The English love of nature, in itself one of the happiest of all gifts, has not been altogether favourable to the understanding of art. It has led many English people to subordinate the fine arts entirely to nature, as if they were but poor human copies of an unapproachable divine original. In reality the fine arts can only be understood when they are pursued and valued for themselves. [Sidenote: The Parisian Mind.] The feebler moral sense of the Parisian mind and its less passionate affection for nature have left it more disengaged and more at liberty to accept art on its own account, as art and nothing more. There is a kind of Paganism which is able to rest content without deep moral problems, and to accept with satisfaction what art has to give without asking for that which it cannot give. [Sidenote: Diversity of Ideals.] The final word on the subject may be that there is a diversity of ideals, that the English ideal (speaking generally) is moral, and the Parisian ideal artistic. CHAPTER IV MORAL TRAINING [Sidenote: Difficulty of the Subject.] [Sidenote: The Effects of Moral Teaching not easily ascertained.] This chapter is very difficult to write, because I shall have to deal with what cannot be accurately ascertained. A man can hardly know how far he has been successful in the moral training of his own sons. As to the boys in the nearest school, he may ascertain what is taught them by their masters, but he cannot know the effects of the teaching on the formation of their characters; that can only be known much later, if at all. And when we pass to distant schools our knowledge must be so general and so vague that no trustworthy argument can be founded upon it. [Sidenote: Personal Influence.] The truth is that moral training is chiefly an affair of personal influence, and that influence of this kind is a special gift. For example, Dr. Arnold had the gift in the supreme degree, but a man might be placed in control of the same educational machinery and yet be destitute of it. However, some general truths may be taken note of, and they may help us to understand the subject so far as it can be said to be intelligible. [Sidenote: Necessity of a National Moral Sense.] [Sidenote: Want of Freshness of Feeling in France.]