to set up as the aim of art; in reality, they do not want
art, nor the legitimate pleasures of art: they want the sterile pleasure
of perceiving mere ingenuity and dexterity of handling; they hanker
vaguely after imaginary sensuous stimulation, spiced with all manner of
mystical rubbish, after some ineffable half-nauseous pleasure in strange
mixtures of beauty and nastiness; they enjoy above all things dabbling
and dipping alternately in virtue and vice, as in the steam and iced
water of a Turkish bath.... In short, these creatures want art not for
its own sake, but for the sake of excitement which the respectabilities
of society do not permit their obtaining, except in imaginative form. As
to art, real art, they treat it much worse than the most determined
utilitarian: the utilitarians turn art into a drudge; these aesthetic
folk make her into a pander and a prostitute. My reason for restricting
art to artistic aims is simply my principle that if things are to be
fully useful they must be restricted to their real use, according to the
idea of Goethe's Duke of Ferrara:--

'Nicht alles dienet uns auf gleiche Weise;
Wer vieles brauchen will, gebrauche jedes
In seiner Art, so ist er wohl bedient.'

I want art in general not to meddle with the work of any of our other
energies, for the same reason that I want each art in particular not to
meddle with the work of any other art. Sculpture cannot do the same as
painting, nor painting the same as music, nor music the same as poetry;
and by attempting anything beyond its legitimate sphere each sacrifices
what it, and no other, can do. So, also, art in general has a definite
function in our lives; and if it attempts to perform the work of
philosophy, or practical benevolence, or science, or moralizing, or
anything not itself, it will merely fail in that, and neglect what it
could do."

"Oh yes," continued Baldwin after a minute, as they passed into the
twilight of a wood of old olives, grey, silvery, mysterious, rising tier
above tier on either side of the road, a faint flicker of yellow light
between their feathery branches. "Oh yes, I don't doubt that were I a
writer, and were I to expound my life-and-art philosophy to the world,
the world would tax me with great narrowness! Things are always too
narrow for people when they are kept in their place--kept within duty
and reason. Of course there is an infinite grandeur in chaos--in a
general wandering among the Unknown,