Page:Clarence S. Darrow - Realism in Literature and Art (1899).djvu/10

 10 nature has slowly fitted the brain and eye of man to the earth on which we live and the objects that we see; and the perfect earthly eye must harmonize with the perfect earthly scene.

To say that realism is coarse and vulgar is to declare against nature and her works, and to assert that the man she made may dream of things higher and grander than nature could unfold. The eye of the great sculptor reveals to him the lines that make the most perfect human form, and he chisels out the marble block until it resembles this image so completely that it almost seems to live. Nature, through ages of experiment and devolpment, has made this almost faultless, form. It is perfect because every part is best fitted for the separate work it has to do. The artist knows that he could not improve a single organ if he would, for all the rest of nature must be adjusted to, the change. He has the skill to reproduce this shape in lasting stone, and the human brain, could not conceive a form more beautiful and fair. Here is a perfect image of the highest work that countless centuries of nature‘s toil has made, and yet some would seek to beautify and sanctify this work by dressing it in the garb that shifting fashion and changing fancy makes for man.

Only the vulgar supersitition of the past ever