Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 3.djvu/82

 68 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

The artist weds the moral to the aesthetic by taking advan- ' as clear and beautiful, while sinners are painted black and hideous. The poets and painters of a blond race will make evil men swarthy, while those of a dark race will make them red haired. In the epic and drama of our fair race the hero is a tall blonde, while the villain is small and dark. Physical deficiencies such as the hunchback or the clubfoot get so associated with evil character as to breed great injustice. Avarice besets young and old, fair and foul. Yet art has coupled it indissolubly in our minds with the filthy person, yellow skin, and long, bony, clutch- ing fingers of an old man.
 * tage of our feelings for person. The faces of saints are shown

Besides putting a shadow into the face of a sinner and a halo to types of deed and character. In literature unruly appetites are "leprosy;" sin is "defilement;" lust is "a cruel pesti- lence;" obedience to instincts is "the bondage of our corrup- tion;" sinful passions are "scabs;" hypocrites are " whited sepulchres;" wealth seeking is "raking muck;" evil practices are "putrid sores;" crafty transactions are "malodorous;" absence of integrity is "rottenness." The wicked are "like the troubled sea when it cannot rest; whose waters cast up mire and dirt." The egotists are, after their kind, cormorants, vampires, leeches, vultures, vipers, toads, spiders and vermin.
 * about the head of the saint, art polarizes our feelings in regard

Dante, a moral aesthete, is able to give conduct the stamp he wished by his choice of punishments in his Malebolge. Flatter- ers "snort with their muzzles," traitors "bark," fratricides butt together "like two he-goats," thieves become reptiles, falsifiers are covered with scabs, gluttons thrust forth their heads " as in a ditch the frogs stand only with their muzzles out." So Spen- ser in his Faerie Qucene shows Envy of "leprous mouth," Lechery "rough and blacke and filthy," Gluttony on a swine, crane -necked and "spuing up his gorge." Tennyson and Browning while less crude are no less emphatic. Thus the wrong is yoked with the foul and the excesses of egoism are associated with disgustful images.