feelings, or rather what underlies our feelings, the almost
unconscious life of our nerves, to modalities of order and selection,
and make the spaceless innermost of our spirit into some kind of
sanctuary, swept and garnished, until the coming of better days.

XVIII.

According to a certain class of thinkers, among whom I find Guyau and
other men of note, art is destined partially to replace religion in
our lives. But with what are you going to replace religion itself in
art? For the religious feeling, whenever it existed, gave art an
element of thoroughness which the desire for pleasure and interest,
even for aesthetic pleasure and interest, does not supply. An immense
fulness of energy is due to the fact that beautiful things, as
employed by religion, were intended to be beautiful all through,
adequate in the all-seeing eye of God or Gods, not merely beautiful on
the surface, on the side turned towards the glance of man. For, in
religious art, beautiful things are an oblation; they are the best
that we can give, as distinguished from a pleasure arranged for
ourselves and got as cheap as possible. Herein lies the impassable
gulf between the church and theatre, considered aesthetically; for it
is only in the basest times, of formalism in art as in religion, of
superstition and sensualism, that we find the church imitating the
theatre in its paper glories and plaster painted like marble. The
real, living religious spirit insists on bringing, as in St Mark's, a
gift of precious material, of delicate antique ornament, with every
shipload. The crown of the Madonna is not, like the tragedy queen's,
of tinsel, the sacrament is not given in an empty chalice. The priest,
even where he makes no effort to be holy as a man, is at least sacred
as a priest; whereas there is something uncomfortable in the sense
that the actor is only pretending to be this or the other, and we
ourselves pretending to believe him; there is a thin and acid taste in
the shams of the stage and in all art which, like that of the stage,
exists only to the extent necessary to please our fancy or excite our
feelings. Why so? For is not pleasing the fancy and exciting the
feelings the real, final use of art? Doubtless. But there would seem
to be in nature a law not merely of the greater economy of means, but
also of the greatest output of efficacy: effort helping effort, and
function, function; and many activities, in harmonious interaction,
obtaining a