Even as it applies to the individual, art is a heightened mode of existence. It gives deeper pleasures, it consumes more quickly. It carves upon the faces of its votaries the marks of imaginary and spiritual adventures; and though their external existence may be as quiet as a monk’s, in the long run it produces a fastidiousness, over-refinement, fatigue, and alertness of the nerves such as would not result from actual living, even if crammed with illicit passions and pleasures.
