And what is art doing? All art, real and counterfeit, with very few exceptions, is devoted to describing, depicting, and inflaming sexual love in every shape and form. When one remembers all those novels and their lust-kindling descriptions of love, from the most refined to the grossest, with which the literature of our society overflows; if one only remembers all those pictures and statues representing women’s naked bodies, and all sorts of abominations which are reproduced in illustrations and advertisements; if one only remembers all the filthy operas and operettas, songs and _romances_ with which our world teems, involuntarily it seems as if existing art had but one definite aim—to disseminate vice as widely as possible. Such, though not all, are the most direct consequences of that perversion of art which has occurred in our society. So that, what in our society is called art not only does not conduce to the progress of mankind, but, more than almost anything else, hinders the attainment of goodness in our lives. And therefore the question which involuntarily presents itself to every man free from artistic activity and therefore not bound to existing art by self-interest, the question asked by me at the beginning of this work: Is it just that to what we call art, to a something belonging to but a small section of society, should be offered up such sacrifices of human labour, of human lives, and of goodness as are now being offered up? receives the natural reply: No; it is unjust, and these things should not be! So also replies sound sense and unperverted moral feeling. Not only should these things not be, not only should no sacrifices be offered up to what among us is called art, but, on the contrary, the efforts of those who wish to live rightly should be directed towards the destruction of this art, for it is one of the most cruel of the evils that harass our section of humanity. So that, were the question put: Would it be preferable for our Christian world to be deprived of _all_ that is now esteemed to be art, and, together with the false, to lose _all_ that is good in it? I think that every reasonable and moral man would again decide the question as Plato decided it for his _Republic_, and as all the Church Christian and Mahommedan teachers of mankind decided it, _i.e._ would say, “Rather let there be no art at all than continue the depraving art, or simulation of art, which now exists.” Happily, no one has to face this question, and no one need adopt either solution. All that man can do, and that we—the so-called educated people, who are so placed that we have the possibility of understanding the meaning of the phenomena of our life—can and should do, is to understand the error we are involved in, and not harden our hearts in it but seek for a way of escape. Footnote 88: