ay for the coming of such conditions?
I think that all great art has done this. Do you remember the old story
about Greek mothers keeping in their rooms the statue of a god or a man,
more beautiful than anything real, so that their imagination might be
constantly influenced by the sight of beauty, and that they might perhaps
be able to bring more beautiful children into the world? Among the Arabs,
mothers also do something of this kind, only, as they have no art of
imagery, they go to Nature herself for the living image. Black luminous
eyes are beautiful, and wives keep in their tents a little deer, the
gazelle, which is famous for the brilliancy and beauty of its eyes. By
constantly looking at this charming pet the Arab wife hopes to bring into
the world some day a child with eyes as beautiful as the eyes of the
gazelle. Well, the highest function of art ought to do for us, or at least
for the world, what the statue and the gazelle were expected to do for
Grecian and Arab mothers--to make possible higher conditions than the
existing ones.

So much being said, consider again the place and the meaning of the
passion of love in any human life. It is essentially a period of idealism,
of imagining better things and conditions than are possible in this world.
For everybody who has been in love has imagined something higher than the
possible and the present. Any idealism is a proper subject for art. It is
not at all the same in the case of realism. Grant that all this passion,
imagination, and fine sentiment is based upon a very simple animal
impulse. That does not make the least difference in the value of the
highest results of that passion. We might say the very same thing about
any human emotion; every emotion can be evolutionally traced back to
simple and selfish impulses shared by man with the lower animals. But,
because an apple tree or a pear tree happens to have its roots in the
ground, does that mean that its fruits are not beautiful and wholesome?
Most assuredly we must not judge the fruit of the tree from the unseen
roots; but what about turning up the ground to look at the roots? What
becomes of the beauty of the tree when you do that? The realist--at least
the French realist--likes to do that. He likes to bring back the attention
of his reader to the lowest rather than to the highest, to that which
should be kept hidden, for the very same reason that the roots of a tree
should be kept underground if the tree is to