Art cannot be expelled from human culture, any more than thought. Just as all attempts to stop the followers of religion from exercising the faculty of reasoning do not succeed in the end, so all attempts to stop them from making sacred figures likewise fail. The first Buddhists were without statues for at least two hundred years. The first Romans did not venture to carve figures of their gods for the same period. The Muhammedans still do not dare to imitate sacred sculpture--neither Allah nor Muhammed is ever depicted, so fierce would the opposition be--but their artists put their skills into geometrical patterns to build mosques of striking beauty. Art cannot be dismissed as mere embellishment. It answers a human need. As Plato saw, the search for the beautiful is only another aspect of the search for the true and the good.
-- Notebooks Category 14: The Arts in Culture > Chapter 1 : Appreciation > # 24
