Well, the highest function of art ought to do for us, or at least for the world, what the statue and the gazelle were expected to do for Grecian and Arab mothers--to make possible higher conditions than the existing ones.
So much being said, consider again the place and the meaning of the passion of love in any human life.

It is essentially a period of idealism, of imagining better things and conditions than are possible in this world.
For everybody who has been in love has imagined something higher than the possible and the present.

Any idealism is a proper subject for art.

It is not at all the same in the case of realism.

Grant that all this passion, imagination, and fine sentiment is based upon a very simple animal impulse.