Read "Lectures on Art" by John Ruskin online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
66. You probably recollect that, in the beginning of my last lecture, it was stated that fine art had, and could have, but three functions: the enforcing of the religious sentiments of men, the perfecting their ethical state, and the doing them material service. We have to-day to examine, the mode of its action in the second power -- that of perfecting the morality, or ethical state, of men.
Perfecting, observe -- not producing.