8 THE CRIME OF PROMETHEUS

ty, to which it seems to be transported, privately, by but
a small cooperation of fancy.

Yet, after all, what'must be the purpose of anart whichis
cultivated, just for its own sake, by an audience predisposed
to sympathy and yet expecting from the art no substantial
gain? Whence the quality of “disinterest” thatis the virtue of
the modern audience—an audience whose fervor in defending
artistic licenseis fully equalled by its aversion to any consid-
eration of the moral aim of art? Indeed, the audience has good
cause, if not substantial logical support, for its disinterested
purity. Though its conscience does not restrain it from a play-
ful intimacy with the imaged forms of art reminiscent of the
craft of idolatry, which once fundamentally characterized
the practice of those “fine’ arts, its virtue, requiring the sup-
ression of idolatry, can be credited with the modern ambiv-
alence regarding the value of art as well as for doctrines
that treat the aesthetic as a special philosophical category.

In short, an explanation of art that will set it apart from
technical and scientific knowledge, as well as from ethical
practice, has been found necessary to absolve the modern aud-
ience of responsibility for works of magic, witchcraft, and
image-worship, along with the other paraphernalia useful
in interceding with a spirit, all of which constituted the prim-
ative tools of art. The resultant notions of free or
disinterested pleasure that pervade aesthetic doctrine seem
to guarantee that the modern audience can taste of forbidden
experience in all innocence.

The Greeks acknowledged many gods, and their art,
the only honest European art, was candidly a devotional
offering and supplication to the gods as well as an intricate
magical snare to keep these divine beings benign and commun-
icative with the earth. For this purpose of spiritual persua-
sion or coercion, the imaged human body, the supreme sac-
ramental vessel, was most instrumental. To become a god—
this was the aim of the Greek way of life. If one has been rob-
bed of this aim, however, and has been forbidden the use of

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