justification
in experience for associating great art with penetrating insight."

Before going further it is necessary to hint at a curious confusion in
which he here involves himself--a surely rather crude confusion
between aesthetic, and moral, right and wrong. Being concerned to
disprove the existence of the former, he for a moment identifies it
with the latter. It is either, as I have taken it, a crude confusion
of thought, or an equivocating device more often used in political
controversy than in the domain of art criticism--that of identifying
the opinion attacked with another of an ignominious character. The
view which he is rejecting is thus set forth. "An artist is deemed to
be more than the maker of beautiful things. He is a seer, a moralist,
a prophet." Surely he must realise that there are many who would most
fervently hold that an artist must be a seer or even a prophet, who
would ridicule the idea that he must be that very different sort of
thing, a moralist. And in the same way, when he has declared
categorically: "I can find no justification in experience for
associating great art with penetrating insight," he almost ludicrously
adds, "or good art with good morals."

It is this confusion of the aim of the artist with the aims of other
expounders--the moralist, the philosopher, the theologian--that
vitiates his argument against the insight of the great artists. Why
does he deny them this "penetrating insight?" Because they have
cherished opposite convictions about fundamental matters. "Optimism
and pessimism; materialism and spiritualism; theism, pantheism,
atheism, morality and immorality; religion and irreligion; lofty
resignation and passionate revolt--each and all have inspired or
helped to inspire the creators of artistic beauty." The _non
sequitur_ of this argument lies in the fact that he only shows that
artists have differed in respect of what is not essential to art. If
he had shown that some artists have created the beautiful, and others
have created the ugly, he would have produced evidence fatal to his
opponents. As it is he has denied perception of the beautiful to
artists because they differ in respect of that which has no necessary
connection with beauty.

But to leave this technical, though not wholly unreal, disputation.
There is this merit in Mr. Balfour's essay: that it states in its most
extreme form a view for which there is something to be said and which
has been gaining in favo