Art is not thought, but will, impulse, intuition; not ideas, but ideality. None knew this better than Ruskin. No great artist can be cornered with the question, “What for?” What is creation for? What are you and I for? The catechism answers promptly enough, and the artist does not contradict it. But of necessity his answer is not so dogmatic; or rather, he does not give a direct answer at all, but lets the epitome of life which he brings answer for him. He is not to exhibit the forces of life harnessed to a purpose and tilling some man’s private domain, but he is to show them in spontaneous play and fusion, obeying no law but their own, and working to universal ends. His work is finally for our edification. If it be also for our reproof, he must conceal his purpose so well that we do not suspect it. He must let the laws of life alone speak for him. Sainte-Beuve has a passage bearing upon this subject which is admirable. He had been censured as a critic for being too lax in his dealings with the morality of works of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Let me quote his reply: “If there are some readers (and I think I know some) who would prefer to see me censure it oftener and more roundly, I beg them to observe that I succeed much better by provoking them to condemn it themselves than by taking the lead and seeming to try to impose a judgment of my own every time. In the long run, if a critic does this (or an artist either), he always wearies and offends his readers. They like to feel themselves more severe than the critic. I leave them that pleasure. For me, it is enough if I represent and depict things faithfully, so that every one may profit from the intellectual substance and the good language, and be in a position to judge for himself the other, wholly moral parts. There, however, I am careful not to be crucial.” French art is less moral than English art, not because it preaches less, but because it is more given to levity and trifling, because it exaggerates the part one element plays in life, and because it draws less inspiration from fundamental ethical ideas. It may at times be guilty of indifferentism, but against very little English or American art can this charge be made. The great distinction of art is that it aims to see life steadily and to see it whole. This is its high and unique service; it would enable us to live in the whole and in the spirit of the whole; not in the part called morality, or philosophy, or religion, or beauty, but in the unity resulting from the fusion and transformation of these varied elements. It affords the one point of view whence the world appears harmonious and complete. The moralist, the preacher, seizes upon a certain part of the world, and makes much of that; the philosopher seizes upon another part, the æsthete upon another; only the great artist comprehends and includes all these, and sees life and nature as a vital, consistent whole.