doing to make it no more than the transitory consequence of chance susceptibilities, or the incalculable by-product of social evolution.
The reluctance to accept such views has (often unconsciously) driven some critical theorists to strange expedients. If the dignity of Art be lowered by the instability of aesthetic values, it might, they think, be raised by an alliance with other great spiritual interests. An artist is therefore deemed to be more than the maker of beautiful things. He is a seer, a moralist, a prophet. He must intuitively penetrate the realities which lie behind this world of shows. At the lowest he must supply 'a criticism of life'. In much of Ruskin's work aesthetics, theology, and morals are inextricably intertwined. In the criticisms by smaller men, the same thing has been done in a smaller way; and obiter dicta based on the view that good art is always something more than art, that it not only creates beauty, but symbolically teaches philosophy, religion, ethics, even science, are constantly to be found in the purple passages of enthusiastic commentators on poetry, music, and painting.
For myself I admit that I require a mystical supplement to that strictly critical view of beauty and art with which alone I am now concerned.
