But perhaps the subject-matter, the _feeling_ with which _Romeo and Juliet_ infects those whom it does reach, lifts it into the class of the highest religious art? Not so. The feeling is one of the attractiveness of “love at first sight.” A girl fourteen years old and a young man meet at an aristocratic party, where there is feasting and pleasure and idleness, and, without knowing each other’s minds, they fall in love as the birds and beasts do. If any feeling is transmitted to us, it is the feeling that there _is_ a pleasure in these things. Somewhere, in most natures, there dwells, dominant or dormant, an inclination to let such physical sexual attraction guide our course in life. To give it a plain name, it is “sensuality.” “How can I, father or mother of a daughter of Juliet’s age, wish that those foul feelings which the play transmits should be communicated to my daughter? And if the feelings transmitted by the play are bad, how can I call it good in subject-matter?” But, objects a friend, the _moral_ of _Romeo and Juliet_ is excellent. See what disasters followed from the physical “love at first sight.” But that is quite another matter. It is the feelings with which you are infected when reading, and not any moral you can deduce, that is subject-matter of art. Pondering upon the consequences that flow from Romeo and Juliet’s behaviour may belong to the domain of moral science, but not to that of art. I have hesitated to use an illustration Tolstoy had struck out, but I think it serves its purpose. No doubt there are other, subordinate, feelings (_e.g._ humour) to be found in _Romeo and Juliet_; but many quaint conceits that are ingenious, and have been much admired, are not, I think, infectious. Tried by such tests, the enormous majority of the things we have been taught to consider great works of art are found wanting. Either they fail to infect (and attract merely by being interesting, realistic, effectful, or by borrowing from others), and are therefore not works of art at all; or they are works of “exclusive art,” bad in form and capable of infecting only a select audience trained and habituated to such inferior art; or they are bad in subject-matter, transmitting feelings harmful to mankind.