,note3 for this online edition ,i have moved the ,table of ,contents to the beginning of the text4 ,,the ,,enjoyment ,,of ,,art ,,by ,,carleton ,,noyes ,,boston ,,and ,,new ,,york ,,houghton1 ,,mifflin ,,and ,,company ,the ,riverside ,press1 ,cambridge #aijc ,,copyright1 #aijc1 ,,by ,,carleton ,,noyes ,,all ,,rights ,,reserved ,published1 ,march1 #aijc ,to ,,robert ,,henri ,,and ,,van ,d4 ,,perrine ,this day before dawn ,i ascended a hill and look'd at the crowded heaven1 ,and ,i said to my spirit ,when we become the enfolders of those orbs1 and the pleasure and knowledge of every thing in them1 shall we be fill'd and satisfied then8 ,and my spirit said ,no1 we but level that lift to pass and continue beyond4 ,,walt ,,whitman ,,contents ,preface ,i4 ,the ,picture and the ,man i ,,ii4 ,the ,work of ,art as ,symbol #ai ,,iii4 ,the ,work of ,art as ,beautiful #da ,,iv4 ,art and ,appreciation #fg ,v4 ,the ,artist #hf ,,preface ,the following pages are the answer to questions which a young man asked himself when1 fresh from the university1 he found himself adrift in the great galleries of ,europe4 ,as he stood helpless and confused in the presence of the visible expressions of the spirit of man in so many ages and so many lands1 one question recurred insistently3 ,why are these pictures8 ,what is the meaning of all this striving after expression8 ,what was the aim of these men who have left their record here8 ,what was their moving impulse8 ,why1 why does the human spirit seek to manifest itself in forms which we call beautiful8 ,he turned to histories of art and to biographies of artists1 but he found no answer6 to the ,why8 ,the philosophers with their theories of aesthetics helped him little to understand the dignity and force of this portrait or the beauty of that landscape4 ,in the conversation of his artist friends there was no enlightenment1 for they talked about values and planes of modeling and the mysteries of tone4 ,at last he turned in upon himself3 ,what does this canvas mean to me8 ,and here he found his answer4 ,this work of art is the revelation to me of a fuller beauty1 a deeper harmony1 than ,i have ever seen or felt4 ,the artist is he who has experienced this new wonder in nature and who wants to communicate his joy1 in concrete forms1 to his fellow men4 ,the purpose of this book is to set forth in simple1 untechnical fashion the nature and the meaning of a work of art4 ,although the illustrations of the underlying principles are drawn mainly from pictures1 yet the conclusions apply equally to books and to music4 ,it is true that the manifestations of the art-impulse are innumerable1 embracing not only painting1 sculpture1 literature1 music1 and architecture1 but also the handiwork of the craftsman in the designing of a rug or in the fashioning of a cup or a candlestick2 it is true that each art has its special province and function1 and that each is peculiarly adapted to the expression of a certain order of emotion or idea1 and that the distinctions between one art and another are not to be inconsiderately swept aside or obscured4 ,yet art is one4 ,it is possible1 without confusing the individual characteristics essential to each1 to discuss these principles under the comprehensive rubric of ,art4 ,the attempt is made here to reduce the supposed mysteries of art discussion to the basis of practical1 every-day intelligence and common sense4 ,what the ordinary man who feels himself in any way attracted2 towards art needs is not more and constantly more pictures to look at1 not added lore about them1 not further knowledge of the men and the times that have produced them2 but rather what he needs is some understanding of what the artist has aimed to express1 and1 as reinforcing that understanding1 the capacity rightly to appreciate and enjoy4 ,it is hoped that in this book the artist may find expressed with simplicity and justice his own highest aims2 and that the appreciator and the layman may gain some insight into the meaning of art expression1 and that they may be helped a little on their way to the enjoyment of art4 ,,harvard ,,college1 ,december tenth1 #aijb4 ,i ,,the ,,picture ,,and ,,the ,,man ,at any exhibition of paintings1 more particularly at some public gallery or museum1 one can hardly fail to reflect that an interest in pictures is unmistakably widespread4 ,people are there in considerable numbers1 and what is more striking1 they seem to represent every station and walk in life4 ,it is evident that pictures1 as exhibited to the public1 are not the cult of an initiated few2 their appeal is manifestly to no one class2 and this popular interest is as genuine as it is extended4 ,thus reflectively scanning the crowd1 the observer asks himself3 ,what has attracted these numbers to that which might be supposed not to be understood of the many8 ,and what are the pictures that in general draw the popular attention8 ,a few persons have of course drifted into the exhibition out of curiosity or from lack of something better to do4 ,so much is evident at once1 for these file past the walls listlessly1 seldom stopping1 and then but to glance at those pictures which are most obviously like the familiar object they pretend to represent1--such as the bowl of flowers which the beholder can almost smell1 the theatre-checks and five-dollar note pasted on a wall which tempt him to finger them1 or the panel of game birds which puzzles him to determine whether the birds are real or not4 ,these visitors1 however1 are not the most numerous4 ,with the great majority it is not enough that the picture be a clever piece of imitation or illusion3 transferring their interest from the mere execution1 they demand further that the subjects represented shall be pleasing4 ,the crowd pause before a sunny landscape1 with cows standing by the shaded pool2 they gather about the brilliant portrait of a woman splendidly arrayed1--a favorite actress or a social celebrity2 they linger before a group of children wading in a brook1 or a dog crouching mournfully by an empty cradle4 ,at length1 with an approving and sympathetic word of comment1 they pass on to the next pleasing picture4 ,some canvases1 not the most popular ones1 are yet not without their interest for a few2 these visitors are taking things a little more seriously2 they do not try to see every picture1 they do not hurry2 they seem to be considering the canvas immediately before them with concentrated attention4 ,no one of all these people is insensible to the appeal of the picturesque3 their presence at the exhibition is evidence of that4 ,in life they like to see a bowl of flowers1 a sunny landscape1 a beautiful woman in beautiful surroundings2 and naturally they are interested in that which represents and recalls the reality4 ,at once it is plain1 however1 that to different individuals the various pictures appeal in different measure and for differing reasons4 ,to one the very fact of representation is a mystery and fascination4 ,to another the important thing is the subject2 the picture must represent what he likes in nature or in life4 ,to a third the subject itself is of less concern than what the painter wanted to say about it3 the artist saw a beauty manifested by an ugly beggar1 perhaps1 and he wanted to show that beauty to his fellows1 who could not perceive it for themselves4 ,the special interest in pictures of each of these three men is not without its warrant in experience4 ,what man is wholly indifferent to the display of human skill8 ,who is there without his store of pleasurable associations1 who is not stirred by any call which rouses them into play8 ,what lover of beauty is not ever awake to the revelation of new beauty8 ,indeed1 upon these three principles together1 though in varying proportion1 depends the full significance of a great work of art4 ,as the lover of pictures looks back over the period of his conscious interest in exhibitions and galleries1 it is not improbable that his earliest memories attach themselves to those paintings which most closely resembled the object represented4 ,he remembers the great wonder which he felt that a man with mere paint and canvas could so reproduce the reality of nature4 ,so it is that those paintings which are perhaps the first to attract the man who feels an interest in pictures awakening are such as display most obviously the painter's skill4 ,whatever the subject imitated1 the fascination remains2 that such illusion is possible at all is the mystery and the delight4 ,but as his interest in pictures grows with indulgence1 as his experience widens1 the beholder becomes gradually aware that he is making a larger demand4 ,after the first shock of pleasurable surprise is worn away1 he finds that the repeated exhibition of the painter's dexterity ceases to satisfy him2 these clever pieces of deception manifest a wearying sameness1 after all2 and the beholder begins now to look for something more than mere expertness4 ,thinking on his experience1 he concludes that the subjects which can be imitated deceptively are limited in range and interest2 he has a vague1 disquieting sense that somehow these pictures do not mean anything4 ,yet he is puzzled4 ,art aims to represent1 he tells himself1 and it should follow that the best art is that which represents most closely and exactly4 ,he recalls1 perhaps1 the legend of the two ,greek painters1 one with his picture of the fruit which the birds flew down to peck at1 the other with his painting of a veil which deceived his very rival4 ,the imitative or illusionist picture pleads its case most plausibly4 ,a further experience of such pictures1 however1 fails to bring the beholder beyond his simple admiration of the painter's skill2 and that skill1 he comes gradually to realize1 does not differ essentially from the adroitness of the juggler who keeps a billiard ball1 a chair1 and a silk handkerchief rotating from hand to hand4 ,conscious1 then1 of a new demand1 of an added interest to be satisfied1 the amateur of pictures turns from the imitative canvas to those paintings which appeal more widely to his familiar experience4 ,justly1 he does not here forgo altogether his delight in the painter's cunning of hand1 only he requires further that the subjects represented shall be pleasing4 ,it must be a subject whose meaning he can recognize at once3 a handsome or a strong portrait1 a familiar landscape1 some little incident which tells its own story4 ,the spectator is now attracted by those pictures which rouse a train of agreeable associations4 ,he stops before a canvas representing a bit of rocky coast1 with the ocean tumbling in exhilaratingly4 ,he recognizes the subject and finds it pleasing2 then he wonders where the picture was painted4 ,turning to his catalogue1 he reads3 #cg4 ,on the ,coast of ,maine4 ,oh1 yes1 he says to himself1 ,i was on the coast of ,maine last summer1 and ,i remember what a glorious time ,i had sitting on the rocks of an afternoon1 with some book or other which the ocean was too fine to let me read4 ,i like that picture4 ,if the title had read ,massachusetts ,coast1 it is to be feared he would not have liked the canvas quite so well4 ,the next picture which he notices shows1 perhaps1 a stately woman sumptuously attired4 ,it is with a slight shock of disappointment that the visitor finds recorded in his catalogue3 #da4 ,portrait of a ,lady4 ,he could see that much for himself4 ,he hoped it was going to be the painter's mother or somebody's wife1--a person he ought to know about4 ,but the pictures which appeal to him most surely are those which tell some little story1--,the ,lovers1 ,the ,boy leaving ,home1 ,the ,wreck4 ,here the subject1 touching some one of the big human emotions1 to which no man is wholly insensible1 calls out the response of immediate interest and sympathy4 ,it is something which he can understand4 ,at length there comes a day when the visitor stops before a landscape which seems to him more beautiful than anything he has ever seen in nature2 or some portrait discloses a strength of character or radiates a charm of personality which he has seldom met with in life4 ,whence comes this beauty1 this strength1 this graciousness8 ,can it be that the painter has seen a new wonder in nature1 a new significance in human life8 ,the spectator's previous experience of pictures has familiarized him in some measure with the means of expression which the painter employs4 ,more sensitive now to the appeal of color and form1 he sees that what the artist cares to present on his canvas is just his peculiar sense of the beauty in the world1 a beauty that is best symbolized and made manifest through the medium of color and form4 ,before he understood this eloquent language which the painter speaks1 he misinterpreted those pictures whose significance he mistook to be literary and not pictorial4 ,he early liked the narrative picture because here was a subject he could understand2 he could rephrase it in his own terms1 he could retell the story to himself in words4 ,now words are the means of expression of every-day life4 ,because of this fact1 the art which employs words as its medium is the art which comes nearest to being universally understood1 namely1 literature4 ,the other arts use each a medium which it requires a special training to understand4 ,without some sense of the expressiveness of color1 line1 form1 and sounds1--a sense which can be cultivated1--one is necessarily unable to grasp the full and true meaning of picture1 statue1 or musical composition4 ,one must realize further that the artist thinks and feels in his peculiar medium2 his special meaning is conceived and expressed in color or form or sound4 ,the task of the appreciator1 correspondingly1 is to receive the artist's message in the same terms in which it was conceived4 ,the tendency is inevitable1 however1 to translate the meaning of the work into words1 the terms in which men commonly phrase their experience4 ,a parallel tendency is manifest in one's efforts to learn a foreign language4 ,the ,english student of ,french at first thinks in ,english and laboriously translates phrase for phrase into ,french2 and in hearing or reading the foreign language1 he translates the original1 word for word1 into his native tongue before he can understand its sense3 he has mastered the language only when he has reached that point where ,english is no longer present to his consciousness3 he thinks in ,french and understands in ,french4 ,similarly1 to translate the message of any art into terms that are foreign to it1 to phrase the meaning of music or painting1 for example1 in words1 is to fail of its essential1 true significance4 ,the import of music is musical2 the meaning of pictures is not literary but pictorial4 ,in the understanding of this truth1 then1 the spectator penetrates to the artist's real intention2 and he becomes aware that when he used the picture as the peg whereon to hang his own reflections and ideas1 he missed the meaning of the artist's work4 ,as ,i look at this canvas1 he tells himself1 it is not what ,i know of the coast of ,maine that is of concern1 but what the painter has seen and felt of its beauty and wants to reveal to me4 ,able at last to interpret the painter's medium1 the appreciator comes to seek in pictures not primarily an exhibition of the craftsman's skill1 not even a recall of his own pleasurable experiences1 but rather1 beyond all this1 a fuller visible revelation of beauty4 ,the essential significance of art1 that art is revelation1 is illustrated not only by painting but by the other arts as well4 ,in music1 to take but a single example1 are present the same elements that constitute the appeal of pictures1--skill in the rendering1 a certain correspondence with experience1 and the power of imaginative interpretation of the facts of life4 ,the music-hall performer who wins the loudest and heartiest applause is he who does the greatest number of pyrotechnic1 wonderful things on the piano1 or holds a high note on the cornet for the longest time4 ,his success1 as with the painter whose aim is to create illusion1 rests upon men's instinctive admiration for the exhibition of skill4 ,again1 as the imitative picture involves not only the display of dexterity1 but also likeness to the thing represented and the consequent possibility of recognizing it immediately1 so in the domain of music there is an order of composition which seems to aim at imitation1--the so-called descriptive music4 ,a popular audience is delighted with the ,cats' ,serenade1 executed on the violins with overwhelming likeness to the reality1 or with1 the ,day in the ,country1 in which the sun rises in the high notes1 cocks crow1 horses rattle down the road1 merrymakers frolic on the green1 clouds come up in the horns1 lightning plays in the violins1 thunder crashes in the drums and cymbals1 the merrymakers scatter in the whole orchestra1 the storm passes diminuendo1 and in the muted violins the full moon rises serenely into a twilight sky4 ,here the intention is easily understood2 the layman cannot fail to recognize what the composer wanted to say4 ,and as in the case of pictures which interest the beholder because he can translate their subject into the terms which are his own medium of expression1 that is1 words1 so with descriptive music1 broadly speaking1 the interest and significance is literary and not musical4 ,still another parallel is presented4 ,just as those pictures are popular whose subjects lie within the range of familiar experience1 such as cows by the shaded pool1 or children playing1 or whose subjects touch the feelings2 so1 that music is popular which is phrased in obvious and familiar rhythms such as the march and the waltz1 or which appeals readily and unmistakably to sentiment and emotion4 ,it is after the lover of music has traversed these passages of musical expression and has proved their imitations that he comes to seek in music new ranges of experience1 unguessed-at possibilities of feeling1 which the composer has himself sounded and which he would communicate to others4 ,he is truly the artist only as he leads his auditors into regions of beautiful living which they alone and of themselves had not penetrated4 ,for it is then that his work reveals4 ,only such pictures1 too1 will have a vital meaning as reveal4 ,the imitative and the iterative alike1 that which adds nothing to the object and that which adds nothing to the experience of the beholder1 though once pleasing1 now fail to satisfy4 ,the appreciator calls for something fuller4 ,he wants to pass beyond the object1 beyond his experience of it1 into the realm of illumination whither the true artist would lead him4 ,the development of appreciation1 as the amateur has come to realize in his own person1 is only the enlargement of demand4 ,the appreciator requires ever fresh revelations of beauty4 ,he discovers1 too1 that in practice the tendency of his development is in the direction of exclusion4 ,as he goes on1 he cares for fewer and fewer things1 because those works which can minister to his ever-expanding desire of beauty must needs be less numerous4 ,but these make up in largeness of utterance1 in the intensity of their message1 what they lack in numbers4 ,nor does this outcome make against a fancied catholicity of taste4 ,the true appreciator still sees in his earlier loves something that is good1 and he values the good the more justly that he sees it now in its right relation and apprehends its real significance4 ,as each in its turn led him to seek further1 each became an instrument in his development4 ,for himself he has need of them no longer4 ,but far from contemning them1 he is rightly grateful for the solace they have afforded1 as by them he has made his way up into the fuller meaning of art4 ,,ii ,,the ,,work ,,of ,,art ,,as ,,symbol ,in the experience of the man who feels himself attracted to pictures and who studies them intelligently and with sympathy1 there comes a day when suddenly a canvas reveals to him a new beauty in nature or in life4 ,much seeing and much thinking1 much bewilderment and some disappointment1 have taught him that in the appreciation of pictures the question at issue is not1 how cleverly has the painter imitated his object1 is not1 how suggestive is the subject of pleasing associations2 he need simply ask himself1 ,what has the artist conceived or felt in the presence of this landscape1 this arrangement of line and color1 this human face1 that ,i have not seen and felt1 and that he wants to communicate to me8 ,the incident of the single canvas1 which by its illuminating revealment first discloses to the observer the true significance of pictures1 is typical of the whole scope of art4 ,the mission of art is to reveal4 ,it is the prophet's message to his fellow men1 the apocalypse of the seer4 ,the artist is he to whom is vouchsafed a special apprehension of beauty4 ,he has the eye to see1 the temperament to feel1 the imagination to interpret2 it is by virtue of these capacities1 this high1 transfiguring vision1 that he is an artist2 and his skill of hand1 his equipment with the means of expression1 is incidental to the great fact that he has somewhat to express that the common man has not4 ,to his work1 the manifestation of his spirit in material form1 his perception made sensible1 is accorded the name of art4 ,art is expression4 ,it is not a display of skill2 it is not the reproduction of external forms or appearances2 it does not even1 as some say1 exist for itself3 it is a message1 a means4 ,to cry ,art for ,art's sake6 is to converse with the echo4 ,such a definition but moves in a circle1 and doubles upon itself4 ,no2 art is for the artist's sake4 ,the artist is the agent or human instrument whereby the supreme harmony1 which is beauty1 is manifested to men4 ,art is the medium by which the artist communicates himself to his fellows2 and the individual work is the expression of what the artist felt or thought1 as at the moment some new aspect of the universal harmony was revealed to his apprehension4 ,art is emotion objectified1 but the object is subordinated to the emotion as means is to an end4 ,the material result is not the final significance1 but what of spiritual meaning or beauty the artist desired to convey4 ,not what is painted1 as the layman thinks1 not how it is painted1 as the technician considers1 but why did the artist paint it1 is the question which sums up the truth about art4 ,the appreciator need simply ask1 ,what is the beauty1 what the idea1 which the artist is striving to reveal by these symbols of color and form8 ,he understands that the import of the work is the idea1 and that the work itself is beautiful because it symbolizes a beautiful idea2 its significance is spiritual4 ,the function of art1 then1 is through the medium of concrete1 material symbols to reveal to men whatever of beauty has been disclosed to the artist's more penetrating vision4 ,in order to seize the real meaning of art it is necessary to strip the word beauty of all the wrappings of customary associations and the accretions of tradition and habit4 ,as the word is current in ordinary parlance1 the attribute of beauty is ascribed to that which is pleasing1 pretty1 graceful1 comely2 in fine1 to that which is purely agreeable4 ,but surely such is not the beauty which ,rembrandt saw in the filthy1 loathsome beggar4 ,to ,rembrandt the beggar was expressive of some force or manifestation of the supreme universal life1 wherein all things work together to a perfect harmony4 ,beauty is the essential quality belonging to energy1 character1 significance4 ,a merely agreeable object is not beautiful unless it is expressive of a meaning2 whatever1 on the other hand1 is expressive of a meaning1 however shocking it may be in itself1 however much it may fail to conform to conventional standards1 is beautiful4 ,beauty does not reside in the object4 ,no2 it is the artist's sense of the great meaning of things2 and in proportion as he finds that meaning--the qualities of energy1 force1 aspiration1 life--manifest and expressed in objects do those objects become beautiful4 ,such was the conception of beauty ,keats had when he wrote in a letter3 ,what the ,imagination seizes as ,beauty must be ,truth--whether it existed before or not1--for ,i have the same idea of all our passions as of ,love3 they are all1 in their sublime1 creative of essential ,beauty4 ,and similarly2 ,i can never feel certain of any truth1 but from a clear perception of its ,beauty4 ,it his verse he sings3-- ',beauty is truth1 truth beauty1'--that is all ,ye know on earth1 and all ye need to know4 ,when it is said here1 then1 that the artist sees beauty in nature1 the phrase may be understood as a convenient but inexact formula1 as when one says the sun rises or the sun sets4 ,beauty is in the landscape only in the sense that these material forms express for the artist an idea he has conceived of some aspect of the universal life4 ,the artist is impelled to embody concretely his perception of beauty1 and so to communicate his emotion1 because the emotion wakened by the perception of new harmony in things is most fully possessed and enjoyed as it comes to expression4 ,thus to make real his ideal and find the expression of himself is the artist's supreme ,happiness4 ,a familiar illustration of the twin need and delight of expression may be found in the handiwork produced in the old days when every artisan was an artist4 ,it may be1 perhaps1 a key which some craftsman of ,nuremberg fashioned4 ,in the making of it he was not content to stop with the key which would unlock the door or the chest ,it was his key1 the work of his hands2 and he wrought upon it lovingly1 devotedly1 and made it beautiful1 finding in his work the expression of his thought or feeling2 it was the realization for that moment of his ideal4 ,his sense of pleasure in the making of it prompted the care he bestowed upon it2 his delight was in creation1 in rendering actual a new beau which it was given him to conceive4 ,in its origin as a work of art the key does not differ from a landscape by ,inness1 an arrangement by ,whistler1 a portrait by ,sargent4 ,the artist1 whether craftsman or painter1 is deeply stirred by some passage in his experience1 a fair object or a true thought3 it is the imperious demand of his nature1 as it is his supreme pleasure1 to give his feeling expression4 ,the form which his expression takes--it may be key or carpet1 it may be statue1 picture1 poem1 symphony1 or cathedral--is that which most closely responds to his idea1 the form which most truly manifests and represents it4 ,all art1 as the expression of the artist's idea1 is in a certain definite sense representative4 ,not that all art reproduces an external reality1 as it is said that painting or literature represents and music does not2 but every work of art1 in painting1 poetry1 music1 or in the handiwork of the craftsman1 represents in that it is the symbol of the creator's ideal4 ,to be sure1 the painter or sculptor or dramatist draws his symbols from already existing material forms1 and these symbols are like objects in a sense in which music is not ,but line and color and the life of man1 apart from this resemblance to external reality1 are representative or symbolic of the artist's idea precisely as the craftsman's key1 the designer's pattern1 or the musician's symphony4 ,the beautifully wrought key1 the geometric pattern of oriental rug or hanging1 the embroidered foliation on priestly vestment1 are works of art equally with the landscape1 the statue1 the drama1 or the symphony1 in that they are one and all the sensuous manifestation of some new beauty spiritually conceived4 ,the symbolic character of a work of art must not be lost from sight1 for it is the clue to the interpretation of pictures1 as it is of all art4 ,the painter feels his way through the gamut of his palette to a harmony of color just as truly as the musician summons the notes of his scale and marshals them into accord4 ,the painter is moved by some sweep of landscape2 it wakens in him an emotion4 ,when he sets himself to express his emotion in the special medium with which he works1 he represents by pigment the external aspect of the landscape1 yes2 but not in order to imitate it or reproduce it3 he represents the landscape because the colors and the forms which he registers upon the canvas express for him the emotions roused by those colors and those forms in nature4 ,he does not try to match his grays with nature's grays1 but this nuance which he gropes for on his palette1 and having found it1 touches upon his canvas1 expresses for him what that particular gray in nature made him feel4 ,his one compelling purpose is in all fidelity and singleness of aim to translate the impression received4 ,the painter's medium is just as symbolic as the notes of the musician's nocturne or the words of the poet's sonnet1 equally inspired by the hour and place4 ,color and line and form1 although they happen to be the properties of things1 have a value for the emotions as truly as musical sounds3 they are the outward symbol of the inward thought or feeling1 the visible bodying forth of the immaterial idea4 ,the symbolic character of the material world is not early apprehended4 ,in superficial reaction upon life1 men do not readily pass beyond the immediate actuality4 ,that the spiritual meaning of all things is not perceived1 that all things are not seen to be beautiful1 or expressive of the supreme harmony1 is due to men's limited powers of sight and feeling4 ,therefore is it that the artist is given in order that he may reveal as yet unrealized spiritual relations1 or new beauty4 ,the workaday world with its burden of exigent realities has need of a ,carlyle to declare that things are but a wonderful metaphor and the physical universe is the garment of the living ,god4 ,in the realm of thought an ,emerson1 seer of transcendent vision1 must come to restore his fellows to their birthright1 which is the life of the spirit4 ,as in life1 so in art men do not easily pass the obvious and immediate4 ,the child reads ,gulliver's ,travels or ,the ,pilgrim's ,progress for the story4 ,as his experience of life both widens and deepens1 he is able to see through externals1 and he penetrates to the real significance1 of which the narrative is but the symbol4 ,so it is with an insight born of experience that the lover of art sees no longer the subject1 but the beauty which the subject is meant to symbolize4 ,in the universal1 all-embracing constitution of things1 nothing is without its significance4 ,to be aware that everything has a meaning is necessary to the understanding of art1 as indeed of life itself4 ,that meaning1 which things symbolize and express1 it cannot be said too often1 is not necessarily to be phrased in words4 ,it is a meaning for the spirit4 ,a straight line affects one differently from a curve2 that is1 each kind of line means something4 ,every line in the face utters the character behind it2 every movement of the body is eloquent of the man's whole being4 ,the expression of the face balks account1 says ,walt ,whitman1 ,but the expression of a well-made man appears not only in his face1 ,it is in his limbs and joints also1 it is curiously in the joints of his hips and wrists1 ,it is in his walk1 the carriage of his neck1 the flex of his waist and knees1 dress does not hide him1 ,the strong sweet quality he has strikes through the cotton and broadcloth1 ,to see him pass conveys as much as the best poem1 perhaps more1 ,you linger to see his back1 and the back of his neck and shoulder-side4 ,crimson rouses a feeling different from that roused by yellow1 and gray wakens a mood different from either4 ,in considering this symbolic character of colors it is necessary to distinguish between their value for the emotions and merely literary associations4 ,that white stands for purity or blue for fidelity is a conventionalized and attached conception4 ,but the pleasure which a man has in some colors or his dislike for others depends upon the effect each color has upon his emotions1 and this effect determines for him the symbolic value of the color4 ,in the same way sounds are symbolic in that they affect the emotions apart from associated thoughts4 ,even with a person who has no technical knowledge of music1 the effect of the minor key is unmistakably different from the major4 ,the tones and modulations of the voice1 quite apart from the words uttered1 have an emotional value and significance4 ,everything1 line1 form1 gesture1 movement1 color1 sound1 all the material world1 is expressive4 ,all objective forms have their meaning1 and rightly perceived are1 in the sense in which the word is used here1 beautiful1 in that they represent or symbolize a spiritual idea4 ,thus it is that beauty is not in the object but in man's sense of the object's symbolic expressiveness4 ,the amateur may be rapt by some artist's quality of color4 ,but it is probable that in the act of laying on his pigment1 the artist was not thinking of his quality at all1 but1 rapt himself by the perception of the supreme harmony at that moment newly revealed to his sense1 he was striving sincerely and directly to give his feeling its faithfullest expression4 ,his color is beautiful because his idea was beautiful4 ,the expression is of the very essence of the thought2 it is the thought1 but the thought embodied4 ,coleridge1 says ,carlyle1 remarks very pertinently somewhere that whenever you find a sentence musically worded1 of true rhythm and melody in the words1 there is something deep and good in the meaning1 too4 ,for body and soul1 word and idea1 go strangely together here as everywhere4 ,not to look beyond the material is to miss the meaning of the work4 ,in an art such as music1 in which form and content are one and inextricable1 it is not difficult to understand that the medium of expression which the art employs is necessarily symbolic1 for here the form cannot exist apart from the meaning to be conveyed4 ,in the art of literature1 however1 the case is not so clear1 for the material with which the poet1 the novelist1 the dramatist works1 material made up of the facts of the world about us1 we are accustomed to regard as objective realities4 ,an incident is an incident1 the inevitable issue of precedent circumstances1 and that's all there is to it ,character is the result of heredity1 environment1 training1 plus the inexplicable ,ego4 ,to regard these facts of life which are so actual and immediate as a kind of animate algebraic formulae seems absurd1 but absurd only as one is unable to penetrate to the inner meaning of things4 ,madame ,bovary1 to take an example quite at random1 is called a triumph of realism4 ,now realism1 of all literary methods1 should register the fact as it is1 and least of all should concern itself with symbols4 ,but this great novel is more than the record of one woman's life4 ,any one who has come to understand the character and temperament of ,flaubert as revealed in his ,letters must feel that ,madame ,bovary is no arbitrary recital of tragic incident1 but those people who move through his pages1 what they do and what goes on about them1 expressed for ,flaubert his own dreary1 baffled rebellion against life4 ,that the artist may consciously employ the facts of life1 not for the sake of the fact1 but to communicate his feeling by thus bodying it forth in concrete symbols1 there is explicit testimony4 ,in an essay dealing with his own method of composition1 ,poe writes3 ,i prefer commencing with the consideration of an effect4 ,keeping originality always in view 4 4 4 ,i say to myself1 in the first place1 'of the innumerable effects or impressions of which the heart1 the intellect1 or 7more generally7 the soul is susceptible1 what one shall ,i1 on the present occasion1 select8' ,having chosen a novel first1 and secondly1 a vivid effect1 ,i consider whether it can be best wrought by incident or tone 4 4 4 afterwards looking about me 7or rather within7 for such combinations of event or tone as shall best aid me in the construction of the effect4 ,yes1 physical circumstances1 the succession of incident1 shifting momentary grouping of persons1 traits of character in varied combination and contrast1--all these are significant for the literary artist of spiritual relations4 ,as the symbol of what the artist feels and strives to express1 the individual work of art is necessarily more than any mere transcript of fact4 ,it is the meeting and mingling of nature and the spirit of man2 the result of their union is fraught with the inheritance of the past and holds within it the limitless promise of the future4 ,the work of art is a focus1 gathering into itself all the stored experience of the artist1 and radiating in turn so much to the beholder as he is able at the moment to receive4 ,a painter is starting out to sketch4 ,through underbrush and across the open he pushes his way1 beset by beauty on every side1 and storing impressions1 sensations1 thoughts4 ,at last his eye lights upon some clump of brush1 some meadow or hill1 which seems at the instant to sum up and express his accumulated experience4 ,in rendering this bit of nature1 he pours out upon his canvas his store of feeling4 ,it is the single case which typifies his entire course4 ,the man's whole life preludes the single deed4 ,his way through the world has been just such a gathering up of experience1 and each new work which he produces is charged with the collected wealth of years4 ,the special work is the momentary epitome of the artist's total meaning4 ,he finds this brief passage in nature beautiful then and there because it expresses what he feels and means4 ,he does not try to reproduce the thing1 but uses the thing for what it signifies4 ,the thing is but for that moment3 it signifies all that has gone before4 ,as he watches1 a cloud passes over the sun and the face of nature is darkened4 ,suddenly the scene bursts into light again4 ,in itself the landscape is no brighter than before the sun was darkened4 ,the painter feels it brighter for the contrast1 and inevitably his rendering of its aspect is heightened and intensified4 ,art is nature heightened and intensified as nature is interpreted through the transfiguring medium of the human spirit ,to the object is added ,the gleam1 ,the light that never was on sea or land1 ,the consecration and the poet's dream4 ,after an early morning in the fields1 ,corot withdraws to his house to rest4 ,i dream of the morning landscape1 he writes2 ,i dream my picture1 and presently ,i will paint my dream4 ,but not only does the artist render the beauty which this landscape happens to express for him3 he charges these colors and forms with the beauty of all landscape4 ,corot painted at ,ville d',avray2 what he painted was ,god's twilight or dawn enwrapping tree and pool4 ,in gratitude and worship he revealed to men the tender1 ineffable poetry of gray dawns in all places and for all time4 ,millet's peasants were called ,john and ,peter and ,charles1 and they tilled the soil of ,france2 but on their bowed shoulders rests the universal burden2 these dumb figures are eloquent of the uncomplaining1 hopeless peasanthood of the world4 ,in the actual to discern the ideal1 in the appearance to penetrate to the reality1 without taking leave of the material to reveal the spiritual1--this is the mystery and vocation of the artist1 and his achievement is art4 ,,iii ,,the ,,work ,,of ,,art ,,as ,,beautiful ,just as nature and life are significant as the material manifestation of spiritual forces and relations1 so a work of art is in its turn the symbol by which the artist communicates himself2 it is his revelation to men of the beauty he has perceived and felt4 ,beauty is not easy to define4 ,that conception which regards beauty as the power to awaken merely agreeable emotions is limited and in so far false4 ,another source of misunderstanding is the confusion of beauty with moralistic values4 ,it is said that beauty is the ,ideal2 and by many the ,ideal is taken to mean ideal goodness4 ,with righteousness and sin as such beauty has no concern4 ,much that is evil in life1 much that offends against the moral law1 must be regarded as beautiful in so far as it plays its necessary part in the universal whole4 ,clearing away these misconceptions1 then1 an approximate definition would be that the essence of beauty is harmony4 ,so soon as a detail is shown in its relation to a whole1 then it becomes beautiful because it is expressive of the supreme unity4 ,a discord in music is felt to be a discord only as it is isolated2 when it takes its fitting and inevitable place in the large unity of the symphony1 it becomes full of meaning4 ,the hippopotamus1 dozing in his tank at the ,zoo1 is wildly grotesque and ugly4 ,but who shall say that1 seen in the fastnesses of his native rivers1 he is not the beautiful perfect fulfilling of nature's harmony8 ,to a race of blacks1 the fair-skinned ,apollo appearing among them could not but be monstrous4 ,the smoking factory1 sordid and hideous1 is beautiful to him who sees that it accomplishes a necessary function in the great scheme of life4 ,beauty is adaptation4 ,whatever is truly useful is in so far truly beautiful4 ,the steam engine and the battleship are beautiful just as truly as ,titian's ,madonna1 glorified and sweeping upward into the presence of ,god the ,father4 ,only what is vital and serviceable1 and whatever is that1 is beautiful4 ,when the spirit of man perceives a unity in things1 a working together of parts1 there beauty exists4 ,it resides in the synthesis of details to the end of shaping a complete whole4 ,this perception1 this synthesis1 is a function of the human mind4 ,beauty is not in the landscape1 but in the intelligence which apprehends it4 ,evidence of this fundamental truth is the fact that the same landscape is more beautiful to one man than to another1 or to a third1 perhaps1 is not beautiful at all4 ,it is only as the individual perceives a relation among the parts resulting in a total unity that the object becomes beautiful for him4 ,this abstract exposition may be made clearer by a graphic illustration4 ,here are four figures composed of the same elements3-- 99 999999 9999 99 999999 99 9999999999 99 999999999999 99 9999 99 99 99 99 99 99999999999999999999999999 99 99 99 99 99 9999 ,fig4 ,i4 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 ,fig4 ,,ii4 ,fig4 ,,iii4 ,fig4 ,,iv4 ,figure ,i41 far from being pleasing1 is positively disquieting4 ,with the other three figures1 the perception of their form is attended with a kind of pleasure4 ,whereas the first figure is without form and is meaningless1 each of the second group exhibits harmony1 balance1 proportion1 interrelation of parts3 each is perceived to be a whole4 ,although experience itself comes to men in fragments and seemingly without order1 yet the human mind is so constituted as to require that an idea or a truth be shown to be a whole before the mind can comprehend it ,in considering the element of balance1 it should be noted1 as illustrated by ,figure ,,iv41 that balance is not necessarily perfect symmetry4 ,a ,gothic cathedral is beautiful no less than a ,greek temple4 ,in a painting of a landscape1 for example1 it is necessary simply that the masses and the tones stand in balancing relation2 the perfect symmetry of geometric exactness1 characteristic of ,hellenic and ,renaissance art1 is not required4 ,in the work which embodies the artist's perception of the universal harmony1 there must be rhythm1 order1 unity in variety2 so framed it becomes expressive and significant ,as the symbol of beauty1 the work of art is itself beautiful in that it manifests in itself that wholeness and integrity which is beauty4 ,every work of art is informed by a controlling design2 it subordinates manifold details to a definite whole2 it reduces and adjusts its parts to an all-inclusive1 perceptible unity4 ,the ,nuremberg key must have some sort of rhythm2 the rug or vestment must exhibit a pattern which can be seen to be a whole2 the canvas must show balance in the composition1 and the color must be in tone4 ,in any work of art there must be design and purpose4 ,in nature there is much which to the limited perception of men does not appear to be beautiful1 for there is much that does not manifest superficially the necessary harmony4 ,the landscape at noonday under the blaze of the relentless sun discloses many things which are seemingly incongruous with one another4 ,the dull vision of men cannot penetrate to the unity underlying it all4 ,at twilight1 as the shadows of evening wrap it round1 the same landscape is invested with mysterious beauty4 ,conflicting details are lost1 harsh outlines are softened and merged1 discordant colors are mellowed and attuned4 ,nature has brought her field and hill and clustered dwellings into tone4 ,so the artist1 who has perceived a harmony where the common eye saw it not1 selects2 he suppresses here1 strengthens there1 fuses1 and brings all into unity4 ,harmony wherever perceived is beauty4 ,beauty made manifest by the agency of the human spirit is art4 ,art1 in order to reveal this harmony to men1 must work through selection1 through rejection and emphasis1 through interpretation4 ,it is not difficult to understand1 then1 that the exact reproduction of the facts of the external world is not in a true sense art4 ,the photograph1 which is the most exact method of reproducing outward aspect1 is denied the title of a work of art2 that is1 the photograph direct1 which has not been retouched4 ,to be sure1 the photograph is the product of a mechanical process1 and is not1 except incidentally1 the result of human skill4 ,another kind of reproduction of outward aspect1 however1 virtually exact1 which does show the evidence of human skill1 is yet not entitled to rank as art1--the imitative or deceptive picture4 ,photograph and picture are ruled out equally on the one count4 ,neither selects4 ,in an exhibition of paintings were once displayed two panels precisely similar in appearance1 presenting an army coat and cap1 a sabre and a canteen4 ,at a distance there was no point of difference in the two4 ,a nearer view disclosed the fact that on one panel the objects were real and that the other panel was painted4 ,the beholder was pleased by the exhibition of the painter's skill2 but in so far as the work did not reveal a significance or beauty in these objects which the artist had seen and the beholder had not1 it fell short of being a work of art ,just as the key of the ,nuremberg craftsman was a work of art in that it was for him the expression1 the rendering actual1 of a new beauty it was given him to conceive1 so only that is art which makes manifest a beauty that is new1 a beauty that is truly born of the artist's own spirit4 ,the repetition of existing forms with no modification by the individual workman is not creation1 but imitation2 and imitation is manufacture1 not art4 ,inasmuch as the two panels could not be distinguished1 the presentment signified no more than the reality4 ,tried as a work of art1 the imitative picture1 in common with the photograph1 lacks the necessary element of interpretation1 of revelation4 ,that the representation may become art1 there must be added to it some new attribute or quality born of the artist's spirit4 ,the work must take on new meaning4 ,as lending his work significance of an obvious sort1 a significance not necessarily pictorial1 the painter might see in the objects some story they have to tell4 ,the plaster of the garret wall where they are hanging he may show to be cracked2 that tear in the coat speaks of faithful service1 but the coat hangs limp and dusty now2 the inscription on the canteen is almost obliterated1 and the strap is broken2 the sabre1 which shows the marks of stern usage along its blade1 is spotted with rust3 the whole composition means ,trusty ,servants in ,neglect4 ,by the emphasis of certain aspects he picture is made to signify more than he mere objects themselves1 wherein there was nothing salient4 ,the meaning is imposed upon them or drawn out of them by he artist4 ,or again1 the painter may see in these things the expression for him of a harmony which he can manifest by the arrangement of line and color1 and he so disposes his material as to make that harmony visible4 ,it is1 then1 not the crude fact which the artist transcribes1 but rather some feeling he has toward the fact4 ,by selection1 by adjustment1 he gives this special aspect of the fact emphasis and relief4 ,in virtue of his interpretation the picture acquires a significance that is new2 it gives the beholder a pleasure which the fact itself did not give1 and thus it passes over into the domain of art4 ,the purpose of art is not the reproduction of a beautiful object1 but the expression in objective form of a beautiful idea4 ,a plaster cast of a hand1 however comely the hand may be1 is not a work of art4 ,as with the photograph1 the work involves only incidentally the exercise of human skill4 ,but that is not all4 ,in order to render the work in the spirit of art1 the sculptor must model1 not the hand1 but his sense of the hand2 he must draw out and express its character1 its significance4 ,to him it is not a certain form in bone and flesh2 to him it means grace1 delicacy1 sensitiveness1 or perhaps resolution1 strength1 force4 ,as the material symbol of his idea of the hand1 he will select and make salient such lines and contours as are expressive to him of that character4 ,indeed1 so little depends upon the exact subject represented and so much upon the artist's feeling toward it1 so much depends upon the spirit of the rendering1 that the representation of a subject uninteresting or even ugly in itself may be beautiful4 ,in the art of literature1 the subject is drawn from the life of man4 ,the material of the poem1 the novel1 the drama1 is furnished by man's total experience1 the sum of his sensations1 impressions1 emotions1 and the events in which he is concerned4 ,but experience crowds in upon him at every point1 without order and without relation2 the daily round of living is for most men a humdrum thing4 ,yet it is just this rudimentary and undistinguished mass of experience which is transmuted into literature2 by the alchemy of art the representation of that which is without interest becomes interesting4 ,and it happens on this wise4 ,life is humdrum only in so far as it is meaningless2 men can endure any amount drudgery and monotony provided that it lead somewhere1 that they perceive its relation to a larger unity which is the total of life4 ,as part of a whole which can be apprehended1 immediately it acquires purpose and becomes significant4 ,it is the sense of meaning in life which gives color and warmth to the march of uniform days4 ,so the literary artist shapes his inchoate material to a definite end2 out of the limitless complex details at his command1 he selects such passages of background1 such incidents1 and such traits of character as make for the setting forth of the idea he has conceived4 ,clearly the artist cannot use everything1 clearly he does not aim to reproduce the fact3 there are abridgments and suppressions1 as there are accent and emphasis4 ,the finished work is a composite1 embodying what is essential of many1 many preliminary studies and sketches1 wrought and compiled with generous industry4 ,the master is recognized in what he omits2 what is suppressed is felt but not perceived3 the great artist1 in the result1 steps from peak to peak4 ,the ,sun's rim dips2 the stars rush out3 ,at one stride comes the ,dark4 ,thus with three strokes the master ,coleridge depicts the onrush of the night over boundless spaces of sky and sea4 ,within the compass of a few lines1 ,tennyson registers the interminable1 empty monotony of weary years3 ,no sail from day to day1 but every day ,the sunrise broken into scarlet shafts ,among the palms and ferns and precipices2 ,the blaze upon the waters to the east2 ,the blaze upon his island overhead2 ,the blaze upon the waters to the west2 ,then the great stars that globed themselves in ,heaven1 ,the hollower-bellowing ocean1 and again ,the scarlet shafts of sunrise--but no sail4 ,thus through selection does the artist work to interpretation4 ,by detaching the eternal meaning from the momentary fact1 by embodying his sense of its significance in such concrete forms as symbolize his idea1 by investing the single instance with universally typical import1 then in very truth he represents4 ,nature is not the subject of art2 she is the universal treasury from whose infinitely various store the artist selects his symbols4 ,a special method in art may here suggest itself as having for its purpose to reproduce the fact in perfect fidelity2 the method is called realism4 ,but a moment's considerate analysis shows that realism is only a label for one manner of handling1 and in the end comes no nearer the object as it really is4 ,in its essence realism is the artist's personal vision of the fact1 exactly as idealism or romanticism or impressionism is personal4 ,for after all1 what is the reality8 ,a chance newsboy is offering his papers on a crowded street corner4 ,the fine lady recoils from his filth and from all contact with him2 the philanthropist sees in him a human being to help and to redeem2 the philosopher regards him dispassionately as a social factor1 the result of heredity and environment2 the artist cries out in joy as his eye lights upon good stuff to paint4 ,but all the while1 which of these conceptions figures the real newsboy8 ,not one4 ,for he is all these together2 and the single observer1 whatever his bias1 cannot apprehend him at every point4 ,any attempt to represent him involves selection and interpretation1 the suppression of some traits in order to emphasize others1 which are the special aspects that have impressed the given observer4 ,so there is no essential realism4 ,the term applies to the method of those who choose to render what is less comforting in life1 who insist on those characteristics of things which men call ugly4 ,in realism1 just as truly as in any other kind of treatment1 is expressed the personality of the artist1 his own peculiar way of envisaging the world4 ,a work of art is born of the artist's desire to express his joy in some new aspect of the universal harmony which has been disclosed to him4 ,the mission of art is through interpretation to reveal4 ,it happens sometimes that a visitor at an exhibition of paintings is shocked by a picture which seems to him for the moment impossible1 because so far beyond the range of his experience2 yet withal he finds himself attracted by it and he returns to study it4 ,it is not many days before his glance is arrested by that very effect in nature1 and he says1 ,why1 that is like that picture6 ,it was the artist who first saw it and who taught him to see it for himself4 ,when one observes an effect in nature or in life that one calls a ,corot or a ,whistler1 one means that to ,corot or to ,whistler is due the glory of discovering that fuller beauty and revealing it4 ,browning makes ,fra ,lippo ,lippi say3 ,we're made so that we love ,first when we see them painted1 things we have passed ,perhaps a hundred times nor cared to see2 ,and so they are better1 painted--better to us1 ,which is the same thing4 ,art was given for that4 ,this revealing power of art is not restricted to the individual appreciator4 ,it is said that the ,french are an artistic people and that ,americans are not4 ,the explanation is that for generations the artists of ,france have been discovering to their countrymen the beauty that is around them at their very door1 and have taught them to appreciate it4 ,the ,americans will be an artistic people when our artists shall have done the like for us4 ,when there shall have been for generations a truly native ,american art1 there will be a public to understand and to appreciate4 ,so it is that everywhere the high function of art is to reveal4 ,as a friend1 more sensitive and more enthusiastic1 with whom we are strolling1 points out to us many beauties by the wayside or in trees and sky1 so the artist takes us by the hand and leads us out into life1 indicating for us a harmony to which we were blind before4 ,burdened with affairs and the daily round1 we had not thought to look off and out to the spreading meadows tossing into hills which roll upward into the blue heaven beyond4 ,the beauty thus revealed is a beauty which the artist has apprehended in spirit and which he would make actual4 ,a work of art is the expression of an aspiration4 ,the crude and tawdry images of the ,madonna ,set in the roadside cross are just as truly a work of art as the rapt saints of ,giotto or the perfect ,madonnas of ,raphael in so far as they are expressive of what those poor1 devout souls who fashioned them felt of worship and of love4 ,after all1 the difference is that ,giotto felt more than they1 ,raphael was endowed with more accomplished powers of expression4 ,the work receives its import as it is the faithful utterance of him who shaped it1 as it is genuinely the realization of his ideal4 ,the gift without the giver is bare4 ,but it is no less true that the gift without the receiver is sterile and void1 for art involves not only its creator's intention but also its message to him whom the work reaches4 ,in a book1 it is not only what the writer says that makes its significance but also what the reader thinks as he reads4 ,in so far as any man finds in picture or poem or song a new beauty1 a fuller sense of harmony than was his before1 for him that is a work of art4 ,thus the standard by which art is to be tried is relative4 ,for its creator1 the work is art in that it embodies a perception of new harmony that is peculiarly his4 ,in the material result1 this special character is imparted to the work by the artist's instinctive selection4 ,no two painters1 though equipped with equal technical skill and perhaps of like tastes and preferences1 would or indeed could render the same sweep of landscape in precisely similar fashion4 ,obviously1 to set down everything were at once an impossibility and an untruth1 for the detail of nature is infinite and the beholder does not see everything4 ,each is bound to select such details as impress him1 and his selection will be determined by the way in which he as a unique personality1 an individual different from every other man in the whole wide universe1 feels about the bit of nature before him4 ,in expressing by his special medium what he feels about the landscape1 he aims1 in the selection of material form and color1 to detach and render visible what of essential truth the landscape means to him1 to purge it of accidents1 and register its eternal beauty4 ,the painter will not attempt1 then1 to reproduce the physical facts of nature1--the topography1 geology1 botany1 of the landscape1--but rather through those facts in terms of color and form he tries to render its expression3 its quality1 as brilliance1 tenderness2 its mood1 as joy1 mystery1 setting down those salient aspects of it which combine to give it character and meaning4 ,for landscape--to recall the exposition of a preceding page--has its expression as truly as the human face4 ,a man knows his friends not by the shape of the nose or the color of the eyes1 but by the character which these features express1 the personality which shines in the face and radiates from it ,this effluence of the soul within is the essential man2 people call it the expression4 ,as with human life1 so with the many aspects of nature4 ,external traits are merged in the spiritual meaning4 ,the material forms have the power of affecting the spirit thus or so2 and in man's reaction on his universe they come to take on a symbolic emotional significance4 ,each manifestation of nature arouses in the artist1 more or less consciously on his part1 some feeling toward it3 he cares1 then1 to represent these external material forms1 whether a flower1 a landscape1 a human face1 only because there is in them something in which he delights2 he fashions the work of art in praise of the thing he loves4 ,to the clever technician who imitatively paints the flower as he knows it to be1 ,a primrose on the river's brim ,a yellow primrose is to him ,and it is nothing more4 ,but to the artist ,the meanest flower that blows can give ,thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears4 ,and it is these thoughts that he cares to express and not the visible truth about the flower4 ,a writer was walking along the streets of ,paris on a day in early ,march4 ,it was dark and rather cold4 ,i was gloomy1 and walked because ,i had nothing to do4 ,i passed by some flowers placed breast-high upon a wall4 ,a jonquil in bloom was there4 ,it is the strongest expression of desire3 it was the first perfume of the year4 ,i felt all the happiness destined for man4 ,this unutterable harmony of souls1 the phantom of the ideal world1 arose in me complete4 ,i never felt anything so great or so instantaneous4 ,i know not what shape1 what analogy1 what secret of relation it was that made me see in this flower a limitless beauty4 4 4 4 ,i shall never enclose in a conception this power1 this immensity that nothing will express2 this form that nothing will contain2 this ideal of a better world which one feels1 but which it would seem that nature has not made4 ,and if ,snancour had set himself to paint his jonquil as he has written about it1 how that tender flower would have been transfigured and glorified6 ,what the artist aims to render is not the rose but the beauty of the rose1 his sense of one chord in the universal harmony which the rose sounds for him1 not that only1 but the beauty of all roses that ever were or ever shall be2 and inevitably he will select such colors and such lines as bring that special and interpreted beauty into relief1 and so make manifest to the beholder what was revealed to his own higher vision1 by virtue of which1 and not because of any exceptional technical skill1 he is an artist4 ,,iv ,,art ,,and ,,appreciation ,it may be that some reader of the foregoing pages will attempt to apply the principles therein set forth to the pictures shown in the next exhibition he happens to attend4 ,it is more than probable that in his first efforts he will be disappointed4 ,for the principles discussed have dealt with art in its authentic manifestations2 and not every painter is an artist1 not every picture is a work of art4 ,at the very outset it should be said that an exhibition of paintings as ordinarily made up is confusing and wholly illogical4 ,we may suppose that a volume to be read through in one sitting of two hours is placed in the hands of an intelligent reader4 ,the book consists of essays1 poems1 short stories1 and dramatic dialogue1 each within the compass of a few pages1 each contributed by a different writer as an example of his work for the year4 ,we may suppose now that the reader is asked to gather from this volume1 read hastily and either superficially or in random bits1 some idea of the significance of each author and of the import and scope of contemporary ,american literature4 ,is it a fair test8 ,this volume1 we may further suppose1 is practically the only means by which the writer can get his work before the public4 ,a public means a purchaser1 and of course the writer must live4 ,is it reasonable to think that every number contributed to such a volume will be a work of art1 wrought with singleness of heart and in loving devotion to an ideal8 ,there are still with us those who work for money and those who work for fame4 ,there are those who believe in giving the public what it wants1 and the numbers they contribute to the yearly volumes are samples of the sort of thing they do1 from which the public may order4 ,in the table of contents stand celebrated names2 and to the work of such men1 perhaps1 will turn the seeker after what he thinks ought to be the best1 not realizing that these are the men who have known how to give the people what they want1 that the people do not always want the good and right thing1 and that it is somewhat the habit of genius to dispense with contemporary recognition4 ,if there is here or there in the book an essay or a poem the product of thought and effort and offered in all seriousness1 how little chance it has of being appreciated1 except by a few1 even if it is remarked at all in the jumble of miscellaneous contributions4 ,this hypothetical volume is a fair parallel of an annual exhibition of paintings4 ,in such an exhibition the number of works of art1 the true1 inevitable expression of a new message1 is relatively small4 ,the most celebrated and most popular painters are not necessarily by that fact great artists1 or indeed artists at all4 ,contemporary judgment is notoriously liable to go astray4 ,the gods of one generation are often the laughing stock of the next2 the idols of the fathers are torn down and trampled under foot by the children4 ,some spirits there have been of liberal promise who have not been able to withstand the demands made upon them by early popular approval4 ,such is the struggle and soul's tragedy which is studied convincingly in ,mr4 ,zangwill's novel1 ,the ,master4 ,no assault on the artist's integrity is so insidious as immediate favor1 which in its turn begets the fatal desire to please4 ,to the successful painters1 however1 are for the most part accorded the places of honor on academy walls4 ,the canvases of these men are seen first by the visitor2 but they are not all4 ,there are other pictures which promise neither better nor worse4 ,here are paintings of merit1 good in color and good in drawing1 but empty of any meaning4 ,scattered through the exhibition are the works of a group of able men1 imitating themselves1 each trying to outdo the others by a display of cleverness in solving some painter's problem or by some startling effect of subject or handling4 ,but it is a sad day for any artist when he ceases to find his impulse and inspiration either in his own spirit or in nature1 and when he looks to his fellow craftsmen for the motive of his work4 ,again1 there are pictures by men who1 equipped with adequate technical skill1 have caught the manner of a master1 and mistaking the manner for the message it was simply intended to express1 they degrade it into a mannerism and turn out a product which people do not distinguish from the authentic utterances of the master4 ,the artist is a seer and prophet1 the channel of divine influences3 the individual painter1 sculptor1 writer1 is a very human being4 ,as he looks over these walls1 clamorous of the commonplace and the commercial1 the seeker after what is good and true in art realizes how very few of these pictures have been rendered in the spirit of love and joy4 ,the painter has one eye on his object and one eye on the public2 and too often1 as a distinguished actor once said of the stage manager whose vision is divided between art and the box office1 the painter is a one-eyed man4 ,a painter once refused to find anything to interest him1 still less to move him1 in a silent street with a noble spire detaching itself vaguely from the luminous blue depths of a midnight sky1 because1 he said1 ,people won't buy dark things1 so what's the use8 ,you might as well do bright1 pretty things that they will buy1 and that are just as easy to make4 ,a portrait-painter gives up landscape subjects because1 as he does not hesitate to declare1 it hurts his business4 ,and the painters themselves are not altogether to blame for this attitude towards their work4 ,the fault lies half with the people who buy pictures1 having the money1 and who have not a gleam of understanding of the meaning of art4 ,a woman who had ordered her house to be furnished and decorated expensively1 remarked to a caller who commented on a water-color hanging in the drawing-room3 ,yes1 ,i think it matches the wall-paper very nicely4 ,when such is the purpose of those who paint pictures and such is the understanding of those who buy them1 it is not surprising that not every picture is inevitably a work of art4 ,but what is the poor seeker after art to do8 ,the case is by no means hopeless4 ,in current exhibitions a few canvases strike a new note2 and by senses delicately attuned this note can be distinguished within the jangle of far louder and popular tunes ground out1 as it were1 by the street-piano4 ,seriously to study contemporary painting1 however1 the logical opportunity is furnished by the exhibitions of the works of single men or of small groups4 ,as the reader who wishes to understand an author or perhaps a school does not content himself with random extracts1 but instead isolates the man for the moment and reads his work consecutively and one book in its relation to his others2 so the student of pictures can appreciate the work and understand the significance of a given painter only as he sees a number of his canvases together and in relation4 ,so1 he is able to gather something of the man's total meaning4 ,widely different from annual exhibitions1 too1 are galleries and museums2 for here the proportion of really good things is immeasurably larger4 ,in the study of masterpieces1 it need hardly be said1 the amateur may exercise judgment and moderation4 ,he should not try to do too much at one time1 for he can truly appreciate only as he enters fully into the spirit of the work and allows it to possess him4 ,to achieve this sympathy and understanding within the same hour for more than a very few great works is manifestly impossible4 ,such appreciation involves fundamentally a quick sensitiveness to the appeal and the variously expressive power of color and line and form4 ,to win from the picture its fullest meaning1 the observer may bring to bear some knowledge of the artist who produced it and of the age and conditions in which he lived4 ,but in the end he must surrender himself to the work of art1 bringing to it his intellectual equipment1 his store of sensuous and emotional experience1 his entire power of being moved4 ,for when all is said1 there is no single invariable standard by which to try a work of art3 its significance to the appreciator rests upon his capacity at the moment to receive it4 ,a jest's prosperity lies in the ear of him that hears it4 ,the appreciator need simply ask himself1 ,what has this work to reveal to me of beauty that ,i have not perceived for myself8 ,i shall not look for the pretty and the agreeable4 ,but what of new significance1 energy1 life1 has this work to express to me8 ,i will accept no man entirely and unquestioningly1 ,i will condemn no one unheard4 ,no man has the whole truth2 every man has some measure of the truth1 however small4 ,let it be my task to find it and to separate it from what is unessential and false4 ,in my search for what is true1 ,i will conserve my integrity and maintain my independence4 ,and ,i shall recognize my own wherever ,i may find it4 ,man is the measure of all things1 declared an ancient philosopher4 ,and his teaching has not been superseded to-day4 ,the individual is the creator of his own universe2 he is the focus of the currents and forces of his world4 ,the meaning of all things is subjective4 ,so the measure of beauty in life for a man is determined by his capacity to receive and understand4 ,thus it is that a man's joy in experience and his appreciation of art in any of its manifestations are conditioned by the opportunity that nature or art furnishes for his spirit to exercise itself4 ,in the reading of poetry1 for example1 we seek the expression of ourselves4 ,our first emotion is1 perhaps1 a simple1 unreflecting delight1 the delight which a butterfly must feel among the flowers or that of a child playing in the fields under the warm sun2 it is a delight wholly physical1--pure sensation4 ,a quick taking of the breath1 the escape of a sigh1 inarticulate and uncritical1 are the only expression we can find at that instant for what we feel3 as when an abrupt turn of the road spreads out before us a landscape of which we had not dreamed1 or we enter for the first time the presence of the ,apollo ,belvedere4 ,we know simply that we are pleased4 ,but after nerves have ceased to tingle so acutely1 we begin to think2 and we seek to give account to ourselves of the beauty which for the moment we could but feel4 ,once arrived at the attitude of reflection1 we find that the poetry which affects us most and to which we oftenest return is the poetry that contains the record of our own experience1 but heightened1 the poetry which expresses our desires and aspirations1 that in which we recognize ourselves elevated and idealized4 ,in so far as we see in it the ennobled image of our own nature1 so far it has power to hold us and to stir us4 ,an elementary manifestation of the tendency to seek in art the record of our own experience is seen in the popularity of those pictures whose subjects are familiar and can be immediately recognized4 ,on a studio wall was once hanging a ,study of ,brush1 showing the play of sunlight through quivering leaves4 ,a visitor asked the painter why he did not put some chickens in the foreground4 ,to her the canvas was meaningless1 for she had never seen1 had never really seen1 the sunlight dancing on burnished leaves4 ,the chickens1 which she had seen and could recognize1 were the element of the familiar she required in order to find any significance in the picture4 ,this tendency1 of which the demand for chickens is a rudimentary manifestation1 is the basis of all appreciation4 ,the artist's revelation of the import of life we can receive and understand only as we have felt a little of that import for ourselves4 ,color is meaningless to a blind man1 music does not exist for the deaf4 ,to him who has never opened his eyes to behold the beauty of field and hill and trees and sky1 to him whose spirit has not dimly apprehended something of that eternal significance of which these things are the material visible bodying forth1 to such a the work of the master is only so much paint and canvas4 ,the task of the appreciator1 then1 is to develop his capacity to receive and enjoy4 ,that capacity is to be trained by the exercise of itself4 ,each new harmony which he is enabled to perceive intensifies his power to feel and widens the range of his vision4 ,the more beauty he apprehends in the world1 so much the more of universal forces he brings into unity with his own personality4 ,by this extension of his spirit he reaches out and becomes merged in the all-embracing life4 ,if the conception be true that a supreme unity1 linking all seemingly chaotic details1 ultimately brings them into order1 and that this unity1 which is spiritual1 penetrates every atom of matter1 fusing everything and making all things one2 then the appreciator will realize that the significance of art is for the spirit ,the beauty which the artist reveals is but the harmony which underlies the universal order2 and he in his turn must apprehend that beauty spiritually4 ,from this truth it follows that the condition of aesthetic enjoyment1 or in other words the appreciation of beauty1 is detachment of spirit and remoteness from practical consequences4 ,the classic illustration of the truth is the saying of ,lucretius1 that it is sublime to stand on the shore and behold a shipwreck4 ,it is sublime only as one's personal interests and feelings are not engaged4 ,it would not be sublime if it were possible for the spectator to aid in averting the catastrophe2 it would not be sublime if one's friends were aboard the ship4 ,one is able to appreciate beauty only as one is able to detach one's self from what is immediate and practical1 and by virtue of this detachment1 to apprehend the spiritual significance4 ,the sublimity of the shipwreck lies in what it expresses of the impersonal might of elemental forces and man's impotence in the struggle against nature4 ,that sublimity1 which is one manifestation of beauty1 is of the spirit1 and by the spirit it must be apprehended4 ,to illustrate this truth by a few homely examples4 ,a farmer looking out on his fields of tossing wheat1 drenched in golden sunlight1 exclaims1 ,look1 isn't that beautiful6 ,what he really means is3 ,see there the promise of a rich harvest1 and it is mine4 ,if the fields belonged to his neighbor1 his feelings towards them would be quite different4 ,no1 their beauty is to be seen and felt only by him whose mind is free of thoughts of personal enrichment and who thus can perceive the harmony with life of golden sunshine and nature's abundant gifts4 ,the farmer could not see beyond the material and its value to him as material4 ,but beauty lies deeper than that1 for it is the expression of spiritual relations4 ,two men are riding together in a railway carriage4 ,as the train draws into a city1 they pass a little group of tumble-down houses1 brown and gray1 a heap of corners thrown together4 ,one man thinks3 ,what dreary lives these people must lead who dwell there4 ,the other1 with no such stirring of the sympathy1 sees a wonderful scheme in grays and browns1 or an expressive composition or ordering of line4 ,neither could think the thoughts of the other at the same time with his own4 ,one feels a practical and physical reaction1 and he cannot therefore at that moment penetrate to the meaning of these things for the spirit2 and that meaning is the harmony which they express4 ,from the tangle of daily living with its conflict of interests and its burden of practical needs1 the appreciator turns to art with its power to chasten and to tranquillize4 ,in art1 he finds the revelation in fuller measure of a beauty which he has felt but vaguely4 ,he realizes that underlying the external chaos of immediate practical experience rests a supreme and satisfying order4 ,of that order he can here and now perceive but little1 hemmed in as he is by the material world1 whose meaning he discerns as through a glass1 darkly4 ,yet he keeps resolutely on his way1 secure in his kinship with the eternal spirit1 and rewarded by momentary glimpses of the broken arcs which he knows will in the end take their appointed places in the perfect round4 ,v ,,the ,,artist ,out of chaos1 order4 ,man's life on the earth is finite and fragmentary1 but it is the constant effort of his spirit to bring the scattering details of momentary experience into an enduring harmony with his personality and with that supreme unity of which he is a part4 ,the man who out of the complex disarray of his little world effects a new harmony is an artist4 ,he who fashioned the first cup1 shaping it according to his ideal1--for no prototype existed1--and in response to his needs2 he who1 taking this elementary form1 wrought upon it with his fingers and embellished it according to his ideal and in response to his need of expressing himself2 he1 again1 who out of the same need for expression adds to the cup anything new3 each of these workmen is an artist4 ,the reproduction of already existing forms1 with no modification by the individual workman1 is not art4 ,so1 for example1 only that painter is an artist who adds to his representation of the visible world some new attribute or quality born of his own spirit ,primitive artisan1 craftsman1 painter1 each creates in that he reveals and makes actual some part1 which before was but potential1 of the all-embracing life4 ,as the artist1 then1 wins new reaches of experience and brings them into unity1 he reveals new beauty1 new to men yet world-old4 ,for the harmony which he effects is new only in the sense that it was not before perceived4 ,as1 in the physical universe1 not an atom of matter through the ages is created or destroyed1 so the supreme spiritual life is constant in its sum and complete4 ,of this life individuals partake in varying measure2 their growth is determined by how much of it they make their own4 ,the growth of the soul in this sense is not different from man's experience of the physical world4 ,the child is born3 he grows up into his family2 the circle widens to include neighbors and the community2 the circle widens again as the boy goes away to school and then to college4 ,with ever-widening sweep the outermost bound recedes1 though still embracing him1 as he reaches out to ,europe and at length compasses the earth1 conquering experience and bringing its treasures into tribute to his own spirit4 ,the things were there2 but for the boy each was in turn created as he made it his own4 ,so the artist1 revealing new aspects of the supreme unity1 creates in the sense that he makes possible for his fellows a fuller taking-up of this life into themselves4 ,it may be said that he is the greatest artist who has felt the most of harmony in life1--the greatest artist but potentially4 ,the beauty he has perceived must in accordance with our human needs find expression concretely1 because it is only as he manifests himself in forms which we can understand that we are able to recognize him4 ,though a mute1 inglorious ,milton were ,milton still1 yet our human limitations demand his utterance that we may know him4 ,so the artist accomplishes his mission when he communicates himself4 ,the human spirit is able to bring the supreme life into unity with itself according to the measure of its own growth made possible through expression4 ,the supreme life1 of which every created thing partakes1--the stone1 the flower1 the animal1 and man1--is beauty1 because it is the supreme harmony wherein everything has its place in relation to every other thing4 ,this central unity has its existence in expression4 ,the round earth1 broken off from the stellar system and whirling along its little orbit through space1 is yet ever in communication with the great system2 the tree1 with its roots in the earth1 puts forth branches1 the branches expand into twigs1 the twigs burst into leaves whose veins reach out into the air2 out of the twigs spring buds swelling into blossoms1 the blossoms ripen into fruit1 the fruit drops seed into the earth which gave it and springs up into new trees4 ,the tree by its growth1 which is the putting forth of itself or expression1 develops needs1 these needs are satisfied1 and the satisfying of the needs is the condition of its continued expansion4 ,man1 too1 has his existence in expression4 ,by growth through expression1 which is the creation of a new need1 he is enabled to take up more into himself2 he brings more into the unity of his personality1 and thus he expands into the universal harmony4 ,the unity which underlies the cosmos--to define once more the conception which is the basis of the preceding chapters--is of the spirit4 ,the material world which we see and touch is but the symbol and bodying forth of spiritual relations4 ,the tranquillizing1 satisfying power of art is due to the revelation which art accomplishes of a spiritual harmony which transcends the seeming chaos of instant experience4 ,so it comes about that harmony1 or beauty1 which is of the spirit1 is apprehended by the spirit4 ,that faculty in the artist by which he is able to perceive beauty is called temperament4 ,by temperament is to be understood the receptive faculty1 the power to feel1 the capacity for sensations1 emotions1 and such intellectual apprehensions as1 in strength and directness and their immediately realized values at the bar of an actual experience1 are most like sensations4 ,the function of temperament is to receive and to transmit1 to interpret1 to create in the sense that it reveals4 ,in the result it is felt to be present only as the medium through which the forces behind it come to expression4 ,art1 the human spirit1 temperament1--these terms are general and abstract4 ,now the abstract to be realized must be made concrete4 ,just as art1 in order to be manifest1 must be embodied in the particular work1 as the statue1 the picture1 the building1 the drama1 the symphony1 so the human spirit becomes operative in the person of the individual1 and temperament may be best studied in the character of the individual artist4 ,as temperament is the receptive faculty1 the artist's attitude toward life is what ,wordsworth called wise passiveness1--,wordsworth1 the poet of impassioned contemplation4 ,keats1 too1--and among the poets1 whose vision of beauty was more beautiful1 whose grasp on the truth more true8--characterizes himself as addicted to passiveness4 ,it is of temperament that ,keats is writing when he says in a letter3 ,that quality which goes to form a man of achievement1 especially in literature1 and which ,shakespeare possessed so enormously1 is ,negative ,capability 4 ,in another letter he writes3-- ,it has been an old comparison for our urging on--the ,beehive2 however1 it seems to me that we should rather be the flower than the ,bee--for it is a false notion that more is gained by receiving than giving--no1 the receiver and the giver are equal in their benefits4 ,the flower1 ,i doubt not1 receives a fair guerdon from the ,bee--its leaves blush deeper in the next spring--and who shall say between ,man and ,woman which is the most delighted8 ,now it is more noble to sit like ,jove than to fly like ,mercury--let us not therefore go hurrying about and collecting honey1 bee-like buzzing here and there impatiently from a knowledge of what is to be aimed at2 but let us open our leaves like a flower and be passive and receptive--budding patiently under the eye of ,apollo and taking hints from every noble insect that favours us with a visit--sap will be given us for meat and dew for drink4 4 4 4 ,o fret not after knowledge--,i have none1 ,and yet my song comes native with the warmth4 ,o fret not after knowledge--,i have none1 ,and yet the ,evening listens4 ,he who saddens ,at thought of idleness cannot be idle1 ,and he's awake who thinks himself asleep4 ,still again he says3 ,the ,genius of ,poetry must work out its own salvation in a man3 ,it cannot be matured by law and precept1 but by sensation and watchfulness in itself4 ,that which is creative must create itself4 ,a nature so constituted1 a nature receptive and passive1 is necessarily withdrawn from practical affairs4 ,to revert to ,keats as an example1 for ,keats is so wholly the artist1 it is his remoteness from the daily life about him that makes him the man of no one country or time4 ,his poetry has a kind of universality1 but universality within a definite sphere1 and that sphere is the world of things lovely and fair4 ,in a playful mood ,keats writes to his sister3 ,give me ,books1 fruit1 ,french wine and fine weather and a little music out of doors1 played by somebody ,i do not know 4 4 4 and ,i can pass a summer very quietly without caring much about ,fat ,louis1 fat ,regent or the ,duke of ,wellington4 ,these are trivial words2 but they serve to define in some measure the artistic temperament4 ,for this characteristic remoteness from affairs the artist is sometimes reproached by those who pin their faith to material things4 ,such are not aware that for the artist the only reality is the life of the spirit4 ,the artist1 as ,carlyle says of the ,man of ,letters1 lives in the inward sphere of things1 in the ,true1 ,divine and ,eternal1 which exists always1 unseen to most1 under the ,temporary1 ,trivial3 his being is in that4 ,temperament constitutes the whole moral nature of the artist4 ,with a great poet1 says ,keats1 the sense of beauty overcomes every consideration1 or rather obliterates all consideration4 ,it is the standard which measures the worth of any act4 ,it is conscience1 too2 for the functions performed by conscience in the normal moral life of the man of action are fulfilled by the artist's devotion to his ideal2 his service to his art is his sole and sufficient obligation4 ,and where the man of action looks to find his rewards in the approval of his fellow men1 the artist cares to please himself4 ,the very act of expressing is itself the joy and the reward4 ,to this truth ,keats again stands as witness3 ,i feel assured1 he says1 ,i should write from the mere yearning and fondness ,i have for the beautiful1 even if my night's labours should be burnt every ,morning and no eye ever shine upon them4 ,and still again3 ,i value more the privilege of seeing great things in loneliness than the fame of a prophet4 ,not that the artist does not crave appreciation4 ,his message fails of completeness if there is no ear to hear it1 if it does not meet a sympathy which understands4 ,but the true artist removes all shadow of petty vanity and becomes1 in ,whitman's phrase1 the free channel of himself4 ,he is but the medium through whom the spirit of beauty reveals itself2 in thankfulness and praise he but receives and transmits4 ,that it is given him to see beauty and to interpret it is enough4 ,it is by virtue of his power to feel that the artist is able to apprehend beauty2 his temperament is ever responsive to new harmonies4 ,by force of his imagination1 which is one function of his temperament1 he sends his spirit into other lives1 absorbs their experience and makes it his own1 and ultimately identifies himself with world forces and becomes creator4 ,in a lyric passage in a letter ,keats exclaims3-- ,the mighty abstract ,idea ,i have of ,beauty in all things stifles the more divided and minute domestic happiness4 4 4 4 ,i feel more and more every day1 as my imagination strengthens1 that ,i do not live in this world alone1 but in a thousand worlds4 ,no sooner am ,i alone than shapes of epic greatness are stationed around me1 and serve my ,spirit the office which is equivalent to a ,king's body-guard--then ',tragedy with sceptered pall comes sweeping by4' ,according to my state of mind ,i am with ,achilles shouting in the ,trenches1 or with ,theocritus in the ,vales of ,sicily4 ,or ,i throw my whole being into ,troilus1 and repeating those lines1 ',i wander like a lost soul upon the ,stygian ,banks staying for waftage1' ,i melt into the air with a voluptuousness so delicate that ,i am content to be alone4 ,this power to penetrate and to identify was exercised with peculiar directness and plenitude by ,walt ,whitman1 prophet of the omnipotence of man4 ,to find the burden of his message formulated in the single phrase one may turn to his ,poems quite at random4 ,my spirit has pass'd in compassion and determination around the whole earth4 ,i inhale great draughts of space1-- ,the east and the west are mine1 and the north and the south are mine4 4 4 4 4 4 ,all seems beautiful to me4 ,of the artist may be affirmed what ,whitman affirms of the ,answerer3-- ,every existence has its idiom1 every thing has an idiom and tongue1 ,he resolves all tongues into his own and bestows it upon men1 and any man translates1 and any man translates himself also1 ,one part does not counteract another part1 he is the joiner1 he sees how they join4 ,as the artist sends out his spirit through the world1 as he becomes the channel of universal and divine influences1 so he is admitted to new and ever new revelations of beauty4 ,and stirred by the glorious vision1 he brings that beauty to earth1 communicating it to his fellows and making them partakers of it1 as he gives his feeling expression4 ,thus finding utterance as the prophet of ,god1 he consummates his mission and takes his place in the world order4 ,herein he has his being1 for life is expression2 and each new harmony which he makes manifest is the medium of his fuller identification with the universal life4 ,so it is that the artist is the supreme interpreter1 the mediator between man and beauty4 ,his work is a work of joy1 of gratitude1 of worship4 ,he is the happy servant of ,god1 ,his prophet1 through whom ,he declares ,himself to the children of men4