Page:Points of view (Repplier).djvu/125

express a too vehement dissatisfaction with the men who dwell in it. Art is never didactic, does not take kindly to facts, is helpless to grapple with theories, and is killed outright by a sermon. Its knowledge is not that of a schoolmaster, and is not imparted through the severe medium of lessons. It assumes no responsibilities, undertakes no reformation, and, as George Sand neatly points out, proves nothing. What are we to learn, she asks, from "Paul and Virginia"? Merely that youth, friendship, love, and the tropics are beautiful things when St. Pierre describes them. What from "Faust?" Only that science, human life, fantastic images, profound, graceful, or terrible ideas, are wonderful things when Goethe makes out of them a sublime and moving picture. This sounds like high authority for Mr. Oscar Wilde's latest and most amusing heresy, that Nature gains her true distinction from being reproduced, with necessary modifications, by Art; that too close a copy of the original is fatal to the perfection of the younger and fairer sister; that the insignificant and sordid types in which Nature takes such reprehensible delight are to be, if possible, forgot-