Page:Clarence S. Darrow - Realism in Literature and Art (1899).djvu/12

 12 of the soul, and it therefore believed that the artist's resurrection of the flesh was the death of the soul. This old religious prejudice, born of a misty, superstitious past, has slowly faded from the minds of men, but we find its traces even yet. The origin of the feeling against realistic art has well nigh been forgot, but much of the feeling still remains. No one would now pretend to say that all the body was unholy or unfit for sight, and yet years of custom and inherited belief have made us think that a part is good and the rest is bad; that nature, in her work of building up the human form, has made one part sacred and another vile. It is easy to mistake custom for nature and inherited prejudice for morality. There is scarcely a portion of the human body but that some people have thought it holy, and scarcely a single portion but that some have believed it vile.

It was not shame that made clothing, but clothing that made shame. If we would eradicate from our beliefs all that inheritance and environment have given it would be hard for us to guess how much should still remain. Custom has made most things good and most things bad, according to the whim of time and place. To find solid ground we must turn to nature and ask her what it is that conduces to the highest happiness and the longest life.