Yet misery and poverty and suffering are with us still, as they were always; perhaps more so now, when the few are becoming richer and the many poorer and less able to fight.
Still, one softening relic of the past remains to us, although it is taking on the garments of the age—Art, which, however much it may strive to imitate the emotionless present, no more can exist without emotion than could the rainbow without colour.
True art is like what religion ought to be—all-sufficing and all-embracing. Within its magic circle live the virtues and the vices, so that when the student approaches he may take his choice with which to walk through life.
If he takes the virtues as his guides, he paints and understands only beauty, and thus raises himself and his audience towards faith, love, and charity.
If he takes the vices, he becomes brutishly realistic and degraded, inspiring his audience with unbelief, passion, and hopeless selfishness.
And therefore, as charity is the greatest of all the virtues, I take my art as the direct inspiration towards charity; feeling that if this angel follows me along the dry highway, and shelters me with her spreading wings, when I come to the cliffs and sit down to rest I may look behind and see the sins I have left covered with white flowers and that limitless ocean bathed in the golden glory of the setting day—a day not all mis-spent or profitless.
How to do the best for art, since art can do so much for us, is the intention I have had in the writing of these chapters. How to live so that we may be in the best condition to fulfil our obligations without losing a moment of the time at our disposal, this is the motive of these self-reflections.
Looking round upon nature, I find that the animals nearest perfection are graminivorous—that is, nearest to that state of peace and purity which we believe Heaven to be—whilst the carnivora represent the vices of unrest, passion, cruelty, and ambition.
Reasoning out this observation further, I think that if man could live naturally, without excitement and haste or the voracious desire for place and fortune, he would become more poetic, more art-loving, and charitable; therefore, nearer to a state of perfection by imitating the graminivora than he will by following the habits of the carnivora.
Still, I must admit that before this can be accomplished society must be altogether changed. From experience as a vegetarian and a non-vegetarian, I have come to the conclusion that unless man can afford to step aside from the rushing stream of competition, and the thousand excitements which hurry us along in a mad race with every nerve on the strain, he cannot possibly be a vegetarian, or, in its highest sense, a true artist.