"Equally with all untruth must all impurity be excluded from art. Purity and chastity are requirements resulting from the very nature of art. But it is just because art is so closely connected with sensuousness, that there is such obvious temptation to present the sensuous in false independence, to call forth the mere gratification of the senses. The sensuous must, however, be always subordinated to the intellectual, for this is involved in the demand for _ideality_, in other words, for that impress of perfection given by the idea and the mind in every artistic representation. And even if æsthetic ideality is present in a work of art, it must be subordinated to ethic ideality, to the moral purity in the artist's mind, a purity diffused throughout the whole." Enough has been said and quoted to prove to all those who believe that art, while it is the chief regenerative force in life, cannot possibly be dissociated from morals, that Wilde's view of art in its relation to morals is entirely unsound and dangerous to the half-educated and those who do not know how the greatest brains of the world have regarded this question. It is not necessary to continue or to pile proof upon proof, easy though this would be. From the people who have a little culture, imagine they have much more, and are dazzled by the splendour and beauty of Wilde's execution, it will be idle to expect an assent. Those who believe in art for art's sake as an infallible doctrine, may be divided into three classes. First of all there are the very young, whose experience of life has not taught them the truth. They have not seen or known life as a whole, and, therefore, no sound ethical view can possibly disabuse them of the heresy. There are those again, older and more mature, who have not made experience of life in its harsher and sadder aspects sufficient to wean them from Wilde's theory, in which they are interested from a purely academic point of view. And there is another class who are convinced secretly in their own hearts that art for art's sake is an untenable doctrine, but know that if they accepted it they would have to give up much which they are unable to do without and which makes life pleasant and dulls the conscience.