An explanation of the nature of these two human acts of art and religion will disclose more analogies while revealing essential differences. Religion is a virtue of the will, a habit developed by the free act of man, a virtue which culminates in worship of God as the supreme being. The impulse of art has not been analyzed as fully and as satisfactorily as the virtue of religion, but from Aristotle’s analysis in the _Poetics_, through the Neo-Platonists and the Scholastics down to Kant and his followers, there is common agreement that the tendency to beauty does not belong to the inclination towards good, actuating appetite and will, but that the enjoyment of beauty is a function of the perceptions, the imagination, and the mind. The admitted disinterestedness of the art impulse is the paramount and irresistible evidence that it differs essentially from the self-seeking tendency of will and appetite which cannot be indifferent to good, since good is the very cause and condition of the appetite’s existence. The enjoyment of a painted fruit is akin to the enjoyment of verified theory or of a triumphant conclusion, and not like the satisfaction felt in the ownership of the painting of fruit or in the actual craving or eating of the fruit. It is evident, therefore, why a man may be artistic without being religious. There is no more difficulty in understanding why an artist is not a saint than in knowing that conscience is one thing and acting up to it another thing. Improvement in art does not always mean improvement in morals or in religion, any more than to know is to will. Nor, on the other hand, will the evil of an artist or of his work be evidence against the divinity of art. The divine origin of conscience and the natural law is evident in the vice of the sinner as in the virtues of the saint. The essential difference between art and religion shows also that the school in which the prophet is Ruskin, the school which finds a religion in the beauty of world or of art, is incorrect in its teaching. Love and fear are the mainsprings of action, the incentives to virtue. Beauty may grace the attraction of good; it cannot take the place of good in virtue and religion. Estheticism is not asceticism. Francis of Assisi was a poet and a saint, Francesca da Rimini enjoyed poetry, might have been a poet, but was not always a saint, and many a Francisco and Francesca may be found neither artistic nor religious, as many are talented without being virtuous and virtuous without being talented. Despite the sad lack of harmony between the beauty of their art and the virtue of their lives, artists have nevertheless always been revered. The honor of their art has won them in their lapses a gentleness of treatment not accorded to less favored mortals. They are fallen angels if they fall.