. They are, so far forth,
either useless or harmful men. It is indeed good that evil should be
occasionally represented, even in its worst forms, but never that it
should be taken delight in: and the mighty men of the central class will
always give us all that is needful of it; sometimes, as Hogarth did,
dwelling upon it bitterly as satirists,--but this with the more effect,
because they will neither exaggerate it, nor represent it mercilessly,
and without the atoning points that all evil shows to a Divinely guided
glance, even at its deepest. So then, though the third class will
always, I fear, in some measure exist, the two necessary classes are
only the first two; and this is so far acknowledged by the general sense
of men, that the basest class has been confounded with the second; and
painters have been divided commonly only into two ranks, now known, I
believe, throughout Europe by the names which they first received in
Italy, "Puristi and Naturalisti." Since, however, in the existing state
of things, the degraded or evil-loving class, though less defined than
that of the Puristi, is just as vast as it is indistinct, this division
has done infinite dishonor to the great faithful painters of nature: and
it has long been one of the objects I have had most at heart to show
that, in reality, the Purists, in their sanctity, are less separated
from these natural painters than the Sensualists in their foulness; and
that the difference, though less discernible, is in reality greater,
between the man who pursues evil for its own sake, and him who bears
with it for the sake of truth, than between this latter and the man who
will not endure it at all.

Sec. LVI. Let us, then, endeavor briefly to mark the real relations of
these three vast ranks of men, whom I shall call, for convenience in
speaking of them, Purists, Naturalists, and Sensualists; not that these
terms express their real characters, but I know no word, and cannot coin
a convenient one, which would accurately express the opposite of Purist;
and I keep the terms Purist and Naturalist in order to comply, as far as
possible, with the established usage of language on the Continent. Now,
observe: in saying that nearly everything presented to us in nature has
mingling in it of good and evil, I do not mean that nature is
conceivably improvable, or that anything that God has made could be
called evil, if we could see far enough into its uses, but that, with
respect to im