The name is absent

The Breviary of Aesthetic 13
tion of the moralistic doctrine; and so is the demand ad-
dressed to artists to collaborate in the education of the lower
classes, in the strengthening of the national or bellicose spirit
of a people, in the diffusion of the ideals of a modest and la-
borious life ; and so on. These are all things that art can-
not do, any more than geometry, which, however, does not
lose anything of its importance on account of its inability to
do this; and one does not see why art should do so, either.
That it cannot do these things was partially perceived by the
moralistic æsthetieians also; who very readily effected a
transaction with it, permitting it to provide pleasures that
were not moral, provided they were not openly dishonest, or
recommending it to employ to a good end the dominion that,
owing to its hedonistic power, it possessed over souls, to
gild the pill, to sprinkle sweetness upon the rim of the glass
containing the bitter draught—in short, to play the cour-
tezan (since it could not get rid of its old and inborn habits),
in the service of holy church or of morality: meretrix eccle-
siæ. On other occasions they have sought to avail them-
selves of it for purposes of instruction, since not only virtue
but also science is a difficult thing, and art could remove this
difficulty and render pleasant and attractive the entrance
into the ocean of science—indeed, lead them through it as
through a garden of Armida, gaily and voluptuously, with-
out their being conscious of the lofty protection they had
obtained, or of the crisis of renovation which they were pre-
paring for themselves. We cannot now refrain from a
smile when we talk of these theories, but should not forget
that they were once a serious matter corresponding to a seri-
ous effort to understand the nature of art and to elevate the
conception of it; and that among those who believed in it
(to limit ourselves to Italian literature) were Dante and

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