path, though it leads us none can tell whither, to wildernesses or paradises, to weltering seas or to viewless wastes of air.  If the artist rests upon beauty itself, if the mystic lingers among his ecstasies, they have deserted the pilgrim’s path, and must begin the journey over again in weariness and in tears.  But if they walk earnestly, not knowing what the end may be, never mistaking the delight of the moment for the joy that shines and glows beyond the furthest horizon, then they are of the happy number who have embraced the true quest.  Such a faith will give them a patient and beautiful kindliness, a deep affection for fellow-pilgrims, and, most of all, for those in whose eyes and lips they can discern the wistful desire to see behind the shadows of mortal things.  But the end will be beyond even the supreme moment of love’s abandonment, beyond the fairest sights of earth, beyond the sweetest music of word or chord.  And we must, above all things, forbear to judge another, to question other motives, to condemn other aims; for we shall feel that for each a different path is prepared.  And we shall forbear, too, to press the motives that seem to us the fairest upon other hearts.  We must give them utterance as faithfully as we can, for they may be a step in another’s progress.  But the thought of interfering with the design of God will be impious, insupportable.  Our only method will be a perfect sincerity, which will indeed lead us to refrain from any attempt to overbalance or to divert ingenuous minds from their own chosen path.  To accuse our fellow-men of stupidity or of prejudice is but to blaspheme God.

XXX

What, after all, is the essence of the artistic life, the artist’s ideal?  I think the reason why it is so often misconceived and misunderstood is because of the fact that it is a narrow path and is followed whole-heartedly by few.  Moreover, in England at the present time, when we are all so tolerant and imagine ourselves to be permeated by intelligent sympathy with ideas, there seem to me to be hardly any people who comprehend this point of view at all.  There is a good deal of interest in England in moral ideals, though even much of that is of a Puritan and commercial type.  The God that we ignorantly worship is Success, and our interest in moral ideas is mainly confined to our interest in what is successful.  We are not in love with beautiful, impracticable visions at all; we measure a man’s moral intensity by the extent to which he makes people respectable and prosperous.  We believe in an educator when he makes his boys do their work and play their games; in a priest, when he makes people join clubs, find regular employment, give up alcohol.  We believe in a statesman when he makes a nation wealthy and contented.  We have no intellectual ideals, no ideals of beauty.  Our idea of poetry is that people should fall in love, and our idea of art is the depicting of rather obvious allegories.