For it is mind, soul, and heart--not taste or art--that make men great.
It is indeed doubtful whether the cultivation of art--which usually ministers to luxury--has done so much for human progress as is generally supposed.

It is even possible that its too exclusive culture may effeminate rather than strengthen the character, by laying it more open to the temptations of the senses.

"It is the nature of the imaginative temperament cultivated by the arts," says Sir Henry Taylor, "to undermine the courage, and, by abating strength of character, to render men more easily subservient--SEQUACES, CEREOS, ET AD MANDATA DUCTILES." [1817] The gift of the artist greatly differs from that of the thinker; his highest idea is to mould his subject--whether it be of painting, or music, or literature--into that perfect grace of form in which thought [18it may not be of the deepest] finds its apotheosis and immortality.
Art has usually flourished most during the decadence of nations, when it has been hired by wealth as the minister of luxury.

Exquisite art and degrading corruption were contemporary in Greece as well as in Rome.
Phidias and Iktinos had scarcely completed the Parthenon, when the glory of Athens had departed; Phidias died in prison; and the Spartans set up in the city the memorials of their own triumph and of Athenian defeat.
It was the same in ancient Rome, where art was at its greatest height when the people were in their most degraded condition.

Nero was an artist, as well as Domitian, two of the greatest monsters of the Empire.
If the "Beautiful" had been the "Good," Commodus must have been one of the best of men.