tion. Things partially evil or partially ugly may have to be
chosen under stress of unfavourable circumstances, lest some worse thing
come; but if a thing were ugly it would _thereby_ not be wholly good,
and if it were _altogether_ good it would perforce be beautiful.

To criticise art on moral grounds is to pay it a high compliment by
assuming that it aims to be adequate, and is addressed to a
comprehensive mind. The only way in which art could disallow such
criticism would be to protest its irresponsible infancy, and admit that
it was a more or less amiable blatancy in individuals, and not _art_ at
all. Young animals often gambol in a delightful fashion, and men also
may, though hardly when they intend to do so. Sportive self-expression
can be prized because human nature contains a certain elasticity and
margin for experiment, in which waste activity is inevitable and may be
precious: for this license may lead, amid a thousand failures, to some
real discovery and advance. Art, like life, should be free, since both
are experimental. But it is one thing to make room for genius and to
respect the sudden madness of poets through which, possibly, some god
may speak, and it is quite another not to judge the result by rational
standards. The earth's bowels are full of all sorts of rumblings; which
of the oracles drawn thence is true can be judged only by the light of
day. If an artist's inspiration has been happy, it has been so because
his work can sweeten or ennoble the mind and because its total effect
will be beneficent. Art being a part of life, the criticism of art is a
part of morals.

[Sidenote: Importance of aesthetic alternatives.]

Maladjustments in human society are still so scandalous, they touch
matters so much more pressing than fine art, that maladjustments in the
latter are passed over with a smile, as if art were at any rate an
irresponsible miraculous parasite that the legislator had better not
meddle with. The day may come, however, if the state is ever reduced to
a tolerable order, when questions of art will be the most urgent
questions of morals, when genius at last will feel responsible, and the
twist given to imagination will seem the most crucial thing in life.
Under a thin disguise, the momentous character of imaginative choices
has already been fully recognised by mankind. Men have passionately
loved their special religions, languages, and manners, and preferred
death to a life flowering in any o