of art. The best periods of art have also been periods
of spiritual or philosophical convictions. The more a man doubts, the more
he disintegrates and the less he constructs. He has in him no central
initial certainty round which all other matters of knowledge or
investigation may group themselves in symmetrical relation. He may analyze
to his heart's content, but must be wary of organizing. If creation is not
of God, if nature is not the expression of the contact between an infinite
and a finite being, then the universe and everything in it are accidents,
which might have been otherwise or might have not been at all; there is no
design in them nor purpose, no divine and eternal significance. This being
conceded, what meaning would there be in designing works of art? If art
has not its prototype in creation, if all that we see and do is chance,
uninspired by a controlling and forming intelligence behind or within it,
then to construct a work of art would be to make something arbitrary and
grotesque, something unreal and fugitive, something out of accord with the
general sense (or nonsense) of things, something with no further basis or
warrant than is supplied by the maker's idle and irresponsible fancy. But
since no man cares to expend the trained energies of his mind upon the
manufacture of toys, it will come to pass (upon the accidental hypothesis
of creation) that artists will become shy of justifying their own title.
They will adopt the scientific method of merely collecting and describing
phenomena; but the phenomena will no longer be arranged as parts or
developments of a central controlling idea, because such an arrangement