In many respects the theory awakens sympathy in all lovers of literature; it was a reaction to the moralist view which wanted art to teach the commonplace ethical notions we all know. Art has always had an enemy in the bourgeois moralist. He always looked for a sermon, and stamped the artist as immoral who arrived at conclusions different from those countenanced by the church or the state. He was not satisfied to read of a wonderful portrayal of a passion, done as a lesson in psychology without any moral comments by the author. He wanted the artist to act like a preacher and condemn at all times, instead of portray. The Puritan opposed the truthful description of natural emotions; he looked askance upon references to the body; he wanted people drawn in obedience to laws, instead of as breaking through them. He tried to thrust subjects upon the artist and limit him. He had no ear for sound, no eye for color, no appreciation of beauty.
Little wonder that the artist lost patience and sent morality to the devil, and deified technique and deliberately chose unseemly subjects. The disciples of art for art's sake did much good to the cause of art. They broadened its field. They gave the artist the right to write about a corpse or delirium tremens, to describe a murder or a crime without pointing out lessons. They permitted him to use his imagination to the full extent, and to invent any forms he chose.
But the theory overrode itself. It became an apology for abuses of art. Writers began to create meaningless jargon, to waste words on trite ideas, to avoid all contact with life, to eliminate man as a subject of art. Art lacked soul, and if it showed a personality behind it, it was a petty, sterile and inane one. Art fought against intellect as well as against morals. Even those who advocated it were writing in direct violation of it. Flaubert's realistic novel _Madame Bovary_ and Swinburne's _Songs Before Sunrise_ were not art for art's sake. _The Ballad of Reading Gaol_ was not art for art's sake; imprisonment had changed Wilde's views. Men like Gautier and Swinburne, who were the most ardent champions of the theory of art for art's sake, found themselves in a peculiarly inconsistent predicament by being the greatest admirers of Victor Hugo, much of whose work was written with humanitarian motives. Hearn in America started out as a believer in the theory and ended by attacking it.