and well-defined ideas, and have a value
that does not depend upon the form or the quality of the words. You
cannot, then, in using them, distinguish between significance and form,
or combine them independently of the idea they are intended to convey,
as is possible with colours and with lines, solely for the beauty that
results from combination. If literary art is a "representation," it is
also something more; and the lapse in Flaubert, as in all those who have
followed him in the letter, lies in having missed this distinction. You
cannot write merely to represent; you write also to express ideas, to
determine or to modify convictions; you write that you may act, or impel
others to act: these are effects beyond the power of painting or of
sculpture. A statue or a picture never brought about a revolution; a
book, a pamphlet, nay, a few fiery words, have overturned a dynasty.

It is no longer true, as a whole generation of writers has believed,
that art and science may be one and the same thing; or that the first,
as Taine has said, may be an "anticipation of the second." We could not
in the presence of our fellow-creatures and their suffering affect the
indifference of a naturalist before the plant or the animal he is
studying. Whatever the nature of "human phenomena" may be, we in our
quality as man can only look at them with human eyes, and could
temptation make us change our point of view, it would properly be called
inhuman.

One might add that, if it is not certain that nature was made for man,
and if, for that reason, science is wholly independent of conscience,
as we take it, it is otherwise with art. We know that man was not made
for art, but that art was made for man. We forget each time we speak of
"art for art's sake" that there is need precisely to define the meaning
of the expression and to recall that but for truth art could not have
for its object the perfecting of political institutions, the uplifting
of the masses, the correction of customs, the teachings of religion, and
that although this may lead finally to the realization of beauty, it
nevertheless remains the duty of man, and consequently, is human in its
origin, human in its development, and human in its aim.

Upon all these points, it is only necessary to think sensibly, as also
upon the question--which we have not touched upon,--of knowing under
what conditions, in what sense, and in what degree the person of the
artist can or should remain f