"An ideal founded wholly on worldly ambitions and passions necessarily partakes of their transitory, material nature, and is devoted to presenting them in every possible variety as the ultimate of human desire. Its forms may be legitimate and wholesome. They are apt to be selfish, sensual, or foolish; but the moment human aspirations rise above a mundane level into an ideal atmosphere of the godlike, be it of Olympus or Paradise, it lifts Art bodily into a more elevated sphere. However greatly the virtue of Pagan may differ from the virtue of Christian Art proper, both seek to exalt humanity by presenting to it examples of an ideal perfection, and eliminating whatever corrupts and makes a lie. We may have an agreeable Art speaking to the sensations, or an intellectual one to the mind, on the plane of the ideal; but no Art can be profoundly great, beautiful, and good, unless its aspirations are stimulated by hopes and visions that have not their exact counterpart and fruition in our earthly being. In its largest sense, religion is that state of the soul which ardently craves ideal goodness, beauty, and felicity. Art that ignores it has no permanent, universal value."