was it intended to do so: its true function is to keep us innocent, so
that we may not individually obstruct the accomplishment of the divine
ends toward us as a race. Our nature not being the private possession of
any one of us, but the impersonal substratum of us all, it follows that it
cannot be redeemed piecemeal, but only as a whole; and, manifestly, the
only Being capable of effecting such redemption is not Peter, or Paul, or
George Washington, or any other atomic exponent of that nature, be he who
he may; but He alone whose infinitude is the complement of our finiteness,
and whose gradual descent into human nature (figured in Scripture under
the symbol of the Incarnation) is even now being accomplished--as any one
may perceive who reads aright the progressive enlightenment of conscience
and intellect which history, through many vicissitudes, displays. We find,
therefore, that art is, essentially, the imaginative expression of a
divine life in man. Art depends for its worth and veracity, not upon its
adherence to literal fact, but upon its perception and portrayal of the
underlying truth, of which fact is but the phenomenal and imperfect
shadow. And it can have nothing to do with personal vice or virtue, in the
way either of condemning the one or vindicating the other; it can only
treat them as elements in its picture--as factors in human destiny. For
the notion commonly entertained that the practice of virtue gives us a
claim upon the Divine Exchequer (so to speak), and the habit of acting
virtuously for the sake of maintaining our credit in society, and ensuring
our prosperity in the next world,--in so thinking and acting we
misapprehend the true inwardness of the matter. To cultivate virtue
because its pays, no matter what the sort of coin in which payment is
looked for, is to be the victims of a lamentable delusion. For such virtue
makes each man jealous of his neighbor; whereas the aim of Providence is
to bring about the broadest human fellowship. A man's physical body
separates him from other men; and this fact disposes him to the error that
his nature is also a separate possession, and that he can only be "good"