This leads me to a reflection already often alluded to, but
which I would keep ever before you as the foundation of my argument:
"Man is the object of art." He is also the art-producer, and considering
relatively the two terms of the proposition, the manifestations of the
faculties are not necessarily adequate between the producer and the
production. I will explain.
The best conditions under which an excellent work of art should be
produced are undoubtedly the following: The conceiver possesses in the
highest possible degree of development the modalities of being essential
to the kind of creation undertaken, and these in their most perfect
harmony; but this perfection of intensity and of the relations of the
elements of the concept by no means necessitates the artist's formation
of types at once morally, intellectually and physically artistic. This
depends upon the truth of his subject. That he embellish it, whatever it
may be, by his artistic interpretation and execution, is all that we
should expect.
In the new manifestation which we now consider, where expression of
sentiment is given predominance, the artist, interpreter of the
passions, sentiments, weaknesses and vices as well as of the virtues and
sympathies of humanity, must, in order to interest or chasten, show to
it its own image, which reflection will be most frequently not an ideal
of perfection but a type of suffering and vice, of weakness and
depravity.
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