Life seen
throughout as a countless show of the finest works of Art; Life shaped,
and purged of the irrelevant, the gross, and the extravagant; Life, as it
were, spiritually selected--that is Truth; a thing as multiple, and
changing, as subtle, and strange, as Life itself, and as little to be
bound by dogma. Truth admits but the one rule: No deficiency, and no
excess! Disobedient to that rule--nothing attains full vitality. And
secretly fettered by that rule is Art, whose business is the creation of
vital things.
That aesthete, to be sure, was right, when he said: "It is Style that
makes one believe in a thing; nothing but Style." For, what is Style in
its true and broadest sense save fidelity to idea and mood, and perfect
balance in the clothing of them? And I thought: Can one believe in the
decadence of Art in an age which, however unconsciously as yet, is
beginning to worship that which Art worships--Perfection-Style?
The faults of our Arts to-day are the faults of zeal and of adventure,
the faults and crudities of pioneers, the errors and mishaps of the
explorer. They must pass through many fevers, and many times lose their
way; but at all events they shall not go dying in their beds, and be
buried at Kensal Green. And, here and there, amid the disasters and
wreckage of their voyages of discovery, they will find something new,
some fresh way of embellishing life, or of revealing the heart of things.
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