Those who see in
the dearest and most intimate of human relations, the purest and
highest gift of God, will watch with a species of terror, and even
repulsion, the aloofness, the solitariness of the mystic and the
artist. It will seem to them a sort of chilly isolation, an inhuman,
even a selfish thing; just as the mystic and the artist will see in the
normal life of men a thing fettered and bound with sad and small
chains. It is impossible to say which is the higher life--no dogmatism
is possible--all depends upon the quality of the emotion; it is the
intensity of the feeling rather than its nature that matters. The
impassioned lover of human relations is a finer being than the
unimpassioned artist, just as the impassioned artist is a finer being
than the man who loves sensually and materialistically. All depends
upon whether the love, whatever it be--the love of nature or of art, of
things spiritual or divine, the love of humanity, the sense of
brotherly companionship--leads on to something unfulfilled and high, or
whether it is satisfied. If our desire is satisfied, we fail; if it is
for ever unsatisfied, we are on the right path, though it leads us none
can tell whither, to wildernesses or paradises, to weltering seas or to
viewless wastes of air. If the artist rests upon beauty itself, if the
mystic lingers among his ecstasies, they have deserted the pilgrim's
path, and must begin the journey over again in weariness and in tears.
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