Previous to this disassociation, which is recent, and whose origin is known, the idea of art was connected with diverse ideas which are normally foreign to it--ideas of morality, of utility, or education. Art was the edifying illustration introduced into religious or philosophical catechism. This was the conception of the last two centuries. We freed ourselves from that yoke. There are now those who would like to put it back upon our necks. The idea of art has again been sullied, this time with the idea of utility. Art is called social by modern preachers. It is also called democratic, both epithets being well chosen, if it was meant by them to imply complete negation of its principal function. Admitting art because it can improve individuals or the masses, is like admitting roses because an eye-wash can be extracted from them. It is confounding two series of notions which the well-regulated exercise of the intelligence places upon entirely different planes. The plastic arts have a language; but this language cannot be translated into words and phrases. The work of art says things which are addressed directly to the aesthetic sense, and to it alone. What it can add, in such a way as to be understood by our other, faculties, is not worth listening to. And yet it is this negligible element which interests the boosters of social art. They are the majority and, as we are governed by the law of numbers, their triumph seems assured. The idea of art will, perhaps, prove to have been disassociated for a few years only, and for a small group of intelligences. There are, then, a very large number of ideas that are never employed by men in their pure state, either because they have not yet been disassociated, or because this disassociation has been incapable of achieving stability. There are also a great many ideas which exist in the state of disassociation, or that can provisionally be considered so to exist, but which have a special affinity for other ideas with which they are most commonly encountered. There are still others which seem refractory to certain associations, whereas the facts to which they correspond are, in reality, extremely frequent. Here are a few examples of these affinities and of these repulsions, chosen in the profoundly interesting realm of commonplaces, or truths.