respect, that pronounce themselves
adverse to the effects of the beautiful, and find formidable arms in
experience, with which to wage war against it. "We are free to admit"--
such is their language--"that the charms of the beautiful can further
honorable ends in pure hands; but it is not repugnant to its nature to
produce, in impure hands, a directly contrary effect, and to employ in
the service of injustice and error the power that throws the soul of man
into chains. It is exactly because taste only attends to the form and
never to the substance; it ends by placing the soul on the dangerous
incline, leading it to neglect all reality and to sacrifice truth and
morality to an attractive envelope. All the real difference of things
vanishes, and it is only the appearance that determines the value! How
many men of talent"--thus these arguers proceed--"have been turned aside
from all effort by the seductive power of the beautiful, or have been led
away from all serious exercise of their activity, or have been induced to
use it very feebly? How many weak minds have been impelled to quarrel
with the organizations of society, simply because it has pleased the
imagination of poets to present the image of a world constituted
differently, where no propriety chains down opinion and no artifice holds
nature in thraldom? What a dangerous logic of the passions they have
learned since the poets have painted them in their pictures in the most
brilliant colors, and since, in the contest with law and duty, they have
commonly remained masters of the battle-field. What has society gained
by the relations of society, formerly under the sway of truth, being now
subject to the laws of the beautiful, or by the external impression
deciding the estimation in which merit is to be held? We admit that all
virtues whose appearance produces an agreeable effect are now seen to
flourish, and those which, in society, give a value to the man who
possesses them. But, as a compensation, all kinds of excesses are seen
to prevail, and all vices are in vogue that can be reconciled with a
graceful exterior." It is certainly a matter entitled to reflection
that, at almost all the periods of history when art flourished and taste
held sway, humanity is found in a state of decline; nor can a single
instance be cited of the union of a large diffusion of aesthetic culture
with political liberty and social virtue, of fine manners associated with
good morals, and of pol