CHAPTER XX THE CONCLUSION
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Tolstoy, Leo, graf and Maude, Aylmer
The task for art to accomplish is to make that feeling of brotherhood and love of one’s neighbour, now attained only by the best members of the society, the customary feeling and the instinct of all men. By evoking, under imaginary conditions, the feeling of brotherhood and love, religious art will train men to experience those same feelings under similar circumstances in actual life; it will lay in the souls of men the rails along which the actions of those whom art thus educates will naturally pass. And universal art, by uniting the most different people in one common feeling, by destroying separation, will educate people to union, will show them, not by reason but by life itself, the joy of universal union reaching beyond the bounds set by life.
The destiny of art in our time is to transmit from the realm of reason to the realm of feeling the truth that well-being for men consists in being united together, and to set up, in place of the existing reign of force, that kingdom of God, i.e. of love, which we all recognise to be the highest aim of human life.
Possibly, in the future, science may reveal to art yet newer and higher ideals, which art may realise; but, in our time, the destiny of art is clear and definite. The task for Christian art is to establish brotherly union among men.