memories. It rather breeds out of the given problem a
new and singular solution, thereby exercising greater invention than
would be requisite for framing an arbitrary ideal and imposing it at all
costs on every occasion.

[Sidenote: Reason is the principle of both art and happiness.]

In other words, a happy result can be secured in art, as in life, only
by intelligence. Intelligence consists in having read the heart and
deciphered the promptings latent there, and then in reading the world
and deciphering its law and constitution, to see how and where the
heart's ideal may be embodied. Our troubles come from the colossal
blunders made by our ancestors (who had worse ancestors of their own) in
both these interpretations, blunders which have come down to us in our
blood and in our institutions. The vices thus transmitted cloud our
intelligence. We fail in practical affairs when we ignore the conditions
of action and we fail in works of imagination when we concoct what is
fantastic and without roots in the world.

The value of art lies in making people happy, first in practising the
art and then in possessing its product. This observation might seem
needless, and ought to be so; but if we compare it with what is commonly
said on these subjects, we must confess that it may often be denied and
more often, perhaps, may not be understood. Happiness is something men
ought to pursue, although they seldom do so; they are drawn away from it
at first by foolish impulses and afterwards by perverse laws. To secure
happiness conduct would have to remain spontaneous while it learned not
to be criminal; but the fanatical attachment of men, now to a fierce
liberty, now to a false regimen, keeps them barbarous and wretched. A
rational pursuit of happiness--which is one thing with progress or with
the Life of Reason--would embody that natural piety which leaves to the
episodes of life their inherent values, mourning death, celebrating
love, sanctifying civic traditions, enjoying and correcting nature's
ways. To discriminate happiness is therefore the very soul of art, which
expresses experience without distorting it, as those political or
metaphysical tyrannies distort it which sanctify unhappiness. A free
mind, like a creative imagination, rejoices at the harmonies it can find
or make between man and nature; and, where it finds none, it solves the
conflict so far as it may and then notes and endures it with a shudder.

A morality orga