nt as mathematical truth of human
vicissitudes. On the whole, no other vehicle of emotion and no other
means to ecstasy has served man so well. In art any flood of spiritual
exaltation finds a channel ready to nurse and lead it: and when art
fails it is for lack of emotion, not for lack of formal adaptability.
There never was a religion so adaptable and catholic as art. And now
that the young movement begins to cast about for a home in which to
preserve itself and live, what more natural than that it should turn to
the one religion of unlimited forms and frequent revolutions?

For art is the one religion that is always shaping its form to fit the
spirit, the one religion that will never for long be fettered in dogmas.
It is a religion without a priesthood; and it is well that the new
spirit should not be committed to the hands of priests. The new spirit
is in the hands of the artists; that is well. Artists, as a rule, are
the last to organise themselves into official castes, and such castes,
when organised, rarely impose on the choicer spirits. Rebellious
painters are a good deal commoner than rebellious clergymen. On
compromise which is the bane of all religion--since men cannot serve two
masters--almost all the sects of Europe live and grow fat. Artists have
been more willing to go lean. By compromise the priests have succeeded
marvellously in keeping their vessel intact. The fine contempt for the
vessel manifested by the original artists of each new movement is almost
as salutary as their sublime belief in the spirit. To us, looking at the
history of art, the periods of abjection and compromise may appear
unconscionably long, but by comparison with those of other religions
they are surprisingly short. Sooner or later a true artist arises, and
often by his unaided strength succeeds in so reshaping the vessel that
it shall contain perfectly the spirit.

Religion which is an affair of emotional conviction should have nothing
to do with intellectual beliefs. We have an emotional conviction that
some things are better than others, that some states of mind are good
and that others are not; we have a strong emotional conviction that a
good world ought to be preferred to a bad; but there is no proving these
things. Few things of importance can be proved; important things have to
be felt and expressed. That is why people with things of importance to
say tend to write poems rather than moral treatises. I make my critics a
pre