Tolstoy wrote most bitterly against the idea, and we may say that from the time of the appearance of his _What is Art?_ in 1897, the theory fell into disrepute. Not that people accepted Tolstoy's views that art should teach the love of God and man, but his idea did much to humanize art. Before Tolstoy, Nietzsche had also taken a fling at the theory.
Critics to-day recognize that life forms the substance of art, that art gets all its material from life and that man is properly the subject of art, thinking man as well as emotional man. They further perceive that literature is so human in its origins that even unconscious human emotions are present where they were not suspected. The more we humanize literature the greater art does it become. It is true, however, that after the art work is completed, it has influence on life. Our lives may be devoted to art, we may have life for art's sake, but not art for art's sake.
Still, art for art's sake is a good theory to be invoked against the extreme didactic-minded one who thinks nothing should be written unless it illustrates a lesson in our commonplace and bourgeois morality, a morality very often false and outworn. They would ask writers to show us men conforming to this morality, instead of revolting from it. They would make literature exalt self-sacrifice in all circumstances and would stamp out any tendencies to liberal speculation. They demand that poetry uphold society in all its institutions, teach obedience, and prevail on us to bow down before the mandates of priests and capitalists. But literary men are often at variance with the moral views entertained by the clergy and the ruling classes, and they have the right to illustrate the views of morality that they consider much higher than the customs of society. An author should not be bound by the views of his age. He should in fact expose them and show their evil influence. He does not, however, then write in conformity with the theory of art for art's sake, for he expresses another morality than that of society's, and thus has a higher moral purport in view. Ibsen's greatness lies in the fact that he did not subscribe to conventional morality: he attacked it and thus he really was an artist with a moral aim.