However cleverly done, they remain cabbages and turnips still.
The man who could paint for us the thought that makes the cabbage, he would be the artist, the man who knows the Life.

And so for our new Art we must have a splendid ideal.

Do you want to know how low Art may sink when materialism triumphs and vulgarises and degrades?
Then see that exhibition of French pictures that was placed in Bond Street some years ago, which attracted those who loved indecency more than those who loved the beautiful, and then you will understand how Art perishes where the breath of the ideal does not inspire and keep alive.

And Theosophy to the artist would bring back that ancient reverence which regards the artist of the Beautiful as one of the chief God-revealers to the race of which he is a portion; which sees in the great musical artist, or the sculptor, or the painter, a God-inspired man, bringing down the grace of heaven to illuminate the dull grey planes of earth.

The artists should be the prophets of our time, the revealers of the Divine smothered under the material; and were they this, they would be regarded with love and with reverence; for true art needs reverence for its growing, and the artist, of all men--subtle, responsive, sensitive to everything that touches him--needs an atmosphere of love and reverence that he may flower into his highest power, and show the world some glimpse of the Beauty which is God.
And the world of science--perhaps there, after the world of religion, Theosophy has most of value to offer.