Art And Religion Are, Then, Two Roads

Comfort Came In With The Middle Classes.

We All Agree Now - By 'we' I Mean Intelligent People Under Sixty - That A Work Of Art Is Like A Rose. A Rose Is Not Beautiful Because It Is Like Something Else. Neither Is A Work Of Art. Roses And Works Of Art Are Beautiful In Themselves.

What Quality Is Shared By All Objects That Provoke Our Aesthetic Emotions? Only One Answer Seems Possible— Significant Form. In Each, Lines And Colors Combined In A Particular Way; Certain Forms And Relations Of Forms, Stir Our Aesthetic Emotions. These Relations And Combinations Of Lines And Colors, These Aesthetically Moving Forms, I Call ‘significant Form’; And ‘significant Form’ Is The One Quality Common To All Works Of Visual Art.

Art And Religion Are, Then, Two Roads By Which Men Escape From Circumstance To Ecstasy. Between Aesthetic And Religious Rapture There Is A Family Alliance. Art And Religion Are Means To Similar States Of Mind.

Only Reason Can Convince Us Of Those Three Fundamental Truths Without A Recognition Of Which There Can Be No Effective Liberty: That What We Believe Is Not Necessarily True; That What We Like Is Not Necessarily Good; And That All Questions Are Open.