I mean integrity in the Latin sense, wholeness.
Everything is broken up, and mingled in confusion, both in our habits
and thoughts; besides being in great part imitative: so that you not
only cannot tell what a man is, but sometimes you cannot tell whether
he _is_, at all!--whether you have indeed to do with a spirit, or
only with an echo. And thus the same inconsistencies appear now,
between the work of artists of merit and their personal characters, as
those which you find continually disappointing expectation in the
lives of men of modern literary power;--the same conditions of society
having obscured or misdirected the best qualities of the imagination,
both in our literature and art. Thus there is no serious question with
any of us as to the personal character of Dante and Giotto, of
Shakespeare and Holbein; but we pause timidly in the attempt to
analyze the moral laws of the art skill in recent poets, novelists,
and painters.
Let me assure you once for all, that as you grow older, if you enable
yourselves to distinguish by the truth of your own lives, what is true
in those of other men, you will gradually perceive that all good has
its origin in good, never in evil; that the fact of either literature
or painting being truly fine of their kind, whatever their mistaken
aim, or partial error, is proof of their noble origin: and that, if
there is indeed sterling value in the thing done, it has come of a
sterling worth in the soul that did it, however alloyed or defiled by
conditions of sin which are sometimes more appalling or more strange
than those which all may detect in their own hearts, because they are
part of a personality altogether larger than ours, and as far beyond
our judgment in its darkness as beyond our following in its light.
Pages:
319
320
321
322
323
324
325
326
327
328
329
330
331
332
333
334
335
336
337
338
339
340
341
342
343