“Yes,” I said, “though often it tries only impracticable schemes. The artistic way combines and transcends the two. For the artist must have knowledge of facts, must know science, and must love supreme good, as well. Facts according to the supreme good, life made beautiful to be like completeness, that is the artistic life. It includes both the scientific and the philosophic.”
“It is as it were the middle way?” asked Ruth.
“Yes,” I said, “because beauty includes all extremes.”
Henry remarked: “It may be the best way, but I wouldn’t guarantee to live according to it.”
I smiled. “You mean,” I said, “that you didn’t like the idea of asking the poor man in to dinner?” He assented. “But you misunderstood me. That was only a picture, a story, not a law. If we make large laws for life—such laws as those of art—we shall avoid petty moralizing, which I, for one, detest. We shall see that every circumstance alters the case.
“It’s just this petty moralizing that is unnecessary, when one has big laws and standards which he can use in life, each for himself.”
We did come very near having a discussion on truth-telling, but I stopped it at once. I was glad to discover, however, that Ruth is not a stickler for literal truth under all circumstances.
“I don’t like little laws laid down,” I said, “because they are never true and necessary in all cases. They make me feel rebellious.”
“Yes,” said Marian, “they make one feel contrary, and want to do just the opposite.”
I spoke of the undeniable fact that all great action, all history sprang from imaginative thought, that a deed had to be imagined before it could be done, that all history was inspired by the bards and prophets. I spoke of even such scientific theories as evolution springing from imaginative thought. They all seemed to have realized this before, and none dissented. I read to them O’Shawnessy’s Ode, “We are the Music-makers.”