,,laurus ,,nobilis ,,by ,,vernon ,,lee ,,contents ,the ,use of ,beauty ,nisi ,citharam ,higher ,harmonies ,beauty and ,sanity ,the ,art and the ,country ,art and ,usefulness ,wasteful ,pleasures ,,laurus ,,nobilis4 ,,chapters ,,on ,,art ,,and ,,life4 ,,to ,,angelica ,,rasponi ,,dalle ,,teste ,,from ,,her ,,grateful ,,old ,,friend ,,and ,,neighbour ,,vernon ,,lee4 #ahhe-aijh4 ,die ,realitt der ,dinge ist der ,dinge ,werk2 der ,schein der ,dinge ist der ,menschen ,werk2 und ein ,gemt1 das sich am ,scheine weidet1 ergtzt sich schon nicht mehr an dem1 was es empfngt1 sondern an dem1 was es tut4 ,,schiller1 ,briefe ber sthetik4 ,,laurus ,,nobilis4 ,,the ,,use ,,of ,,beauty4 ,i4 ,one afternoon1 in ,rome1 on the way back from the ,aventine1 the road-mender climbed onto the tram as it trotted slowly along1 and fastened to its front1 alongside of the place of the driver1 a bough of budding bay4 ,might one not search long for a better symbol of what we may all do by our life8 ,bleakness1 wind1 squalid streets1 a car full of heterogeneous people1 some very dull1 most very common2 a laborious jog-trot all the way4 ,but to redeem it all with the pleasantness of beauty and the charm of significance1 this laurel branch4 ,,ii4 ,our language does not possess any single word wherewith to sum up the various categories of things 7made by nature or made by man1 intended solely for the purpose of subserving by mere coincidence7 which minister to our organic and many-sided sthetic instincts3 the things affecting us in that absolutely special1 unmistakable1 and hitherto mysterious manner expressed in our finding them beautiful4 ,it is of the part which such things--whether actually present or merely shadowed in our mind--can play in our life2 and of the influence of the instinct for beauty on the other instincts making up our nature1 that ,i would treat in these pages4 ,and for this reason ,i have been glad to accept from the hands of chance1 and of that road-mender of the tram-way1 the bay laurel as a symbol of what we have no word to express3 the aggregate of all art1 all poetry1 and particularly of all poetic and artistic vision and emotion4 ,for the ,bay ,laurel--,laurus ,nobilis of botanists--happens to be not merely the evergreen1 unfading plant into which ,apollo metamorphosed1 while pursuing1 the maiden whom he loved1 even as the poet1 the artist turns into immortal shapes his own quite personal and transient moods1 or as the fairest realities1 nobly sought1 are transformed1 made evergreen and restoratively fragrant for all time in our memory and fancy4 ,it is a plant of noblest utility1 averting1 as the ancients thought1 lightning from the dwellings it surrounded1 even as disinterested love for beauty averts from our minds the dangers which fall on the vain and the covetous2 and curing many aches and fevers1 even as the contemplation of beauty refreshes and invigorates our spirit4 ,indeed1 we seem to be reading a description no longer of the virtues of the bay laurel1 but of the virtues of all beautiful sights and sounds1 of all beautiful thoughts and emotions1 in reading the following quaint and charming words of an old herbal3-- ,the bay leaves are of as necessary use as any other in garden or orchard1 for they serve both for pleasure and profit1 both for ornament and use1 both for honest civil uses and for physic2 yea1 both for the sick and for the sound1 both for the living and for the dead4 ,the bay serveth to adorn the house of ,god as well as of man1 to procure warmth1 comfort1 and strength to the limbs of men and women2444 to season vessels wherein are preserved our meats as well as our drinks2 to crown or encircle as a garland the heads of the living1 and to stick and deck forth the bodies of the dead2 so that1 from the cradle to the grave we have still use of it1 we have still need of it4 ,,iii4 ,before beginning to expound the virtues of ,beauty1 let me1 however1 insist that these all depend upon the simple and mysterious fact that--well1 that the ,beautiful is the ,beautiful4 ,in our discussion of what the ,bay ,laurel symbolises1 let us keep clear in our memory the lovely shape of the sacred tree1 and the noble places in which we have seen it4 ,there are bay twigs1 gathered together in bronze sheaves1 in the great garland surrounding ,ghiberti's ,gates of ,paradise4 ,there are two interlaced branches of bay1 crisp-edged and slender1 carved in fine low relief inside the marble chariot in the ,vatican4 ,there is a fan-shaped growth of ,apollo's ,laurel behind that ,venetian portrait of a poet1 which was formerly called ,ariosto by ,titian4 ,and1 most suggestive of all1 there are the ,mycenaean bay leaves of beaten gold1 so incredibly thin one might imagine them to be the withered crown of a nameless singer in a forgotten tongue1 grown brittle through three thousand years and more4 ,each of such presentments1 embodying with loving skill some feature of the plant1 enhances by association the charm of its reality1 accompanying the delight of real bay-trees and bay leaves with inextricable harmonics1 vague recollections of the delight of bronze1 of delicately cut marble1 of marvellously beaten gold1 of deep ,venetian crimson and black and auburn4 ,but best of all1 most satisfying and significant1 is the remembrance of the bay-trees themselves4 ,they greatly affect the troughs of watercourses1 among whose rocks and embanked masonry they love to strike their roots4 ,in such a stream trough1 on a spur of the ,hill of ,fiesole1 grow the most beautiful poet's laurels ,i can think of4 ,the place is one of those hollowings out of a hillside which1 revealing how high they lie only by the sky-lines of distant hills1 always feel so pleasantly remote4 ,and the peace and austerity of this little valley are heightened by the dove-cot of a farm invisible in the olive-yards1 and looking like a hermitage's belfry4 ,the olives are scant and wan in the fields all round1 with here and there the blossom of an almond2 the oak woods1 of faint wintry copper-rose1 encroach above2 and in the grassy space lying open to the sky1 the mountain brook is dyked into a weir1 whence the crystalline white water leaps into a chain of shady pools4 ,and there1 on the brink of that weir1 and all along that stream's shallow upper course among grass and brakes of reeds1 are the bay-trees ,i speak of3 groups of three or four at intervals1 each a sheaf of smooth tapering boles1 tufted high up with evergreen leaves1 sparse bunches whose outermost leaves are sharply printed like lance-heads against the sky4 ,most modest little trees1 with their scant berries and rare pale buds2 not trees at all1 ,i fancy some people saying4 ,yet of more consequence1 somehow1 in their calm disregard of wind1 their cheerful1 resolute soaring1 than any other trees for miles2 masters of that little valley1 of its rocks1 pools1 and overhanging foliage2 sovereign brothers and rustic demi-gods for whom the violets scent the air among the withered grass in ,march1 and1 in ,may1 the nightingales sing through the quivering star night4 ,of all southern trees1 most simple and aspiring2 and certainly most perfect among evergreens1 with their straight1 faintly carmined shoots1 their pliable strong leaves so subtly rippled at the edge1 and their clean1 dry fragrance2 delicate1 austere1 alert1 serene2 such are the bay-trees of ,apollo4 ,,iv4 ,i have gladly accepted1 from the hands of that tram-way road-mender1 the ,bay ,laurel--,laurus ,nobilis--for a symbol of all art1 all poetry1 and all poetic and artistic vision and emotion4 ,it has summed up1 better than words could do1 what the old ,herbals call the virtues1 of all beautiful things and beautiful thoughts4 ,and it has suggested1 ,i hope1 the contents of the following notes2 the nature of my attempt to trace the influence which art should have on life4 ,v4 ,beauty1 save by a metaphorical application of the word1 is not in the least the same thing as ,goodness1 any more than beauty 7despite ,keats' famous assertion7 is the same thing as ,truth4 ,these three objects of the soul's pursuit have different natures1 different laws1 and fundamentally different origins4 ,but the energies which express themselves in their pursuit--energies vital1 primordial1 and necessary even to man's physical survival--have all been evolved under the same stress of adaptation of the human creature to its surroundings2 and have therefore1 in their beginnings and in their ceaseless growth1 been working perpetually in concert1 meeting1 crossing1 and strengthening one another1 until they have become indissolubly woven together by a number of great and organic coincidences4 ,it is these coincidences which all higher philosophy1 from ,plato downwards1 has strained for ever to expound4 ,it is these coincidences1 which all religion and all poetry have taken for granted4 ,and to three of these it is that ,i desire to call attention1 persuaded as ,i am that the scientific progress of our day will make short work of all the spurious stheticism and all the shortsighted utilitarianism which have cast doubts upon the intimate and vital connection between beauty and every other noble object of our living4 ,the three coincidences ,i have chosen are3 that between development of the sthetic faculties and the development of the altruistic instincts2 that between development of a sense of sthetic harmony and a sense of the higher harmonies of universal life2 and1 before everything else1 the coincidence between the preference for sthetic pleasures and the nobler growth of the individual4 ,,vi4 ,the particular emotion produced in us by such things as are beautiful1 works of art or of nature1 recollections and thoughts as well as sights and sounds1 the emotion of sthetic pleasure1 has been recognised ever since the beginning of time as of a mysteriously ennobling quality4 ,all philosophers have told us that2 and the religious instinct of all mankind has practically proclaimed it1 by employing for the worship of the highest powers1 nay1 by employing for the mere designation of the godhead1 beautiful sights1 and sounds1 and words by which beautiful sights and sounds are suggested4 ,nay1 there has always lurked in men's minds1 and expressed itself in the metaphors of men's speech1 an intuition that the ,beautiful is in some manner one of the primordial and1 so to speak1 cosmic powers of the world4 ,the theories of various schools of mental science1 and the practice of various schools of art1 the practice particularly of the persons styled by themselves sthetes and by others decadents1 have indeed attempted to reduce man's relations with the great world-power ,beauty to mere intellectual dilettantism or sensual superfineness4 ,but the general intuition has not been shaken1 the intuition which recognised in ,beauty a superhuman1 and1 in that sense1 a truly divine power4 ,and now it must become evident that the methods of modern psychology1 of the great new science of body and soul1 are beginning to explain the reasonableness of this intuition1 or1 at all events1 to show very plainly in what direction we must look for the explanation of it4 ,this much can already be asserted1 and can be indicated even to those least versed in recent psychological study1 to wit1 that the power of ,beauty1 the essential power therefore of art1 is due to the relations of certain visible and audible forms with the chief mental and vital functions of all human beings2 relations established throughout the whole process of human and1 perhaps1 even of animal1 evolution2 relations seated in the depths of our activities1 but radiating upwards even like our vague1 organic sense of comfort and discomfort2 and permeating1 even like our obscure relations with atmospheric conditions1 into our highest and clearest consciousness1 colouring and altering the whole groundwork of our thoughts and feelings4 ,such is the primordial1 and1 in a sense1 the cosmic power of the ,beautiful2 a power whose very growth1 whose constantly more complex nature proclaims its necessary and beneficial action in human evolution4 ,it is the power of making human beings live1 for the moment1 in a more organically vigorous and harmonious fashion1 as mountain air or sea-wind makes them live2 but with the difference that it is not merely the bodily1 but very essentially the spiritual life1 the life of thought and emotion1 which is thus raised to unusual harmony and vigour4 ,i may illustrate this matter by a very individual instance1 which will bring to the memory of each of my readers the vivifying power of some beautiful sight or sound or beautiful description4 ,i was seated working by my window1 depressed by the ,london outlook of narrow grey sky1 endless grey roofs1 and rusty elm tops1 when ,i became conscious of a certain increase of vitality1 almost as if ,i had drunk a glass of wine1 because a band somewhere outside had begun to play4 ,after various indifferent pieces1 it began a tune1 by ,handel or in ,handel's style1 of which ,i have never known the name1 calling it for myself the ,te ,deum ,tune4 ,and then it seemed as if my soul1 and according to the sensations1 in a certain degree my body even1 were caught up on those notes1 and were striking out as if swimming in a great breezy sea2 or as if it had put forth wings and risen into a great free space of air4 ,and1 noticing my feelings1 ,i seemed to be conscious that those notes were being played on me1 my fibres becoming the strings2 so that as the notes moved and soared and swelled and radiated like stars and suns1 ,i also1 being identified with the sound1 having become apparently the sound itself1 must needs move and soar with them4 ,we can all recollect a dozen instances when architecture1 music1 painting1 or some sudden sight of sea or mountain1 have thus affected us2 and all poetry1 particularly all great lyric poetry1 ,goethe's1 ,shelley's1 ,wordsworth's1 and1 above all1 ,browning's1 is full of the record of such experience4 ,i have said that the difference between this sthetic heightening of our vitality 7and this that ,i have been describing is1 ,i pray you to observe1 the sthetic phenomenon par excellence71 and such other heightening of vitality as we experience from going into fresh air and sunshine or taking fortifying food1 the difference between the sthetic and the mere physiological pleasurable excitement consists herein1 that in the case of beauty1 it is not merely our physical but our spiritual life which is suddenly rendered more vigorous4 ,we do not merely breathe better and digest better1 though that is no small gain1 but we seem to understand better4 ,under the vitalising touch of the ,beautiful1 our consciousness seems filled with the affirmation of what life is1 what is worth being1 what among our many thoughts and acts and feelings are real and organic and important1 what among the many possible moods is the real1 eternal ourself4 ,such are the great forces of ,nature gathered up in what we call the sthetic phenomenon1 and it is these forces of ,nature which1 stolen from heaven by the man of genius or the nation of genius1 and welded together in music1 or architecture1 in the arts of visible design or of written thoughts1 give to the great work of art its power to quicken the life of our soul4 ,,vii4 ,i hope ,i have been able to indicate how1 by its essential nature1 by the primordial power it embodies1 all ,beauty1 and particularly ,beauty in art1 tends to fortify and refine the spiritual life of the individual4 ,but this is only half of the question1 for1 in order to get the full benefit of beautiful things and beautiful thoughts1 to obtain in the highest potency those potent sthetic emotions1 the individual must undergo a course of self-training1 of self-initiation1 which in its turn elicits and improves some of the highest qualities of his soul4 ,nay1 as every great writer on art has felt1 from ,plato to ,ruskin1 but none has expressed as clearly as ,mr4 ,pater1 in all true sthetic training there must needs enter an ethical element1 almost an ascetic one4 ,the greatest art bestows pleasure just in proportion as people are capable of buying that pleasure at the price of attention1 intelligence1 and reverent sympathy4 ,for great art is such as is richly endowed1 full of variety1 subtlety1 and suggestiveness2 full of delightfulness enough for a lifetime1 the lifetime of generations and generations of men2 great art is to its true lovers like ,cleopatra to ,antony--age cannot wither it1 nor custom stale its infinite variety4 ,indeed1 when it is the greatest art of all1 the art produced by the marvellous artist1 the most gifted race1 and the longest centuries1 we find ourselves in presence of something which1 like ,nature itself1 contains more beauty1 suggests more thought1 works more miracles than anyone of us has faculties to appreciate fully4 ,so that1 in some of ,titian's pictures and ,michael ,angelo's frescoes1 the great ,greek sculptures1 certain cantos of ,dante and plays of ,shakespeare1 fugues of ,bach1 scenes of ,mozart and quartets of ,beethoven1 we can each of us1 looking our closest1 feeling our uttermost1 see and feel perhaps but a trifling portion of what there is to be seen and felt1 leaving other sides1 other perfections1 to be appreciated by our neighbours4 ,till it comes to pass that we find different persons very differently delighted by the same masterpiece1 and accounting most discrepantly for their delight in it4 ,now such pleasure as this requires not merely a vast amount of activity on our part1 since all pleasure1 even the lowest1 is the expression of an activity2 it requires a vast amount of attention1 of intelligence1 of what1 in races or in individuals1 means special training4 ,,viii4 ,there is a sad confusion in men's minds on the very essential subject of pleasure4 ,we tend1 most of us1 to oppose the idea of pleasure to the idea of work1 effort1 strenuousness1 patience2 and1 therefore1 recognise as pleasures only those which cost none of these things1 or as little as possible2 pleasures which1 instead of being produced through our will and act1 impose themselves upon us from outside4 ,in all art--for art stands halfway between the sensual and emotional experiences and the experiences of the mere reasoning intellect--in all art there is necessarily an element which thus imposes itself upon us from without1 an element which takes and catches us3 colour1 strangeness of outline1 sentimental or terrible quality1 rhythm exciting the muscles1 or clang which tickles the ear4 ,but the art which thus takes and catches our attention the most easily1 asking nothing in return1 or next to nothing1 is also the poorest art3 the oleograph1 the pretty woman in the fashion plate1 the caricature1 the representation of some domestic or harrowing scene1 children being put to bed1 babes in the wood1 railway accidents1 etc42 or again1 dance or march music1 and the equivalents of all this in verse4 ,it catches your attention1 instead of your attention conquering it2 but it speedily ceases to interest1 gives you nothing more1 cloys1 or comes to a dead stop4 ,it resembles thus far mere sensual pleasure1 a savoury dish1 a glass of good wine1 an excellent cigar1 a warm bed1 which impose themselves on the nerves without expenditure of attention2 with the result1 of course1 that little or nothing remains1 a sensual impression dying1 so to speak1 childless1 a barren1 disconnected thing1 without place in the memory1 unmarried as it is to the memory's clients1 thought and human feeling4 ,if so many people prefer poor art to great1 'tis because they refuse to give1 through inability or unwillingness1 as much of their soul as great art requires for its enjoyment4 ,and it is noticeable that busy men1 coming to art for pleasure when they are too weary for looking1 listening1 or thinking1 so often prefer the sensation-novel1 the music-hall song1 and such painting as is but a costlier kind of oleograph2 treating all other art as humbug1 and art in general as a trifle wherewith to wile away a lazy moment1 a trifle about which every man can know what he likes best4 ,thus it is that great art makes1 by coincidence1 the same demands as noble thinking and acting4 ,for1 even as all noble sports develop muscle1 develop eye1 skill1 quickness and pluck in bodily movement1 qualities which are valuable also in the practical business of life2 so also the appreciation of noble kinds of art implies the acquisition of habits of accuracy1 of patience1 of respectfulness1 and suspension of judgment1 of preference of future good over present1 of harmony and clearness1 of sympathy 7when we come to literary art71 judgment and kindly fairness1 which are all of them useful to our neighbours and ourselves in the many contingencies and obscurities of real life4 ,now this is not so with the pleasures of the senses3 the pleasures of the senses do not increase by sharing1 and sometimes cannot be shared at all2 they are1 moreover1 evanescent1 leaving us no richer2 above all1 they cultivate in ourselves qualities useful only for that particular enjoyment4 ,thus1 a highly discriminating palate may have saved the life of animals and savages1 but what can its subtleness do nowadays beyond making us into gormandisers and winebibbers1 or1 at best1 into cooks and tasters for the service of gormandising and winebibbing persons8 ,,ix4 ,delight in beautiful things and in beautiful thoughts requires1 therefore1 a considerable exercise of the will and the attention1 such as is not demanded by our lower enjoyments4 ,indeed1 it is probably this absence of moral and intellectual effort which recommends such lower kinds of pleasure to a large number of persons4 ,i have said lower kinds of pleasure1 because there are other enjoyments besides those of the senses which entail no moral improvement in ourselves3 the enjoyments connected with vanity and greed4 ,we should not--even if any of us could be sure of being impeccable on these points--we should not be too hard on the persons and the classes of persons who are conscious of no other kind of enjoyment4 ,they are not necessarily base1 not necessarily sensual or vain1 because they care only for bodily indulgence1 for notice and gain4 ,they are very likely not base1 but only apathetic1 slothful1 or very tired4 ,the noble sport1 the intellectual problem1 the great work of art1 the divinely beautiful effect in ,nature1 require that one should give oneself2 the ,french-cooked dinner as much as the pot of beer2 the game of chance1 whether with clean cards at a club or with greasy ones in a tap-room2 the outdoing of one's neighbours1 whether by the ragged heroes of ,zola or the well-groomed heroes of ,balzac1 require no such coming forward of the soul3 they take us1 without any need for our giving ourselves4 ,hence1 as ,i have just said1 the preference for them does not imply original baseness1 but only lack of higher energy4 ,we can judge of the condition of those who can taste no other pleasures by remembering what the best of us are when we are tired or ill3 vaguely craving for interests1 sensations1 emotions1 variety1 but quite unable to procure them through our own effort1 and longing for them to come to us from without4 ,now1 in our still very badly organised world1 an enormous number of people are condemned by the tyranny of poverty or the tyranny of fashion1 to be1 when the day's work or the day's business is done1 in just such a condition of fatigue and languor1 of craving1 therefore1 for the baser kinds of pleasure4 ,we all recognise that this is the case with what we call poor people1 and that this is why poor people are apt to prefer the public-house to the picture gallery or the concert-room4 ,it would be greatly to the purpose were we to acknowledge that it is largely the case with the rich1 and that for that reason the rich are apt to take more pleasure in ostentatious display of their properties than in contemplation of such beauty as is accessible to all men4 ,indeed1 it is one of the ironies of the barbarous condition we are pleased to call civilisation1 that so many rich men--thousands daily--are systematically toiling and moiling till they are unable to enjoy any pleasure which requires vigour of mind and attention1 rendering themselves impotent1 from sheer fatigue1 to enjoy the delights which life gives generously to all those who fervently seek them4 ,and what for8 ,largely for the sake of those pleasures which can be had only for money1 but which can be enjoyed without using one's soul4 ,x4 ,,parenthetical ,and these1 you see1 ,i said1 are bay-trees1 the laurels they used the leaves of to 444 ,i was going to say to crown poets1 but ,i left my sentence in mid-air1 because of course he knew that as well as ,i4 ,precisely1 he answered with intelligent interest--,i have noticed that the leaves are sometimes put in sardine boxes4 ,soon after this conversation ,i discovered the curious circumstance that one of the greatest of peoples and perhaps the most favoured by ,apollo1 calls ,laurus ,nobilis ,laurier-,sauce4 ,the name is ,french2 the symbol1 alas1 of universal application4 ,this paragraph ,x4 had been intended to deal with ,art as it is understood by persons of fashion and eminent men of business4 ,,xi4 ,thus it is that real sthetic keenness--and sthetic keenness1 as ,i shall show you in my next chapter1 means appreciating beauty1 not collecting beautiful properties--thus it is that all sthetic keenness implies a development of the qualities of patience1 attention1 reverence1 and of that vigour of soul which is not called forth1 but rather impaired1 by the coarser enjoyments of the senses and of vanity4 ,so far1 therefore1 we have seen that the capacity for sthetic pleasure is allied to a certain nobility in the individual4 ,i think ,i can show that the preference for sthetic pleasure tends also to a happier relation between the individual and his fellows4 ,but the cultivation of our sthetic pleasures does not merely necessitate our improvement in certain very essential moral qualities4 ,it implies as much1 in a way1 as the cultivation of the intellect and the sympathies1 that we should live chiefly in the spirit1 in which alone1 as philosophers and mystics have rightly understood1 there is safety from the worst miseries and room for the most complete happiness4 ,only1 we shall learn from the study of our sthetic pleasures that while the stoics and mystics have been right in affirming that the spirit only can give the highest good1 they have been fatally wrong in the reason they gave for their preference4 ,and we may learn from our sthetic experiences that the spirit is useful1 not in detaching us from the enjoyable things of life1 but1 on the contrary1 in giving us their consummate possession4 ,the spirit--one of whose most precious capacities is that it enables us to print off all outside things on to ourselves1 to store moods and emotions1 to recombine and reinforce past impressions into present ones--the spirit puts pleasure more into our own keeping1 making it more independent of time and place1 of circumstances1 and1 what is equally important1 independent of other people's strivings after pleasure1 by which our own1 while they clash and hamper1 are so often impeded4 ,,xii4 ,for our intimate commerce with beautiful things and beautiful thoughts does not exist only1 or even chiefly1 at the moment of seeing1 or hearing1 or reading2 nay1 if the beautiful touched us only at such separate and special moments1 the beautiful would play but an insignificant part in our existence4 ,as a fact1 those moments represent very often only the act of storage1 or not much more4 ,our real sthetic life is in ourselves1 often isolated from the beautiful words1 objects1 or sounds2 sometimes almost unconscious2 permeating the whole rest of life in certain highly sthetic individuals1 and1 however mixed with other activities1 as constant as the life of the intellect and sympathies2 nay1 as constant as the life of assimilation and motion4 ,we can live off a beautiful object1 we can live by its means1 even when its visible or audible image is partially1 nay1 sometimes wholly1 obliterated2 for the emotional condition can survive the image and be awakened at the mere name1 awakened sufficiently to heighten the emotion caused by other images of beauty4 ,we can sometimes feel1 so to speak1 the spiritual companionship and comfort of a work of art1 or of a scene in nature1 nay1 almost its particular caress to our whole being1 when the work of art or the scene has grown faint in our memory1 but the emotion it awakened has kept warm4 ,now this possibility of storing for later use1 of increasing by combination1 the impressions of beautiful things1 makes art--and by art ,i mean all sthetic activity1 whether in the professed artist who creates or the unconscious artist who assimilates--the type of such pleasures as are within our own keeping1 and makes the sthetic life typical also of that life of the spirit in which alone we can realise any kind of human freedom4 ,we shall all of us meet with examples thereof if we seek through our consciousness4 ,that such things existed was made clear to me during a weary period of illness1 for which ,i shall always be grateful1 since it taught me1 in those months of incapacity for enjoyment1 that there is a safe kind of pleasure1 the pleasure we can defer4 ,i spent part of that time at ,tangier1 surrounded by everything which could delight me1 and in none of which ,i took any real delight4 ,i did not enjoy ,tangier at the time1 but ,i have enjoyed ,tangier ever since1 on the principle of the bee eating its honey months after making it4 ,the reality of ,tangier1 ,i mean the reality of my presence there1 and the state of my nerves1 were not in the relation of enjoyment4 ,but how often has not the image of ,tangier1 the remembrance of what ,i saw and did there1 returned and haunted me in the most enjoyable fashion4 ,after all1 is it not often the case with pictures1 statues1 journeys1 and the reading of books8 ,the weariness entailed1 the mere continuity of looking or attending1 quite apart from tiresome accompanying circumstances1 make the apparently real act1 what we expect to be the act of enjoyment1 quite illusory2 like ,coleridge1 we see1 not feel1 how beautiful things are4 ,later on1 all odious accompanying circumstances are utterly forgotten1 eliminated1 and the weariness is gone3 we enjoy not merely unhampered by accidents1 but in the very way our heart desires4 ,for we can choose--our mood unconsciously does it for us--the right moment and right accessories for consuming some of our stored delights2 moreover1 we can add what condiments and make what mixtures suit us best at that moment4 ,we draw not merely upon one past reality1 making its essentials present1 but upon dozens4 ,to revert to ,tangier 7whose experience first brought these possibilities clearly before me71 ,i find ,i enjoy it in connection with ,venice1 the mixture having a special roundness of tone or flavour4 ,similarly1 ,i once heard ,bach's ,magnificat1 with ,st4 ,mark's of ,venice as a background in my imagination4 ,again1 certain moonlight songs of ,schumann have blended wonderfully with remembrances of old ,italian villas4 ,king ,solomon1 in all his ships1 could not have carried the things which ,i can draw1 in less than a second1 from one tiny convolution of my brain1 from one corner of my mind4 ,no wizard that ever lived had spells which could evoke such kingdoms and worlds as anyone of us can conjure up with certain words3 ,greece1 the ,middle ,ages1 ,orpheus1 ,robin ,hood1 ,mary ,stuart1 ,ancient ,rome1 the ,far ,east4 ,,xiii4 ,and here1 as fit illustration of these beneficent powers1 which can free us from a life where we stifle and raise us into a life where we can breathe and grow1 let me record my gratitude to a certain young goat1 which1 on one occasion1 turned what might have been a detestable hour into a pleasant one4 ,the goat1 or rather kid1 a charming gazelle-like creature1 with budding horns and broad1 hard forehead1 was one of my fourteen fellow passengers in a third-class carriage on a certain bank holiday ,saturday4 ,riding and standing in such crowded misery had cast a general gloom over all the holiday makers2 they seemed to have forgotten the coming outing in sullen hatred of all their neighbours2 and ,i confess that ,i too began to wonder whether ,bank ,holiday was an altogether delightful institution4 ,but the goat had no such doubts4 ,leaning against the boy who was taking it holiday-making1 it tried very gently to climb and butt1 and to play with its sulky fellow travellers4 ,and as it did so it seemed to radiate a sort of poetry on everything3 vague impressions of rocks1 woods1 hedges1 the ,alps1 ,italy1 and ,greece2 mythology1 of course1 and that amusement of jouer avec des chvres apprivoises1 which that great charmer ,m4 ,renan has attributed to his charming ,greek people4 ,now1 as ,i realised the joy of the goat on finding itself among the beech woods and short grass of the ,hertfordshire hills1 ,i began also to see my other fellow travellers no longer as surly people resenting each other's presence1 but as happy human beings admitted once more to the pleasant things of life4 ,the goat had quite put me in conceit with bank holiday4 ,when it got out of the train at ,berkhampstead1 the emptier carriage seemed suddenly more crowded1 and my fellow travellers more discontented4 ,but ,i remained quite pleased1 and when ,i had alighted1 found that instead of a horrible journey1 ,i could remember only a rather exquisite little adventure4 ,that beneficent goat had acted as ,pegasus2 and on its small back my spirit had ridden to the places it loves4 ,in this fashion does the true sthete tend to prefer1 even like the austerest moralist1 the delights which1 being of the spirit1 are most independent of circumstances and most in the individual's own keeping4 ,,xiv4 ,it was ,mr4 ,pater who first pointed out how the habit of sthetic enjoyment makes the epicurean into an ascetic4 ,he builds as little as possible on the things of the senses and the moment1 knowing how little1 in comparison1 we have either in our power4 ,for1 even if the desired object1 person1 or circumstance comes1 how often does it not come at the wrong hour6 ,in this world1 which mankind fits still so badly1 the wish and its fulfilling are rarely in unison1 rarely in harmony1 but follow each other1 most often1 like vibrations of different instruments1 at intervals which can only jar4 ,the n'est-ce que cela1 the inability to enjoy1 of successful ambition and favoured1 passionate love1 is famous2 and short of love even and ambition1 we all know the flatness of long-desired pleasures4 ,king ,solomon1 who had not been enough of an ascetic1 as we all know1 and therefore ended off in cynicism1 knew that there is not only satiety as a result of enjoyment2 but a sort of satiety also1 an absence of keenness1 an incapacity for caring1 due to the deferring of enjoyment4 ,he doubtless knew1 among other items of vanity1 that our wishes are often fulfilled without our even knowing it1 so indifferent have we become through long waiting1 or so changed in our wants4 ,,xv4 ,there is another reason for such ascetism as was taught in ,marius the ,epicurean and in ,pater's book on ,plato3 the modest certainty of all pleasure derived from the beautiful will accustom the perfect sthete to seek for the like in other branches of activity4 ,accustomed to the happiness which is in his own keeping1 he will view with suspicion all craving for satisfactions which are beyond his control4 ,he will not ask to be given the moon1 and he will not even wish to be given it1 lest the wish should grow into a want2 he will make the best of candles and glowworms and of distant heavenly luminaries4 ,moreover1 being accustomed to enjoy the mere sight of things as much as other folk do their possession1 he will probably actually prefer that the moon should be hanging in the heavens1 and not on his staircase4 ,again1 having experience of the sthetic pleasures which involve1 in what ,milton called their sober waking bliss1 no wear and tear1 no reaction of satiety1 he will not care much for the more rapturous pleasures of passion and success1 which always cost as much as they are worth4 ,he will be unwilling to run into such debt with his own feelings1 having learned from sthetic pleasure that there are activities of the soul which1 instead of impoverishing1 enrich it4 ,thus does the commerce with beautiful things and beautiful thoughts tend to develop in us that healthy kind of asceticism so requisite to every workable scheme of greater happiness for the individual and the plurality3 self-restraint1 choice of aims1 consistent and thorough-paced subordination of the lesser interest to the greater2 above all1 what sums up asceticism as an efficacious means towards happiness1 preference of the spiritual1 the unconditional1 the durable1 instead of the temporal1 the uncertain1 and the fleeting4 ,the intimate and continuous intercourse with the ,beautiful teaches us1 therefore1 the renunciation of the unnecessary for the sake of the possible4 ,it teaches asceticism leading not to indifference and ,nervana1 but to higher complexities of vitalisation1 to a more complete and harmonious rhythm of individual existence4 ,,xvi4 ,art can thus train the soul because art is free2 or1 more strictly speaking1 because art is the only complete expression1 the only consistent realisation of our freedom4 ,in other parts of our life1 business1 affection1 passion1 pursuit of utility1 glory or truth1 we are for ever conditioned4 ,we are twisting perpetually1 perpetually stopped short and deflected1 picking our way among the visible and barely visible habits1 interests1 desires1 shortcomings1 of others and of that portion of ourselves which1 in the light of that particular moment and circumstance1 seems to be foreign to us1 to be another's4 ,we can no more follow the straight line of our wishes than can the passenger in ,venice among those labyrinthine streets1 whose everlasting1 unexpected bends are due to canals which the streets themselves prevent his seeing4 ,moreover1 in those gropings among looming or unseen obstacles1 we are pulled hither and thither1 checked and misled by the recurring doubt as to which1 of these thwarted and yielding selves1 may be the chief and real one1 and which1 of the goals we are never allowed finally to touch1 is the goal we spontaneously tend to4 ,now it is different in the case of ,art1 and of all those sthetic activities1 often personal and private1 which are connected with ,art and may be grouped together under ,art's name4 ,art exists to please1 and1 when left to ourselves1 we feel in what our pleasure lies4 ,art is a free1 most open and visible space1 where we disport ourselves freely4 ,indeed1 it has long been remarked 7the poet ,schiller working out the theory7 that1 as there is in man's nature a longing for mere unconditioned exercise1 one of ,art's chief missions is to give us free scope to be ourselves4 ,if therefore ,art is the playground where each individual1 each nation or each century1 not merely toils1 but untrammelled by momentary passion1 unhampered by outer cares1 freely exists and feels itself1 then ,art may surely become the training-place of our soul4 ,art may teach us how to employ our liberty1 how to select our wishes3 employ our liberty so as to respect that of others2 select our wishes in such a manner as to further the wishes of our fellow-creatures4 ,for there are various1 and variously good or evil ways of following our instincts1 fulfilling our desires1 in short1 of being independent of outer circumstances2 in other words1 there are worthy and worthless ways of using our leisure and our surplus energy1 of seeking our pleasure4 ,and ,art--,art and all ,art here stands for--can train us to do so without injuring others1 without wasting the material and spiritual riches of the world4 ,art can train us to delight in the higher harmonies of existence2 train us to open our eyes1 ears and souls1 instead of shutting them1 to the wider modes of universal life4 ,in such manner1 to resume our symbol of the bay laurel which the road-mender stuck on to the front of that tramcar1 can our love for the beautiful avert1 like the plant of ,apollo1 many of the storms1 and cure many of the fevers1 of life4 ,,nisi ,,citharam4 ,i4 ,it is well that this second chapter--in which ,i propose to show how a genuine sthetic development tends to render the individual more useful1 or at least less harmful1 to his fellow-men--should begin1 like the first1 with a symbol1 such as may sum up my meaning1 and point it out in the process of my expounding it4 ,the symbol is contained in the saying of the ,abbot ,joachim of ,flora1 one of the great precursors of ,st4 ,francis1 to wit3 ,he that is a true monk considers nothing his own except a lyre--nihil reputat esse suum nisi citharam4 ,yes2 nothing except a lyre4 ,,ii4 ,but that lyre1 our only real possession1 is our ,soul4 ,it must be shaped1 and strung1 and kept carefully in tune2 no easy matter in surroundings little suited to delicate instruments and delicate music4 ,possessing it1 we possess1 in the only true sense of possession1 the whole world4 ,for going along our way1 whether rough or even1 there are formed within us1 singing the beauty and wonder of what is or what should be1 mysterious sequences and harmonies of notes1 new every time1 answering to the primval everlasting affinities between ourselves and all things2 our souls becoming musical under the touch of the universe4 ,let us bear this in mind1 this symbol of the lyre which ,abbot ,joachim allowed as sole property to the man of spiritual life4 ,and let us remember that1 as ,i tried to show in my previous chapter1 the true ,lover of the ,beautiful1 active1 self-restrained1 and indifferent to lower pleasures and interests1 is in one sense your man of real spiritual life4 ,for the symbol of ,abbot ,joachim's lyre will make it easier to follow my meaning1 and easier to forestall it1 while ,i try to convince you that art1 and all sthetic activity1 is important as a type of the only kind of pleasure which reasonable beings should admit of1 the kind of pleasure which tends not to diminish by wastefulness and exclusive appropriation1 but to increase by sympathy1 the possible pleasures of other persons4 ,,iii4 ',tis no excessive puritanism to say that while pleasure1 in the abstract1 is a great1 perhaps the greatest1 good2 pleasures1 our actual pleasures in the concrete1 are very often evil4 ,many of the pleasures which we allow ourselves1 and which all the world admits our right to1 happen to be such as waste wealth and time1 make light of the advantage of others1 and of the good of our own souls4 ,this fact does not imply either original sinfulness or degeneracy--religious and scientific terms for the same thing--in poor mankind4 ,it means merely that we are all of us as yet very undeveloped creatures2 the majority1 moreover1 less developed than the minority1 and the bulk of each individual's nature very much in the rear of his own aspirations and definitions4 ,mankind1 in the process of adapting itself to external circumstances1 has perforce evolved a certain amount of intellectual and moral quality2 but that intellectual and moral quality is1 so far1 merely a means for rendering material existence endurable2 it will have to become itself the origin and aim of what we must call a spiritual side of life4 ,in the meanwhile1 human beings do not get any large proportion of their enjoyment from what they admit to be their nobler side4 ,hence it is that even when you have got rid of the mere struggle for existence--fed1 clothed1 and housed your civilised savage1 and secured food1 clothes1 and shelter for his brood--you have by no means provided against his destructive1 pain-giving activities4 ,he has spare time and energy2 and these he will devote1 ten to one1 to recreations involving1 at the best1 the slaughter of harmless creatures2 at the worst1 to the wasting of valuable substance1 of what might be other people's food2 or else to the hurting of other people's feelings in various games of chance or skill1 particularly in the great skilled game of brag called ,society4 ,our gentlemanly ancestors1 indeed1 could not amuse themselves without emptying a certain number of bottles and passing some hours under the table2 while our nimble-witted ,french neighbours1 we are told1 included in their expenditure on convivial amusements a curious item called la casse1 to wit1 the smashing of plates and glasses4 ,the ,spaniards1 on the other hand1 have bull-fights1 most shocking spectacles1 as we know1 for we make it a point to witness them when we are over there4 ,undoubtedly we have immensely improved in such matters1 but we need a great deal of further improvement4 ,most people are safe only when at work1 and become mischievous when they begin to play4 ,they do not know how to kill time 7for that is the way in which we poor mortals regard life7 without incidentally killing something else3 proximately birds and beasts1 and their neighbours' good fame2 more remotely1 but as surely1 the constitution of their descendants1 and the possible wages of the working classes4 ,it is quite marvellous how little aptness there is in the existing human being for taking pleasure either in what already exists ready to hand1 or in the making of something which had better be there2 in what can be enjoyed without diminishing the enjoyment of others1 as nature1 books1 art1 thought1 and the better qualities of one's neighbours4 ,in fact1 one reason why there is something so morally pleasant in cricket and football and rowing and riding and dancing1 is surely that they furnish on the physical plane the counterpart of what is so sadly lacking on the spiritual3 amusements which do good to the individual and no harm to his fellows4 ,of course1 in our state neither of original sinfulness nor of degeneracy1 but of very imperfect development1 it is still useless and absurd to tell people to make use of intellectual and moral resources which they have not yet got4 ,it is as vain to preach to the majority of the well-to-do the duty of abstinence from wastefulness1 rivalry1 and ostentation as it is vain to preach to the majority of the badly-off abstinence from alcohol2 without such pleasures their life would be unendurably insipid4 ,but inevitable as is such evil in the present1 it inevitably brings its contingent of wretchedness2 and it is therefore the business of all such as could become the forerunners of a better state of things to refuse to follow the lead of their inferiors4 ,exactly because the majority is still so hopelessly wasteful and mischievous1 does it behove the minority not merely to work to some profit1 but to play without damage4 ,to do this should become the mark of ,nature's aristocracy1 a sign of liberality of spiritual birth and breeding1 a question of noblesse oblige4 ,,iv4 ,and here comes in the immense importance of ,art as a type of pleasure3 of ,art in the sense of sthetic appreciation even more than of sthetic creation2 of ,art considered as the extracting and combining of beauty in the mind of the obscure layman quite as much as the embodiment of such extracted and combined beauty in the visible or audible work of the great artist4 ,for experience of true sthetic activity must teach us1 in proportion as it is genuine and ample1 that the enjoyment of the beautiful is not merely independent of1 but actually incompatible with1 that tendency to buy our satisfaction at the expense of others which remains more or less in all of us as a survival from savagery4 ,the reasons why genuine sthetic feeling inhibits these obsolescent instincts of rapacity and ruthlessness1 are reasons negative and positive1 and may be roughly divided into three headings4 ,only one of them is generally admitted to exist1 and of it1 therefore1 ,i shall speak very briefly1 ,i mean the fact that the enjoyment of beautiful things is originally and intrinsically one of those which are heightened by sharing4 ,we know it instinctively when1 as children1 we drag our comrades and elders to the window when a regiment passes or a circus parades by2 we learn it more and more as we advance in life1 and find that we must get other people to see the pictures1 to hear the music1 to read the books which we admire4 ,it is a case of what psychologists call the contagion of emotion1 by which the feeling of one individual is strengthened by the expression of similar feeling in his neighbour1 and is explicable1 most likely1 by the fact that the greatest effort is always required to overcome original inertness1 and that two efforts1 like two horses starting a carriage instead of one1 combined give more than double the value of each taken separately4 ,the fact of this sthetic sociability is so obvious that we need not discuss it any further1 but merely hold it over to add1 at last1 to the result of the two other reasons1 negative and positive1 which tend to make sthetic enjoyment the type of unselfish1 nay1 even of altruistic pleasure4 ,v4 ,the first of these reasons1 the negative one1 is that sthetic pleasure is not in the least dependent upon the fact of personal ownership1 and that it therefore affords an opportunity of leaving inactive1 of beginning to atrophy by inactivity1 the passion for exclusive possession1 for individual advantage1 which is at the bottom of all bad luxury1 of all ostentation1 and of nearly all rapacity4 ,but before entering on this discussion ,i would beg my reader to call to mind that curious saying of ,abbot ,joachim's2 and to consider that ,i wish to prove that1 like his true monk1 the true sthete1 who nowadays loves and praises creation much as the true monk did in former centuries1 can really possess as sole personal possession only a musical instrument--to wit1 his own well-strung and resonant soul4 ,having said this1 we will proceed to the question of ,luxury1 by which ,i mean the possession of such things as minister only to weakness and vanity1 of such things as we cannot reasonably hope that all men may some day equally possess4 ,when we are young--and most of us remain mere withered children1 never attaining maturity1 in similar matters--we are usually attracted by luxury and luxurious living4 ,we are possessed by that youthful instinct of union1 fusion1 marriage1 so to speak1 with what our soul desires2 we hanker after close contact and complete possession2 and we fancy1 in our inexperience1 that luxury1 the accumulation of valuables1 the appropriation of opportunities1 the fact of rejecting from our life all that is not costly1 brilliant1 and dainty1 implies such fusion of our soul with beauty4 ,but1 as we reach maturity1 we find that this is all delusion4 ,we learn1 from the experience of occasions when our soul has truly possessed the beautiful1 or been possessed by it1 that if such union with the harmony of outer things is rare1 perhaps impossible1 among squalor and weariness1 it is difficult and anomalous in the condition which we entitle luxury4 ,we learn that our assimilation of beauty1 and that momentary renewal of our soul which it effects1 rarely arises from our own ownership2 but comes1 taking us by surprise1 in presence of hills1 streams1 memories of pictures1 poets' words1 and strains of music1 which are not1 and cannot be1 our property4 ,the essential character of beauty is its being a relation between ourselves and certain objects4 ,the emotion to which we attach its name is produced1 motived by something outside us1 pictures1 music1 landscape1 or whatever it may be2 but the emotion resides in us1 and it is the emotion1 and not merely its object1 which we desire4 ,hence material possession has no sthetic meaning4 ,we possess a beautiful object with our soul2 the possession thereof with our hands or our legal rights brings us no nearer the beauty4 ,ownership1 in this sense1 may empower us to destroy or hide the object and thus cheat others of the possession of its beauty1 but does not help us to possess that beauty4 ,it is with beauty as with that singer who answered ,catherine ,,ii41 ,your ,majesty's policemen can make me scream1 but they cannot make me sing2 and she might have added1 for my parallel1 ,your policemen1 great ,empress1 even could they make me sing1 would not be able to make you hear4 ,,vi4 ,hence all strong sthetic feeling will always prefer ownership of the mental image to ownership of the tangible object4 ,and any desire for material appropriation or exclusive enjoyment will be merely so much weakening and adulteration of the sthetic sentiment4 ,since the mental image1 the only thing sthetically possessed1 is in no way diminished or damaged by sharing2 nay1 we have seen that by one of the most gracious coincidences between beauty and kindliness1 the sthetic emotion is even intensified by the knowledge of co-existence in others3 the delight in each person communicating itself1 like a musical third1 fifth1 or octave1 to the similar yet different delight in his neighbour1 harmonic enriching harmonic by stimulating fresh vibration4 ,if1 then1 we wish to possess casts1 copies1 or photographs of certain works of art1 this is1 sthetically considered1 exactly as we wish to have the means--railway tickets1 permissions for galleries1 and so forth--of seeing certain pictures or statues as often as we wish4 ,for we feel that the images in our mind require renewing1 or that1 in combination with other more recently acquired images1 they will1 if renewed1 yield a new kind of delight4 ,but this is quite another matter from wishing to own the material object1 the thing we call work of art itself1 forgetting that it is a work of art only for the soul capable of instating it as such4 ,thus1 in every person who truly cares for beauty1 there is a necessary tendency to replace the illusory legal act of ownership by the real spiritual act of appreciation4 ,charles ,lamb already expressed this delightfully in the essay on the old manor-house4 ,compared with his possession of its beauties1 its walks1 tapestried walls and family portraits1 nay1 even of the ghosts of former proprietors1 the possession by the legal owner was utterly nugatory1 unreal3 ,mine too1 ,blakesmoor1 was thy noble ,marble ,hall1 with its mosaic pavements1 and its twelve ,csars2444 mine1 too1 thy lofty ,justice ,hall1 with its one chair of authority4444 ,mine1 too--whose else8--thy costly fruit-garden 444 thy ampler pleasure-garden 444 thy firry wilderness4444 ,i was the true descendant of those old ,w----'s1 and not the present family of that name1 who had fled the old waste places4 ,how often have not some of us felt like that2 and how much might not those of us who never have1 learn1 could they learn1 from those words of ,elia8 ,,vii4 ,i have spoken of material1 actual possession4 ,but if we look closer at it we shall see that1 save with regard to the things which are actually consumed1 destroyed1 disintegrated1 changed to something else in their enjoyment1 the notion of ordinary possession is a mere delusion4 ,it can be got only by a constant obtrusion of a mere idea1 the idea of self1 and of such unsatisfactory ideas as one's right1 for instance1 to exclude others4 ',tis like the tension of a muscle1 this constant keeping the consciousness aware by repeating ,mine--mine--mine and not theirs2 not theirs1 but mine4 ,and this wearisome act of self-assertion leaves little power for appreciation1 for the appreciation which others can have quite equally1 and without which there is no reality at all in ownership4 ,hence1 the deeper our enjoyment of beauty1 the freer shall we become of the dreadful delusion of exclusive appropriation1 despising such unreal possession in proportion as we have tasted the real one4 ,we shall know the two kinds of ownership too well apart to let ourselves be cozened into cumbering our lives with material properties and their responsibilities4 ,we shall save up our vigour1 not for obtaining and keeping 7think of the thousand efforts and cares of ownership1 even the most negative7 the things which yield happy impressions1 but for receiving and storing up and making capital of those impressions4 ,we shall seek to furnish our mind with beautiful thoughts1 not our houses with pretty things4 ,,viii4 ,i hope ,i have made clear enough that sthetic enjoyment is hostile to the unkind and wasteful pleasures of selfish indulgence and selfish appropriation1 because the true possession of the beautiful things of ,nature1 of ,art1 and of thought is spiritual1 and neither damages1 nor diminishes1 nor hoards them2 because the lover of the beautiful seeks for beautiful impressions and remembrances1 which are vested in his soul1 and not in material objects4 ,that is the negative benefit of the love of the beautiful4 ,let us now proceed to the positive and active assistance which it renders1 when genuine and thorough-paced1 to such thought as we give to the happiness and dignity of others4 ,,ix4 ,i have said that our pleasure in the beautiful is essentially a spiritual phenomenon1 one1 ,i mean1 which deals with our own perceptions and emotions1 altering the contents of our mind1 while leaving the beautiful object itself intact and unaltered4 ,this being the case1 it is easy to understand that our sthetic pleasure will be complete and extensive in proportion to the amount of activity of our soul2 for1 remember1 all pleasure is proportionate to activity1 and1 as ,i said in my first chapter1 great beauty does not merely take us1 but we must give ourselves to it4 ,hence1 an increase in the capacity for sthetic pleasure will mean1 ceteris paribus1 an increase in a portion of our spiritual activity1 a greater readiness to take small hints1 to connect different items1 to reject the lesser good for the greater4 ,moreover1 a great1 perhaps the greater1 part of our sthetic pleasure is due1 as ,i also told you before1 to the storing of impressions in our mind1 and to the combining of them there with other impressions4 ,indeed1 it is for this reason that ,i have made no difference1 save in intensity between sthetic creation1 so called1 and sthetic appreciation2 telling you1 on the contrary1 that the artistic layman creates1 produces something new and personal1 only in a less degree than the professed artist4 ,for the sthetic life does not consist merely in the perception of the beautiful object1 not merely in the emotion of that spiritual contact between the beautiful product of art or of nature and the soul of the appreciator3 it is continued in the emotions and images and thoughts which are awakened by that perception2 and the sthetic life is life1 is something continuous and organic1 just because new forms1 however obscure and evanescent1 are continually born1 in their turn continually to give birth1 of that marriage between the beautiful thing outside and the beautiful soul within4 ,hence1 full sthetic life means the creating and extending of ever new harmonies in the mind of the layman1 the unconscious artist who merely enjoys1 as a result of the creating and extending of new harmonies in the work of the professed artist who consciously creates4 ,this being the case1 the true sthete is for ever seeking to reduce his impressions and thoughts to harmony2 and is for ever1 accordingly1 being pleased with some of them1 and disgusted with others4 ,x4 ,the desire for beauty and harmony1 therefore1 in proportion as it becomes active and sensitive1 explores into every detail1 establishes comparisons between everything1 judges1 approves1 and disapproves2 and makes terrible and wholesome havoc not merely in our surroundings1 but in our habits and in our lives4 ,and very soon the mere thought of something ugly becomes enough to outweigh the actual presence of something beautiful4 ,i was told last winter at ,san ,remo1 that the scent of the ,parma violet can be distilled only by the oil of the flower being passed through a layer of pork fat2 and since that revelation violet essence has lost much of the charm it possessed for me3 the thought of the suet counterbalanced the reality of the perfume4 ,now this violet essence1 thus obtained1 is symbolic of many of the apparently refined enjoyments of our life4 ,we shall find that luxury and pomp1 delightful sometimes in themselves1 are distilled through a layer of coarse and repulsive labour by other folk2 and the thought of the pork suet will spoil the smell of the violets4 ,for the more dishes we have for dinner1 the greater number of cooking-pots will have to be cleaned2 the more carriages and horses we use1 the more washing and grooming will result2 the more crowded our rooms with furniture and nicknacks1 the more dust will have to be removed2 the more numerous and delicate our clothes1 the more brushing and folding there will be2 and the more purely ornamental our own existence1 the less ornamental will be that of others4 ,there is a pense of ,pascal's to the effect that a fop carries on his person the evidence of the existence of so many people devoted to his service4 ,this thought may be delightful to a fop2 but it is not pleasant to a mind sensitive to beauty and hating the bare thought of ugliness3 for while vanity takes pleasure in lack of harmony between oneself and one's neighbour1 sthetic feeling takes pleasure only in harmonious relations4 ,the thought of the servile lives devoted to make our life more beautiful counterbalances the pleasure of the beauty2 'tis the eternal question of the violet essence and the pork suet4 ,now the habit of beauty1 the sthetic sense1 becomes1 as ,i said1 more and more sensitive and vivacious2 you cannot hide from it the knowledge of every sort of detail1 you cannot prevent its noticing the ugly side1 the ugly lining of certain pretty things4 ',tis a but weak and sleepy kind of stheticism which blinks and shuts its apprehension up at your bidding1 which looks another way discreetly1 and discreetly refrains from all comparisons4 ,the real sthetic activity is an activity2 it is one of the strongest and most imperious powers of human nature2 it does not take orders1 it only gives them4 ,it is1 when full grown1 a kind of conscience of beautiful and ugly1 analogous to the other conscience of right and wrong1 and it is equally difficult to silence4 ,if you can silence your sthetic faculty and bid it be satisfied with the lesser beauty1 the lesser harmony1 instead of the greater1 be sure that it is a very rudimentary kind of instinct2 and that you are no more thoroughly sthetic than if you could make your sense of right and wrong be blind and dumb at your convenience1 you could be thoroughly moral4 ,hence1 the more sthetic we become1 the less we shall tolerate such modes of living as involve dull and dirty work for others1 as involve the exclusion of others from the sort of life which we consider sthetically tolerable4 ,we shall require such houses and such habits as can be seen1 and1 what is inevitable in all sthetical development1 as can also be thought of1 in all their details4 ,we shall require a homogeneous impression of decorum and fitness from the lives of others as well as from our own1 from what we actually see and from what we merely know3 the imperious demand for beauty1 for harmony will be applied no longer to our mere material properties1 but to that other possession which is always with us and can never be taken from us1 the images and feelings within our soul4 ,now1 that other human beings should be drudging sordidly in order that we may be idle and showy means a thought1 a vision1 an emotion which do not get on in our mind in company with the sight of sunset and sea1 the taste of mountain air and woodland freshness1 the faces and forms of ,florentine saints and ,antique gods1 the serene poignancy of great phrases of music4 ,this is by no means all4 ,developing in sthetic sensitiveness we grow to think of ourselves also1 our own preferences1 moods and attitudes1 as more or less beautiful or ugly2 the inner life falling under the same criticism as the outer one4 ,we become aristocratic and epicurean about our desires and habits2 we grow squeamish and impatient towards luxury1 towards all kinds of monopoly and privilege on account of the mean attitude1 the graceless gesture they involve on our own part4 ,,xi4 ,this feeling is increasing daily4 ,our deepest sthetic emotions are1 we are beginning to recognise1 connected with things which we do not1 cannot1 possess in the vulgar sense4 ,nay1 the deepest sthetic emotions depend1 to an appreciable degree1 on the very knowledge that these things are either not such as money can purchase1 or that they are within the purchasing power of all4 ,the sense of being shareable by others1 of being even shareable1 so to speak1 by other kinds of utility1 adds a very keen attraction to all beautiful things and beautiful actions1 and1 of course1 vice vers4 ,and things which are beautiful1 but connected with luxury and exclusive possession1 come to affect one as1 in a way1 lacking harmonics1 lacking those additional vibrations of pleasure which enrich impressions of beauty by impressions of utility and kindliness4 ,thus1 after enjoying the extraordinary lovely tints--oleander pink1 silver-grey1 and most delicate citron--of the plaster which covers the commonest cottages1 the humblest chapels1 all round ,genoa1 there is something short and acid in the pleasure one derives from equally charming colours in expensive dresses4 ,similarly1 in ,italy1 much of the charm of marble1 of the sea-cave shimmer1 of certain palace-yards and churches1 is due to the knowledge that this lovely1 noble substance is easy to cut and quarried in vast quantities hard by3 no wretched rarity like diamonds and rubies1 which diminish by the worth of a family's yearly keep if only the cutter cuts one hair-breadth wrong6 ,again1 is not one reason why antique sculpture awakens a state of mind where stoicism1 humaneness1 simplicity1 seem nearer possibilities--is not one reason that it shows us the creature in its nakedness1 in such beauty and dignity as it can get through the grace of birth only8 ,there is no need among the gods for garments from silken ,samarkand1 for farthingales of brocade and veils of ,mechlin lace like those of the wooden ,madonnas of ,spanish churches2 no need for the ruffles and plumes of ,pascal's young beau1 showing thereby the number of his valets4 ,the same holds good of trees1 water1 mountains1 and their representation in poetry and painting2 their dignity takes no account of poverty or riches4 ,even the lilies of the field please us1 not because they toil not neither do they spin1 but because they do not require1 while ,solomon does1 that other folk should toil and spin to make them glorious4 ,,xii4 ,again1 do we not prefer the books which deal with habits simpler than our own8 ,do we not love the ,odyssey partly because of ,calypso weaving in her cave1 and ,nausicaa washing the clothes with her maidens8 ,does it not lend additional divinity that ,christianity should have arisen among peasants and handicraftsmen8 ,nay more1 do we not love certain objects largely because they are useful2 boats1 nets1 farm carts1 ploughs2 discovering therein a grace which actually exists1 but which might else have remained unsuspected8 ,and do we not feel a certain lack of significance and harmony of fulness of sthetic quality in our persons when we pass in our idleness among people working in the fields1 masons building1 or fishermen cleaning their boats and nets2 whatever beauty such things may have being enhanced by their being common and useful4 ,in this manner our sthetic instinct strains vaguely after a double change3 not merely giving affluence and leisure to others1 but giving simplicity and utility to ourselves8 ,,xiii4 ,and1 even apart from this1 does not all true stheticism tend to diminish labour while increasing enjoyment1 because it makes the already existing more sufficient1 because it furthers the joys of the spirit1 which multiply by sharing1 as distinguished from the pleasures of vanity and greediness1 which only diminish8 ,,xiv4 ,you may at first feel inclined to pooh-pooh the notion that mere love of beauty can help to bring about a better distribution of the world's riches2 and reasonably object that we cannot feed people on images and impressions which multiply by sharing2 they live on bread1 and not on the idea of bread4 ,but has it ever struck you that1 after all1 the amount of material bread--even if we extend the word to everything which is consumed for bodily necessity and comfort--which any individual can consume is really very small2 and that the bad distribution1 the shocking waste of this material bread arises from being1 so to speak1 used symbolically1 used as spiritual bread1 as representing those ideas for which men hunger3 superiority over other folk1 power of having dependants1 social position1 ownership1 and privilege of all kinds8 ,for what are the bulk of worldly possessions to their owners3 houses1 parks1 plate1 jewels1 superfluous expenditure of all kinds and armies and navies when we come to national wastefulness--what are all these ill-distributed riches save ideas1 ideas futile and ungenerous1 food for the soul1 but food upon which the soul grows sick and corrupteth8 ,would it not be worth while to reorganise this diet of ideas8 ,to reorganise that part of us which is independent of bodily sustenance and health1 which lives on spiritual commodities--the part of us including ambition1 ideal1 sympathy1 and all that ,i have called ideas8 ,would it not be worth while to find such ideas as all people can live upon without diminishing each other's share1 instead of the ideas1 the imaginative satisfactions which each must refuse to his neighbour1 and about which1 therefore1 all of us are bound to fight like hungry animals8 ,thus to reform our notions of what is valuable and distinguished would bring about an economic reformation2 or1 if other forces were needed1 would make the benefits of such economic reformation completer1 its hardships easier to bear2 and1 altering our views of loss and gain1 lessen the destructive struggle of snatching and holding4 ,now1 as ,i have been trying to show1 beauty1 harmony1 fitness1 are of the nature of the miraculous loaves and fishes3 they can feed multitudes and leave basketfuls for the morrow4 ,but the desire for such spiritual food is1 you will again object1 itself a rarity1 a product of leisure and comfort1 almost a luxury4 ,quite true4 ,and you will remember1 perhaps1 that ,i have already remarked that they are not to be expected either from the poor in material comfort1 nor from the poor in soul1 since both of these are condemned1 the first by physical wretchedness1 the second by spiritual inactivity1 to fight only for larger shares of material bread2 with the difference that this material bread is eaten by the poor1 and made into very ugly symbols of glory by the rich4 ,but1 among those of us who are neither hungry nor vacuous1 there is not1 generally speaking1 much attempt to make the best of our spiritual privileges4 ,we teach our children1 as we were taught ourselves1 to give importance only to the fact of exclusiveness1 expense1 rareness1 already necessarily obtruded far too much by our struggling1 imperfect civilisation4 ,we are indeed angry with little boys and girls if they enquire too audibly whether certain people are rich or certain things cost much money1 as little boys and girls are apt to do in their very far from innocence2 but we teach them by our example to think about such things every time we stretch a point in order to appear richer or smarter than we are4 ,while1 on the contrary1 we rarely insist upon the intrinsic qualities for which things are really valuable1 without which no trouble or money would be spent on them1 without which their difficulty of obtaining would1 as in the case of ,dr4 ,johnson's musical performance1 become identical with impossibility4 ,i wonder how many people ever point out to a child that the water in a tank may be more wonderful and beautiful in its beryls and sapphires and agates than all the contents of all the jewellers' shops in ,bond ,street8 ,moreover1 we rarely struggle against the standards of fashion in our habits and arrangements2 which standards1 in many cases1 are those of our ladies' maids1 butlers1 tradesfolk1 and in all cases the standards of our less intelligent neighbours4 ,nay1 more1 we sometimes actually cultivate in ourselves1 we superfine and sthetic creatures1 a preference for such kinds of enjoyment as are exclusive and costly2 we allow ourselves to be talked into the notion that solitary egoism1 laborious self-assertion of ownership 7as in the poor mad ,ludwig of ,bavaria7 is a badge of intellectual distinction4 ,we cherish a desire for the new-fangled and far-fetched1 the something no other has had before2 little suspecting1 or forgetting1 that to extract more pleasure not less1 to enjoy the same things longer1 and to be able to extract more enjoyment out of more things1 is the sign of sthetic vigour4 ,,xv4 ,still1 on the whole1 such as can care for beautiful things and beautiful thoughts are beginning to care for them more fully1 and are growing1 undoubtedly1 in a certain moral sensitiveness which1 as ,i have said1 is coincident with sthetic development4 ,this strikes me every time that ,i see or think about a certain priest's house on a hillside by the ,mediterranean3 a little house built up against the village church1 and painted and roofed1 like the church1 a most delicate grey1 against which the yellow of the spalliered lemons sings out in exquisite intensity2 alongside1 a wall with flower pots1 and dainty white curtains to the windows4 ,such a house and the life possible in it are beginning1 for many of us1 to become the ideal1 by whose side all luxury and worldly grandeur becomes insipid or vulgar4 ,for such a house as this embodies the possibility of living with grace and decorum throughout by dint of loving carefulness and self-restraining simplicity4 ,i say with grace and decorum throughout1 because all things which might beget ugliness in the life of others1 or ugliness in our own attitude towards others1 would be eliminated1 thrown away like the fossil which ,thoreau threw away because it collected dust4 ,moreover1 such a life as this is such as all may reasonably hope to have2 may1 in some more prosperous age1 obtain because it involves no hoarding of advantage for self or excluding therefrom of others4 ,and such a life we ourselves may attain at least in the spirit1 if we become strenuous and faithful lovers of the beautiful1 sthetes and ascetics who recognise that their greatest pleasure1 their only true possessions are in themselves2 knowing the supreme value of their own soul1 even as was foreshadowed by the ,abbot ,joachim of ,flora1 when he said that the true monk can hold no property except his lyre4 ,,higher ,,harmonies4 ,i4 ,to use the beauties of earth as steps along which he mounts upwards1 going from one to two1 and from two to all fair forms1 and from fair forms to fair actions1 and from fair actions to fair notions1 until from fair notions he arrives at the notion of absolute beauty1 and at last knows what the essence of beauty is2 this1 my dear ,socrates1 said the prophetess of ,mantineia1 is that life1 above all others1 which man should live1 in the contemplation of beauty absolute4 ,do you not see that in that communion only1 beholding beauty with the eye of the mind1 he will be enabled to bring forth not images of beauty1 but realities2 for he has hold not of an image1 but of a reality2 and bringing forth and educating true virtue to become the friend of ,god1 and be immortal1 if mortal man may8 ,such are the sthetics of ,plato1 put into the mouth of that mysterious ,diotima1 who was a wise woman in many branches of knowledge4 ,as we read them nowadays we are apt to smile with incredulity not unmixed with bitterness4 ,is all this not mere talk1 charming and momentarily elating us like so much music2 itself mere beauty which1 because we like it1 we half voluntarily confuse with truth8 ,and1 on the other hand1 is not the truth of sthetics1 the bare1 hard fact1 a very different matter8 ,for we have learned that we human creatures will never know the absolute or the essence1 that notions1 which ,plato took for realities1 are mere relative conceptions2 that virtue and truth are social ideals and intellectual abstractions1 while beauty is a quality found primarily and literally only in material existences and sense-experiences2 and every day we are hearing of new discoveries connecting our sthetic emotions with the structure of eye and ear1 the movement of muscles1 the functions of nerve centres1 nay1 even with the action of heart and lungs and viscera4 ,moreover1 all round us schools of criticism and cliques of artists are telling us forever that so far from bringing forth and educating true virtue1 art has the sovereign power1 by mere skill and subtlety1 of investing good and evil1 healthy and unwholesome1 with equal merit1 and obliterating the distinctions drawn by the immortal gods1 instead of helping the immortal gods to their observance4 ,thus we are apt to think1 and to take the words of ,diotima as merely so much lovely rhetoric4 ,but--as my previous chapters must have led you to expect--,i think we are so far mistaken4 ,i believe that1 although explained in the terms of fantastic1 almost mythical metaphysic1 the speech of ,diotima contains a great truth1 deposited in the heart of man by the unnoticed innumerable experiences of centuries and peoples2 a truth which exists in ourselves also as an instinctive expectation1 and which the advance of knowledge will confirm and explain4 ,for in that pellucid atmosphere of the ,greek mind1 untroubled as yet by theoretic mists1 there may have been visible the very things which our scientific instruments are enabling us to see and reconstruct piecemeal1 great groupings of reality metamorphosed into ,fata ,morgana cities seemingly built by the gods4 ,and thus ,i am going to try to reinstate in others' belief1 as it is fully reinstated in my own1 the theory of higher sthetic harmonies1 which the prophetess of ,mantineia taught ,socrates3 to wit1 that through the contemplation of true beauty we may attain1 by the constant purification--or1 in more modern language1 the constant selecting and enriching--of our nature1 to that which transcends material beauty2 because the desire for harmony begets the habit of harmony1 and the habit thereof begets its imperative desire1 and thus on in never-ending alternation4 ,,ii4 ,perhaps the best way of expounding my reasons will be to follow the process by which ,i reached them2 for so far from having started with the theory of ,diotima1 ,i found the theory of ,diotima1 when ,i re-read it accidentally after many years' forgetfulness1 to bring to convergence the result of my gradual experience4 99 99 99 99 99 ,thinking about the ,hermes of ,olympia1 and the fact that so far he is pretty well the only ,greek statue which historical evidence unhesitatingly gives us as an original masterpiece1 it struck me that1 could one become really familiar with him1 could eye and soul learn all the fulness of his perfection1 we should have the true starting-point for knowledge of the antique1 for knowledge1 in great measure1 of all art4 ,yes1 and of more than art1 or rather of art in more than one relation4 ,is this a superstition1 a mere myth1 perhaps1 born of words8 ,i think not4 ,surely if we could really arrive at knowing such a masterpiece1 so as to feel rather than see its most intimate organic principles1 and the great main reasons separating it from all inferior works and making it be itself3 could we do this1 we should know not merely what art is and should be1 but1 in a measure1 what life should be and might become3 what are the methods of true greatness1 the sensations of true sanity4 ,it would teach us the eternal organic strivings and tendencies of our soul1 those leading in the direction of life1 leading away from death4 ,if this seems mere allegory and wild talk1 let us look at facts and see what art is4 ,for is not art inasmuch as untroubled by the practical difficulties of existence1 inasmuch as the free1 unconscious attempt of all nations and generations to satisfy1 outside life1 those cravings which life still leaves unsatisfied--is not art a delicate instrument1 showing in its sensitive oscillations the most intimate movements and habits of the soul8 ,does it not reveal our most recondite necessities and possibilities1 by sifting and selecting1 reinforcing or attenuating1 the impressions received from without2 showing us thereby how we must stand towards nature and life1 how we must feel and be8 ,and this most particularly in those spontaneous arts which1 first in the field1 without need of adaptations of material or avoidance of the already done1 without need of using up the rejected possibilities of previous art1 or awakening yet unknown emotions1 are the simple1 straightforward expression1 each the earliest satisfactory one in its own line1 of the long unexpressed1 long integrated1 organic wants and wishes of great races of men3 the arts1 for instance1 which have given us that ,hermes1 ,titian's pictures1 and ,michael ,angelo's and ,raphael's frescoes2 given us ,bach1 ,gluck1 ,mozart1 the serener parts of ,beethoven1 music of yet reserved pathos1 braced1 spring-like strength1 learned1 select3 arts which never go beyond the universal1 averaged expression of the soul's desires1 because the desires themselves are sifted1 limited to the imperishable and unchangeable1 like the artistic methods which embody them1 reduced to the essential by the long delay of utterance1 the long--century long--efforts to utter4 ,becoming intimate with such a statue as the ,olympian ,hermes1 and comparing the impressions received from it with the impressions both of inferior works of the same branch of art and with the impressions of equally great works--pictures1 buildings1 musical compositions--of other branches of art1 becoming conversant with the difference between an original and a copy1 great art and poor art1 we gradually become aware of a quality which exists in all good art and is absent in all bad art1 and without whose presence those impressions summed up as beauty1 dignity1 grandeur1 are never to be had4 ,this peculiarity1 which most people perceive and few people define--explaining it away sometimes as truth1 or taking it for granted under the name of quality--this peculiarity ,i shall call for convenience' sake harmony2 for ,i think you will all of you admit that the absence or presence of harmony is what distinguishes bad art from good4 ,harmony1 in this sense--and remember that it is this which connoisseurs most usually allude to as quality--harmony may be roughly defined as the organic correspondence between the various parts of a work of art1 the functional interchange and interdependence thereof4 ,in this sense there is harmony in every really living thing1 for otherwise it could not live4 ,if the muscles and limbs1 nay1 the viscera and tissues1 did not adjust themselves to work together1 if they did not in this combination establish a rhythm1 a backward-forward1 contraction-relaxation1 taking-in-giving-out1 diastole-systole in all their movements1 there would be1 instead of a living organism1 only an inert mass4 ,in all living things1 and just in proportion as they are really alive 7for in most real things there is presumably some defect of rhythm tending to stoppage of life71 there is bound to be this organic interdependence and interchange4 ,natural selection1 the survival of such individuals and species as best work in with1 are most rhythmical to1 their surroundings--natural selection sees to that4 ,,iii4 ,in art the place of natural selection is taken by man's selection2 and all forms of art which man keeps and does not send into limbo1 all art which man finds suitable to his wants1 rhythmical with his habits1 must have that same quality of interdependence of parts1 of interchange of function4 ,only in the case of art1 the organic necessity refers not to outer surroundings1 but to man's feeling2 in fact1 man's emotion constitutes necessity towards art1 as surrounding nature constitutes necessity for natural objects4 ,now man requires organic harmony1 that is1 congruity and co-ordination of processes1 because his existence1 the existence of every cell of him1 depends upon it1 is one complete microcosm of interchange1 of give-and-take1 diastole-systole1 of rhythm and harmony2 and therefore all such things as give him impressions of the reverse thereof1 go against him1 and in a greater or lesser degree1 threaten1 disturb1 paralyse1 in a way poison or maim him4 ,hence he is for ever seeking such congruity1 such harmony2 and his artistic creativeness is conditioned by the desire for it1 nay1 is perhaps mainly seeking to obtain it4 ,whenever he spontaneously and truly creates artistic forms1 he obeys the imperious vital instinct for congruity2 nay1 he seeks to eke out the insufficient harmony between himself and the things which he cannot command1 the insufficient harmony between the uncontrollable parts of himself1 by a harmony created on purpose in the things which he can control4 ,to a large extent man feels himself tortured by discordant impressions coming from the world outside and the world inside him2 and he seeks comfort and medicine in harmonious impressions of his own making1 in his own strange inward-outward world of art4 ,this1 ,i think1 is the true explanation of that much-disputed-over ideal1 which1 according to definitions1 is perpetually being enthroned and dethroned as the ultimate aim of all art3 the ideal1 the imperatively clamoured-for mysterious something1 is neither conformity to an abstract idea1 nor conformity to actual reality1 nor conformity to the typical1 nor conformity to the individual2 it is1 ,i take it1 simply conformity to man's requirements1 to man's inborn and peremptory demand for greater harmony1 for more perfect co-ordination and congruity in his feelings4 ,now1 when1 in the exercise of the artistic instincts1 mankind are partially obeying some other call than this one--the desire for money1 fame1 or for some intellectual formula--things are quite different1 and there is no production of what ,i have called harmony4 ,there is no congruity when even great people set about doing pseudo-antique sculpture in ,canova-,thorwaldsen fashion because ,winckelmann and ,goethe have made antique sculpture fashionable2 there is no congruity when people set to building pseudo-,gothic in obedience to the romantic movement and to ,ruskin4 ,for neither the desire for making a mark1 nor the most conscientious pressure of formula gives that instinct of selection and co-ordination characterising even the most rudimentary artistic efforts in the most barbarous ages1 when men are impelled merely and solely by the sthetic instinct4 ,moreover1 where people do not want and need 7as they want and need food or drink or warmth or coolness7 one sort of effect1 that is to say1 one arrangement of impressions rather than another1 they are sure to be deluded by the mere arbitrary classification1 the mere names of things4 ,they will think that smooth cheeks1 wavy hair1 straight noses1 limbs of such or such measure1 attitude1 and expression1 set so1 constitute the ,antique2 that clustered pillars1 cross vaulting1 spandrils1 and ,tudor roses make ,gothic4 ,but the ,antique quality is the particular and all permeating relation between all its items2 and ,gothic the particular and all permeating relation between those other ones2 and unless you aim at the specific emotion of ,antique or ,gothic1 unless you feel the imperious call for the special harmony of either1 all the measurements and all the formulas will not avail4 ,while1 on the contrary1 people without any formula or any attempt at imitation1 like the ,byzantine architects and those of the fifteenth century1 merely because they are obeying their own passionate desire for congruity of impressions1 for harmony of structure and function1 will succeed in creating brand-new1 harmonious1 organic art out of the actual details1 sometimes the material ruins1 of an art which has passed away4 ,if we become intimate with any great work of art1 and intimate in so far with the thoughts and emotions it awakens in ourselves1 we shall find that it possesses1 besides this congruity within itself which assimilates it to all really living things1 a further congruity1 not necessarily found in real objects1 but which forms the peculiarity of the work of art1 a congruity with ourselves2 for the great work of art is vitally connected with the habits and wants1 the whole causality and rhythm of mankind2 it has been fitted thereto as the boat to the sea4 ,,iv4 ,in this manner can we learn from art the chief secret of life3 the secret of action and reaction1 of causal connection1 of suitability of part to part1 of organism1 interchange1 and growth4 ,and when ,i say learn1 ,i mean learn in the least official and the most efficacious way4 ,i do not mean merely that1 looking at a statue like the ,hermes1 a certain fact is borne in upon our intelligence1 the fact of all vitality being dependent on harmony4 ,i mean that perhaps1 nay probably1 without any such formula1 our whole nature becomes accustomed to a certain repeated experience1 our whole nature becomes adapted thereunto1 and acts and reacts in consequence1 by what we call intuition1 instinct4 ,it is not with our intellect alone that we possess such a fact1 as we might intellectually possess that twice two is four1 or that ,elizabeth was the daughter of ,henry ,,viii41 knowing casually what we may casually also forget2 we possess1 in such a way that forgetting becomes impossible1 with our whole soul and our whole being1 re-living that fact with every breath that we draw1 with every movement we make1 the first great lesson of art1 that vitality means harmony4 ,let us look at this fact1 and at its practical applications1 apart from all sthetic experience4 ,all life is harmony2 and all improvement in ourselves is therefore1 however unconsciously1 the perceiving1 the realising1 or the establishing of harmonies1 more minute or more universal4 ,yes1 curious and unpractical as it may seem1 harmonies1 or1 under their humbler separate names--arrangements1 schemes1 classifications1 are the chief means for getting the most out of all things1 and particularly the most out of ourselves4 ,for they mean1 first of all1 unity of means for the attaining of unity of effect1 that is to say1 incalculable economy of material1 of time1 and of effort2 and secondly1 unity of effect produced1 that is to say1 economy even greater in our power of perceiving and feeling3 nothing to eliminate1 nothing against whose interruptions we waste our energy1 our power of becoming more fit in the course of striving4 ,when there exists harmony one impression leads to1 enhances another2 we1 on the other hand1 unconsciously recognise at once what is doing to us1 what we in return must do2 the mood is indicated1 fulfilled1 consummated2 in plenitude we feel1 we are2 and in plenitude of feeling and being1 we1 in our turn1 do4 ,neither is such habit of harmony1 of scheme1 of congruity1 a mere device for sucking the full sweetness out of life1 although1 heaven knows1 that were important enough4 ,as much as such a habit husbands1 and in a way multiplies1 life's sweetness2 so likewise does it husband and multiply man's power4 ,for there is no quicker and more thorough mode of selecting among our feelings and thoughts than submitting them to a standard of congruity2 nothing more efficacious than the question3 ,is such or such a notion or proceeding harmonious with what we have made the rest of our life1 with what we wish our life to be8 ,this is1 in other words1 the power of the ideal1 the force of ideas1 of thought-out1 recognised habits1 as distinguished from blind helter-skelter impulse4 ,this is what welds life into one1 making its forces work not in opposition but in concordance2 this is what makes life consecutive1 using the earlier act to produce the later1 tying together existence in an organic fatality of must be3 the fatality not of the outside and the unconscious1 but of the conscious1 inner1 upper man4 ,nay1 it is what makes up the ,ego4 ,for the ego1 as we are beginning to understand1 is no mysterious separate entity1 still less a succession of disconnected1 conflicting1 blind impulses2 the ego is the congruous1 perceived1 nay1 thought-out system of habits1 which feels all incongruity towards itself as accidental and external4 ,hence1 when we ask which are the statements we believe in1 we answer instinctively 7logic being but a form of congruity7 those statements which accord with themselves and with other statements2 when we ask1 which are the persons we trust8 we answer1 those persons whose feelings and actions are congruous with themselves and with the feelings and actions of others4 ,and1 on the contrary1 it is in the worthless1 in the degenerate creature1 that we note moods which are destructive to one another's object1 ideas which are in flagrant contradiction2 and it is in the idiot1 the maniac1 the criminal1 that we see thoughts disconnected among themselves1 perceptions disconnected with surrounding objects1 and instincts and habits incompatible with those of other human beings4 ,nay1 if we look closely1 we shall recognise1 moreover1 that those emotions of pleasure are the healthy1 the safe ones1 which are harmonious not merely in themselves 7as a musical note is composed of even vibrations71 but harmonious with all preceding and succeeding pleasures in ourselves1 and harmonious1 congruous1 with the present and future pleasures in others4 ,v4 ,the instinct of congruity1 of subordination of part to whole1 the desire for harmony which is fostered above all things by art1 is one of the most precious parts of our nature1 if only1 obeying its own tendency to expand1 we apply it to ever wider circles of being2 not merely to the accessories of living1 but to life itself4 ,for this love of harmony and order leads us to seek what is most necessary in our living3 a selection of the congruous1 an arrangement of the mutually dependent in our thoughts and feelings4 ,much of the work of the universe is done1 no doubt1 by what seems the exercise of mere random energy1 by the thinking of apparently disconnected thoughts and the feeling of apparently sporadic impulses2 but if the thought and the impulse remained really disconnected and sporadic1 half would be lost and half would be distorted4 ,it is one of the economical adaptations of nature that every part of us tends not merely to be consistent with itself1 to eliminate the hostile1 to beget the similar1 but tends also to be connected with other parts2 so that1 action coming in contact with action1 thought in contact with thought1 and feeling in contact with feeling1 each single one will be strengthened or neutralised by the other4 ,and it is the especial business of what we may call the central consciousness1 the dominant thought or emotion1 to bring these separate thoughts and impulses1 these separate groups thereof1 into more complex relations1 to continue on a far vaster scale that vital contact1 that trying of all things by the great trial of affinity or repulsion1 of congruity or incongruity4 ,thus we make trial of ourselves2 and by the selfsame process1 by the test of affinity and congruity1 the silent forces of the universe make trial of us1 rejecting or accepting1 allowing us1 our thoughts1 our feelings to live and be fruitful1 or condemning us and them to die in barrenness4 ,whither are we going8 ,in what shape shall the various members of our soul proceed on their journey2 which forming the van1 which the rear and centre8 ,or shall there be neither van1 nor rear1 nor wedge-like forward flight8 ,if this question remains unasked or unanswered1 our best qualities1 our truest thoughts and purest impulses1 may be hopelessly scattered into distant regions1 become defiled in bad company1 or1 at least1 barren in isolation2 the universal life rejecting or annihilating them4 ,how often do we not see this6 ,natures whose various parts have rambled asunder1 or have come to live1 like strangers in an inn1 casually1 promiscuously1 each refusing to be his brother's keeper3 instincts of kindliness at various ends1 unconnected1 unable to coalesce and conquer2 thoughts separated from their kind1 incapable of application2 and1 in consequence1 strange superficial comradeships1 shoulder-rubbings of true and false1 good and evil1 become indifferent to one another1 incapable of looking each other in the face1 careless1 unblushing4 ,nay1 worse4 ,for lack of all word of command1 of all higher control1 hostile tendencies accommodating themselves to reign alternate1 sharing the individual in distinct halves1 till he becomes like unto that hero of ,gautier's witch story1 who was a pious priest one-half of the twenty-four hours and a wicked libertine the other3 all power of selection1 of reaction gone in this passive endurance of conflicting tendencies2 all identity gone1 save a mere feeble outsider looking on at the alternations of intentions and lapses1 of good and bad4 ,and the soul of such a person--if1 indeed1 we can speak of one soul or one person where there exists no unity--becomes like a jangle of notes belonging to different tonalities1 alternating and mingling in hideous confusion for lack of a clear thread of melody1 a consistent system of harmony1 to select1 reject1 and keep all things in place4 ,melody1 harmony3 the two great halves of the most purely sthetic of all arts1 symbolise1 as we might expect1 the two great forces of life3 consecutiveness and congruity1 under their different names of intention1 fitness1 selection1 adaptation4 ,these are what make the human soul like a conquering army1 a fleet freighted with riches1 a band of priests celebrating a rite4 ,and this is what art1 by no paltry formula1 but by the indelible teaching of habit1 of requirement1 and expectation become part of our very fibre--this is what art can teach to those who will receive its highest lesson4 ,,vi4 ,those who can receive that lesson1 that is to say1 those in whom it can expand and ramify to the fulness and complexity which is its very essence4 ,for it happens frequently enough that we learn only a portion of this truth1 which by this means is distorted into error4 ,we accept the sthetic instinct as a great force of ,nature2 but1 instead of acknowledging it as our master1 as one of the great lords of life1 of whom ,emerson spoke1 we try to make it our servant4 ,we attempt to get congruity between the details of our everyday existence1 and refuse to seek for congruity between ourselves and the life which is greater than ours4 ,a friend of mine1 who had many better ways of spending her money1 was unable one day to resist the temptation of buying a beautiful old majolica inkstand1 which1 not without a slight qualm of conscience1 she put into a very delightful old room of her house4 ,the room had an inkstand already1 but it was of glass1 and modern4 ,this one is in harmony with the rest of the room1 she said1 and felt fully justified in her extravagance4 ,it is this form1 or rather this degree1 of stheticism1 which so often prevents our realising the higher sthetic harmonies4 ,in obedience to a perception of what is congruous on a small scale we often do oddly incongruous things3 spend money we ought to save1 give time and thought to trifles while neglecting to come to conclusions about matters of importance2 endure1 or even cultivate1 persons with whom we have less than no sympathy2 nay1 sometimes1 from a keen sense of incongruity1 tune down our thoughts and feelings to the flatness of our surroundings4 ,the phenomenon of what may thus result from a certain sthetic sensitiveness is discouraging1 and ,i confess that it used to discourage and humiliate me4 ,but the philosophy which the prophetess of ,mautineia taught ,socrates settles the matter1 and solves1 satisfactorily what in my mind ,i always think of as the question of the majolica inkstand4 ,diotima1 you will remember1 did not allow her disciple to remain engrossed in the contemplation of one kind of beauty1 but particularly insisted that he should use various fair forms as steps by which to ascend to the knowledge of ever higher beauties4 ,and this ,i should translate into more practical language by saying that1 in questions like that of the majolica inkstand1 we require not a lesser sensitiveness to congruity1 but a greater2 that we must look not merely at the smaller1 but at the larger items of our life1 asking ourselves1 ,is this harmonious8 or is it1 seen in some wider connection1 even like that clumsy glass inkstand in the oak panelled and brocade hung room8 ,if we ask ourselves this1 and endeavour to answer it faithfully--with that truthfulness which is itself an item of consistency--we may find that1 strange as it may seem1 the glass inkstand1 ugly as it is in itself1 and out of harmony with the furniture1 is yet more congruous1 and that we actually prefer it to the one of majolica4 ,and it is in connection with this that ,i think that many persons who are really sthetic1 and many more who imagine themselves to be so1 should foster a wholesome suspicion of the theory which makes it a duty to accumulate certain kinds of possessions1 to seek exclusively certain kinds of impressions1 on the score of putting beauty and dignity into our lives4 ,put beauty1 dignity1 harmony1 serenity into our lives4 ,it sounds very fine4 ,but can we8 ,i doubt it4 ,we may put beautiful objects1 dignified manners1 harmonious colours and shapes1 but can we put dignity1 harmony1 or beauty8 ,can we put them into an individual life2 can anything be put into an individual life save furniture and garments1 intellectual as well as material8 ,for an individual life1 taken separately1 is a narrow1 weak thing at the very best2 and everything we can put into it1 everything we lay hold of for the sake of putting in1 must needs be small also1 merely the chips or dust of great things2 or if it have life1 must be squeezed1 cut down1 made so small before it can fit into that little receptacle of our egoism1 that it will speedily be a dead1 dry thing3 thoughts once thought1 feelings once felt1 now neither thought nor felt1 merely lying there inert1 as a dead fact1 in our sterile self4 ,do we not see this on all sides1 examples of life into which all the dignified things have been crammed and all the beautiful ones1 and which despite the statues1 pictures1 poems1 and symphonies within its narrow compass1 is yet so far from dignified or beautiful8 ,but we need not trouble about dignity and beauty coming to our life so long as we veritably and thoroughly live2 that is to say1 so long as we try not to put anything into our life1 but to put our life into the life universal4 ,the true1 expanding1 multiplying life of the spirit will bring us in contact1 we need not fear1 with beauty and dignity enough1 for there is plenty such in creation1 in things around us1 and in other people's souls2 nay1 if we but live to our utmost power the life of all things and all men1 seeing1 feeling1 understanding for the mere joy thereof1 even our individual life will be invested with dignity and beauty in our own eyes4 ,but furniture will not do it1 nor dress1 nor exquisite household appointments2 nor any of the things1 books1 pictures1 houses1 parks1 of which we can call ourselves owners4 ,i say call ourselves3 for can we be sure we really possess them8 ,and thus1 if we think only of our life1 and the decking thereof1 it is only furniture1 garments1 and household appointments we can deal with2 for beauty and dignity cannot be confined in so narrow a compass4 ,,vii4 ,i have spoken so far of the conscious habit of harmony1 and of its conscious effect upon our conduct4 ,i have tried to show that the desire for congruity1 which may seem so trivial a part of mere dilettanteist superfineness1 may expand and develop into such love of harmony between ourselves and the ways of the universe as shall make us wince at other folks' loss united to our gain1 at our deterioration united to our pleasure1 even as we wince at a false note or a discordant arrangement of colours4 ,but there is something more important than conscious choice1 and something more tremendous than definite conduct1 because conscious choice and conduct are but its separate and plainly visible results4 ,i mean unconscious way of feeling and organic way of living3 that which1 in the language of old-fashioned medicine1 we might call the complexion or habit of the soul4 ,this is undoubtedly affected by conscious knowledge and reason1 as it undoubtedly manifests itself in both4 ,but it is1 ,i believe1 much more what we might call a permanent emotional condition1 a particular way of feeling1 of reacting towards the impressions given us by the universe4 ,and ,i believe that the individual is sound1 that he is capable of being happy while increasing the happiness of others1 or the reverse1 according as he reacts harmoniously or inharmoniously towards those universal impressions4 ,and here comes in what seems to me the highest benefit we can receive from art and from the sthetic activities1 which1 as ,i have said before1 are in art merely specialised and made publicly manifest4 ,,viii4 ,the habit of beauty1 of harmony1 is but the habit1 engrained in our nature by the unnoticed experiences of centuries1 of life in our surroundings and in ourselves2 the habit of beauty is the habit1 ,i believe scientific analysis of nature's ways and means will show us--of the growing of trees1 the flowing of water1 the perfect play of perfect muscles1 all registered unconsciously in the very structure of our soul4 ,and for this reason every time we experience afresh the particular emotion associated with the quality beautiful1 we are adding to that rhythm of life within ourselves by recognising the life of all things4 ,there is not room within us for two conflicting waves of emotion1 for two conflicting rhythms of life1 one sane and one unsound4 ,the two may possibly alternate1 but in most cases the weaker will be neutralised by the stronger2 and1 at all events1 they cannot co-exist4 ,we can account1 only in this manner1 for the indisputable fact that great emotion of a really and purely sthetic nature has a morally elevating quality1 that as long as it endures--and in finer organisations its effect is never entirely lost--the soul is more clean and vigorous1 more fit for high thoughts and high decisions4 ,all understanding1 in the wider and more philosophical sense1 is but a kind of becoming3 our soul experiences the modes of being which it apprehends4 ,hence the particular religious quality 7all faiths and rituals taking advantage thereof7 of a high and complex sthetic emotion4 ,whenever we come in contact with real beauty1 we become aware1 in an unformulated but overwhelming manner1 of some of the immense harmonies of which all beauty is the product1 of which all separate beautiful things are1 so to speak1 the single patterns happening to be in our line of vision1 while all around other patterns connect with them1 meshes and meshes of harmonies1 spread out1 outside our narrow field of momentary vision1 an endless web1 like the constellations which1 strung on their threads of mutual dependence1 cover and fill up infinitude4 ,in the moments of such emotional perception1 our soul also1 ourselves1 become in a higher degree organic1 alive1 receiving and giving out the life of the universe2 come to be woven into the patterns of harmonies1 made of the stuff of reality1 homogeneous with themselves1 consubstantial with the universe1 like the living plant1 the flowing stream1 the flying cloud1 the great picture or statue4 ,and in this way is realised1 momentarily1 but with ever-increasing power of repetition1 that which1 after the teaching of ,diotima1 ,socrates prayed for--the harmony between the outer and the inner man4 ,but this1 ,i know1 many will say1 is but a delusion4 ,rapture is pleasant1 but it is not necessarily1 as the men of the ,middle ,ages thought1 a union with ,god4 ,and is this the time to revive1 or seek to revive1 when science is for ever pressing upon us the conclusion that soul is a function of matter--is this the time to revive discredited optimistic idealisms of an unscientific philosophy8 ,but if science become omniscient1 it will surely recognise and explain the value of such recurring optimistic idealisms2 and if the soul be a function of matter1 will not science recognise but the more1 that the soul is an integral and vitally dependent portion of the material universe8 ,,ix4 ,be this as it may1 one thing seems certain1 that the artistic activities are those which bring man into emotional communion with external nature2 and that such emotional communion is necessary for man's thorough spiritual health4 ,perception of cause and effect1 generalisation of law1 reduces the universe indeed to what man's intellect can grasp2 but in the process of such reduction to the laws of man's thought1 the universe is shorn of its very power to move man's emotion and overwhelm his soul4 ,the abstract which we have made does not vivify us sufficiently4 ,and the emotional communion of man with nature is through those various faculties which we call sthetic4 ,it is not to no purpose that poetry has for ever talked to us of skies and mountains and waters2 we require1 for our soul's health1 to think about them otherwise than with reference to our material comfort and discomfort2 we require to feel that they and ourselves are brethren united by one great law of life4 ,and what poetry suggests in explicit words1 bidding us love and be united in love to external nature2 art1 in more irresistible because more instinctive manner1 forces upon our feelings1 by extracting1 according to its various kinds1 the various vital qualities of the universe1 and making them act directly upon our mind3 rhythms of all sorts1 static and dynamic1 in the spatial arts of painting and sculpture2 in the half spatial1 half temporal art of architecture3 in music1 which is most akin to life1 because it is the art of movement and change4 ,x4 ,we can all remember moments when we have seemed conscious1 even to overwhelming1 of this fact4 ,in my own mind it has become indissolubly connected with a certain morning at ,venice1 listening to the organ in ,st4 ,mark's4 ,any old and beautiful church gives us all that is most moving and noblest--organism1 beauty1 absence of all things momentary and worthless1 exclusion of grossness1 of brute utility and mean compromise1 equality of all men before ,god2 moreover1 time1 eternity1 the past1 and the great dead4 ,all noble churches give us this2 how much more1 therefore1 this one1 which is noblest and most venerable6 ,it has1 like no other building1 been handed over by man to ,nature2 ,time moulding and tinting into life this structure already so organic1 so fit to live4 ,for its curves and vaultings1 its cupolas mutually supported1 the weight of each carried by all2 the very colour of the marbles1 brown1 blond1 living colours1 and the irregular symmetry1 flower-like1 of their natural patterning1 are all seemingly organic and ready for life4 ,time has added that1 with the polish and dimming alternately of the marbles1 the billowing of the pavement1 the slanting of the columns1 and last1 but not least1 the tarnishing of the gold and the granulating of the mosaic into an uneven surface3 the gold seeming to have become alive and in a way vegetable1 and to have faded and shrunk like autumn leaves4 ,,xi4 ,the morning ,i speak of they were singing some fugued composition by ,i know not whom4 ,how well that music suited ,st4 ,mark's6 ,the constant interchange of vault and vault1 cupola and cupola1 column and column1 handing on their energies to one another2 the springing up of new details gathered at once into the great general balance of lines and forces2 all this seemed to find its natural voice in that fugue1 to express1 in that continuous revolution of theme chasing1 enveloping theme1 its own grave emotion of life everlasting3 ,being1 becoming2 becoming1 being4 ,,xii4 ,it is such an alternation as this1 ceaseless1 rhythmic1 which constitutes the upward life of the soul3 that life of which the wise woman of ,mantineia told ,socrates that it might be learned through faithful and strenuous search for ever widening kinds of beauty1 the life above all1 in the words of ,diotima1 which a man should live4 ,the life which vibrates for ever between being better and conceiving of something better still2 between satisfaction in harmony and craving for it4 ,the life whose rhythm is that of happiness actual and happiness ideal1 alternating for ever1 for ever pressing one another into being1 as the parts of a fugue1 the dominant and the tonic4 ,being1 becoming2 becoming1 being2 idealising1 realising2 realising1 idealising4 ,,beauty ,,and ,,sanity4 ,i4 ,out of ,london at last2 at last1 though after only two months6 ,not1 indeed1 within a walk of my clump of bay-trees on the ,fiesole hill2 but in a country which has some of that ,tuscan grace and serene austerity1 with its ,tweed1 clear and rapid in the wide shingly bed1 with its volcanic cones of the ,eildons1 pale and distinct in the distance3 river and hills which remind me of the valley where the bay-trees grow1 and bring to my mind all that which the bay-trees stand for4 ,there is always something peculiar in these first hours of finding myself once more alone1 once more quite close to external things2 the human jostling over1 an end1 a truce at least1 to all the neighbours' talk with man and maid--such men--all the fuss and trouble of street sounds1 window-sights 7how he knew these things1 the poet672 once more in communion with the things which somehow--nibbled grass and stone-tossed water1 yellow ragwort in the fields1 blue cranesbill along the road1 big ash-trees along the river1 sheep1 birds1 sunshine1 and showers--somehow contrive to keep themselves in health1 to live1 grow1 decline1 die1 be born again1 without making a mess or creating a fuss4 ,the air1 under the grey sky1 is cool1 even cold1 with infinite briskness4 ,and this impression of briskness1 by no means excluded by the sense of utter isolation and repose1 is greatly increased by a special charm of this place1 the quantity of birds to listen to and watch2 great blackening flights of rooks from the woods along the watercourses and sheltered hillsides 7for only solitary ashes and wind-vexed beeches will grow in the open72 peewits alighting with squeals in the fields2 blackbirds and thrushes in the thick coverts 7,i found a poor dead thrush with a speckled chest like a toad1 laid out among the beech-nuts72 wagtails on the shingle1 whirling over the water1 where the big trout and salmon leap2 every sort of swallow2 pigeons crossing from wood to wood2 wild duck rattling up1 and seagulls circling above the stream2 nay1 two herons1 standing immovable1 heraldic1 on the grass among the sheep4 ,in such moments1 with that briskness transferred into my feelings1 life seems so rich and various4 ,all pleasant memories come to my mind like tunes1 and with real tunes among them 7making one realise that the greatest charm of music is often when no longer materially audible74 ,pictures also of distant places1 tones of voice1 glance of eyes of dear friends1 visions of pictures and statues1 and scraps of poems and history4 ,more seems not merely to be brought to me1 but more to exist1 wherewith to unite it all1 within myself4 ,such moments1 such modes of being1 ought to be precious to us2 they and every impression1 physical1 moral1 sthetic1 which is akin to them1 and we should recognise their moral worth4 ,since it would seem that even mere bodily sensations1 of pure air1 bracing temperature1 vigor of muscles1 efficiency of viscera1 accustom us not merely to health of our body1 but also1 by the analogies of our inner workings1 to health of our soul4 ,,ii4 ,how delicate an organism1 how alive with all life's dangers1 is the human character2 and how persistently do we consider it as the thing of all others most easily forced into any sort of position1 most safely handled in ignorance6 ,surely some of the misery1 much of the waste and deadlock of the world are due to our all being made of such obscure1 unguessed at material2 to our not knowing it betimes1 and others not admitting it even late in the day4 ,when1 for instance1 shall we recognise that the bulk of our psychic life is unconscious or semi-unconscious1 the life of long-organised and automatic functions2 and that1 while it is absurd to oppose to these the more recent1 unaccustomed and fluctuating activity called reason1 this same reason1 this conscious portion of ourselves1 may be usefully employed in understanding those powers of nature 7powers of chaos sometimes7 within us1 and in providing that these should turn the wheel of life in the right direction1 even like those other powers of nature outside us1 which reason cannot repress or alter1 but can understand and put to profit4 ,instead of this1 we are ushered into life thinking ourselves thoroughly conscious throughout1 conscious beings of a definite and stereotyped pattern2 and we are set to do things we do not understand with mechanisms which we have never even been shown3 ,told to be good1 not knowing why1 and still less guessing how6 ,some folk will answer that life itself settles all that1 with its jostle and bustle4 ,doubtless4 ,but in how wasteful1 destructive1 unintelligent1 and cruel a fashion6 ,should we be satisfied with this kind of surgery1 which cures an ache by random chopping off a limb2 with this elementary teaching1 which saves our body from the fire by burning our fingers8 ,surely not2 we are worth more care on our own part4 ,the recognition of this1 and more especially of the manner in which we may be damaged by dangers we have never thought of as dangers1 our souls undermined and made boggy by emotions not yet classified1 brings home to me again the general wholesomeness of art2 and also the fact that1 wholesome as art is1 in general1 and1 compared with the less abstract activities of our nature1 there are yet differences in art's wholesomeness1 there are categories of art which can do only good1 and others which may also do mischief4 ,art1 in so far as it moves our fancies and emotions1 as it builds up our preferences and repulsions1 as it disintegrates or restores our vitality1 is merely another of the great forces of nature1 and we require to select among its activities as we select among the activities of any other natural force4444 ,when1 ,i wonder1 ,i wonder1 will the forces within us be recognised as natural1 in the same sense as those without2 and our souls as part of the universe1 prospering or suffering1 according to which of its rhythms they vibrate to3 the larger rhythm1 which is for ever increasing1 and which means happiness2 the smaller1 for ever slackening1 which means misery8 ,,iii4 ,but since life has got two rhythms1 why should art have only one8 ,our poor mankind by no means always feel braced1 serene1 and energetic2 and we are far from necessarily keeping step with the movements of the universe which imply happiness4 ,let alone the fact of wretched circumstances beyond our control1 of natural decay and death1 and loss of our nearest and dearest2 the universe has made it excessively difficult1 nay1 impossible1 for us to follow constantly its calm behest1 ,be as healthy as possible4 ,it is all very fine to say be healthy4 ,of course we should be willing enough4 ,but it must be admitted that the ,powers ,that ,be have not troubled about making it easy4 ,be healthy indeed6 ,when health is so nicely balanced that it is at the mercy of a myriad of microscopic germs1 of every infinitesimal increase of cold or heat1 or damp or dryness1 of alternations of work and play1 oscillation of want and excess incalculably small1 any of which may disturb the beautiful needle-point balance and topple us over into disease4 ,such ,job's comforting is one of the many sledge-hammer ironies with which the ,cosmos diverts itself at our expense2 and of course the ,cosmos may permit itself what it likes1 and none of us can complain4 ,but is it possible for one of ourselves1 a poor1 sick1 hustled human being1 to take up the jest of the absentee gods of ,lucretius1 and say to his fellow-men3 ,believe me1 you would do much better to be quite healthy1 and quite happy8 ,and1 as art is one of mankind's modes of expressing itself1 why in the world should we expect it to be the expression only of mankind's health and happiness8 ,even admitting that the very existence of the race proves that the healthy and happy states of living must on the whole preponderate 7a matter which can1 after all1 not be proved so easily71 even admitting that1 why should mankind be allowed artistic emotions only at those moments1 and requested not to express itself or feel artistically during the others8 ,bay-trees are delightful things1 no doubt1 and we are all very fond of them off and on4 ,but why must we pretend to enjoy them when we don't2 why must we hide the fact that they sometimes irritate or bore us1 and that every now and then we very much prefer--well1 weeping-willows1 upas-trees1 and all the livid or phosphorescent eccentricities of the various fleurs du mal8 ,is it not stupid thus to blink and shut our apprehension up8 ,nay1 worse1 is it not positively heartless1 brutal8 ,,iv4 ,this argument1 ,i confess1 invariably delights and humiliates me3 it is so full of sympathy for all sorts and conditions of men1 and so appreciative of what is and what is not4 ,it is so very human and humane4 ,there is in it a sort of quite gentle and dignified ,prometheus ,vinctus attitude towards the ,powers ,that ,be2 and ,zeus1 with his thunderbolts and chains1 looks very much like a brute by contrast4 ,but what is to be done8 ,zeus exists with his chains and thunderbolts1 and all the minor immortals1 lying down1 colossal1 dim1 like mountains at night1 at ,schiller's golden tables1 each with his fine attribute1 olive-tree1 horse1 lyre1 sun and what not1 by his side2 also his own particular scourge1 plague1 dragon1 wild boar1 or sea monster1 ready to administer to recalcitrant1 insufficiently pious man4 ,and the gods have it their own way1 call them what you will1 children of ,chaos or children of ,time1 dynasty succeeding dynasty1 but only for the same old gifts and same old scourges to be handed on from one to the other4 ,in more prosaic terms1 we cannot get loose of nature1 the nature of ourselves2 we cannot get rid of the fact that certain courses1 certain habits1 certain preferences are to our advantage1 and certain others to our detriment4 ,and therefore1 to return to art1 and to the various imaginative and emotional activities which ,i am obliged to label by that very insufficient name1 we cannot get rid of the fact that1 however much certain sorts of art are the natural expression of certain recurring and common states of being2 however much certain preferences correspond to certain temperaments or conditions1 we must nevertheless put them aside as much as possible1 and give our attention to the opposite sorts of art and the opposite sorts of preference1 for the simple reason that the first make us less fit for life and less happy in the long run1 while the second make us more fit and happier4 ,it is a question not of what we are1 but of what we shall be4 ,v4 ,a distinguished scientific psychologist1 who is also a psychologist in the unscientific sense1 and who writes of ,intellect and ,will less in the spirit 7and1 thank heaven1 less in the style7 of ,mr4 ,spencer than in that of ,monsieur de ,montaigne1 has objected to music 7and1 ,i presume1 in less degree to other art7 that it runs the risk of enfeebling the character by stimulating emotions without affording them a corresponding outlet in activity4 ,i agree 7as will be seen farther on7 that music more particularly may have an unwholesome influence1 but not for the reason assigned by ,professor ,james1 who seems to me to mistake the nature and functions of artistic emotion4 ,i doubt very much whether any non-literary art1 whether even music has the power1 in the modern man1 of stimulating tendencies to action4 ,it may have had in the savage1 and may still have in the civilised child2 but in the ordinary1 cultivated grown-up person1 the excitement produced by any artistic sight1 sound1 or idea will most probably be used up in bringing to life again some of the many millions of sights1 sounds1 and ideas which lie inert1 stored up in our mind4 ,the artistic emotion will therefore not give rise to an active impulse1 but to that vague mixture of feelings and ideas which we call a mood2 and if any alteration occur in subsequent action1 it will be because all external impressions must vary according to the mood of the person who receives them1 and consequently undergo a certain selection1 some being allowed to dominate and lead to action1 while others pass unnoticed1 are neutralised or dismissed4 ,more briefly1 it seems to me that artistic emotion is of practical importance1 not because it discharges itself in action1 but1 on the contrary1 because it produces a purely internal rearrangement of our thoughts and feelings2 because1 in short1 it helps to form concatenations of preferences1 habits of being4 ,whether or not ,mr4 ,herbert ,spencer be correct in deducing all artistic activities from our primval instincts of play1 it seems to me certain that these artistic activities have for us adults much the same importance as the play activities have for a child4 ,they represent the only perfectly free exercise1 and therefore1 free development1 of our preferences4 ,now1 everyone will admit1 ,i suppose1 that it is extremely undesirable that a child should amuse itself acquiring unwholesome preferences and evil habits1 indulging in moods which will make it or its neighbours less comfortable out of play-time8 ,mind1 ,i do not for a moment pretend that art is to become the conscious instrument of morals1 any more than 7,heaven forbid67 play should become the conscious preparation of infant virtue4 ,all ,i contend is that if some kinds of infant amusement result in damage1 we suppress them as a nuisance2 and that1 if some kinds of art disorganise the soul1 the less we have of them the better4 ,moreover1 the grown-up human being is so constituted1 is so full of fine connections and analogies throughout his nature1 that1 while the sense of emulation and gain lends such additional zest to his amusements1 the sense of increasing spiritual health and power1 wherever it exists1 magnifies almost incredibly the pleasure derivable from beautiful impressions4 ,,vi4 ,the persons who maintained just now 7and who does not feel a hard-hearted ,philistine for gainsaying them87 that we have no right to ostracise1 still less to stone1 unwholesome kinds of art1 make much of the fact that1 as we are told in church1 ,we have no health in us4 ,but it is the recognition of this lack of health which hardens my heart to unwholesome persons and things4 ,if we must be wary of what moods and preferences we foster in ourselves1 it is because so few of us are congenitally sound--perhaps none without some organic weakness2 and because1 even letting soundness alone1 very few of us lead lives that are not1 in one respect or another1 strained or starved or cramped4 ,gods and archangels might certainly indulge exclusively in the literature and art for which ,baudelaire may stand in this discussion4 ,but gods and archangels require neither filters nor disinfectants1 and may slake their thirst in the veriest decoction of typhoid4 ,,vii4 ,the ,greeks1 who were a fortunate mixture of ,conservatives and ,anarchists1 averred that the desire for the impossible 7,i do not quote1 for1 alas6 ,i should not understand the quotation7 is a disease of the soul4 ,it is not1 ,i think1 the desire for the impossible 7since few can tell what seems impossible1 and fewer care for what indubitably is so7 so much as the desire for the topsy-turvy4 ,baudelaire1 who admired persons thus afflicted1 has a fine line3 ,de la ralit grands esprits contempteurs2 but what they despised was not the real1 but the usual4 ,now the usual1 of the sort thus despised1 happens to represent the necessities of our organisms and of that wider organism which we call circumstances4 ,we may modify it1 always in the direction in which it tends spontaneously to evolve2 but we cannot subvert it4 ,you might as well try to subvert gravitation3 ,je m'en suis aperu tant par terre1 is the only result1 as in ,molire's lesson of physics4 ,,viii4 ,also1 when you come to think of it1 there is nothing showing a finer organisation in the incapacity for finding sugar sweet and vinegar sour4 ,the only difference is that1 as sugar happens to be sweet and vinegar sour1 an organisation which perceives the reverse is at sixes and sevens with the universe1 or a bit of the universe2 and1 exactly to the extent to which this six-and-sevenness prevails1 is likely to be mulcted of some of the universe's good things4 ,how may ,i bring this home1 without introducing a sickly atmosphere of decadent art and literature into my valley of the bay-trees8 ,and yet1 an instance is needed4 ,well2 there is an old story1 originating perhaps in ,suetonius1 handed on by ,edgar ,poe1 and repeated1 with variations1 by various modern ,french writers1 of sundry persons who1 among other realities1 despise the fact that sheets and table-linen are usually white2 and show the subtlety of their organisation 7the ,emperor ,tiberius1 a very subtle person1 was one of the earliest to apply the notion7 by taking their sleep and food in an arrangement of black materials2 a sort of mourning warehouse of beds and dining-tables4 ,now this means simply that these people have bought distinction at the price of one of mankind's most delightful birthrights1 the pleasure in white1 the queen1 as ,leonardo put it1 of all colours4 ,our minds1 our very sensations are interwoven so intricately of all manner of impressions and associations1 that it is no allegory to say that white is good1 and that the love of white is akin somehow to the love of virtue4 ,for the love of white has come to mean1 thanks to the practice of all centuries and to the very structure of our nerves1 strength1 cleanness1 and newness of sensation1 capacity for re-enjoying the already enjoyed1 for preferring the already preferred1 for discovering new interest and pleasureableness in old things1 instead of running to new ones1 as one does when not the old ones are exhausted1 but one's own poor vigour4 ,the love of white means1 furthermore1 the appreciation of certain circumstances1 delightful and valuable in themselves1 without which whiteness cannot be present3 in human beings1 good health and youth and fairness of life2 in houses 7oh6 the white houses of ,cadiz1 white between the blue sky and blue sea671 excellence of climate1 warmth1 dryness and clearness of air2 and in all manner of household goods and stuff1 care1 order1 daintiness of habits1 leisure and affluence4 ,all things these which1 quite as much as any peculiarity of optic function1 give for the healthy mind a sort of restfulness1 of calm1 of virtue1 and ,i might almost say1 of regal or priestly quality to white2 a quality which suits it to the act of restoring our bodies with food and wine1 above all1 to the act of spiritual purification1 the passing through the cool1 colourless1 stainless1 which constitutes true sleep4 ,all this the ,emperor ,tiberius and his imitators forego with their bogey black sheets and table-cloths4444 ,,ix4 ,but what if we do not care for white8 ,what if we are so constituted that its insipidity sickens us as much as the most poisonous and putrescent colours which ,blake ever mixed to paint hell and sin8 ,nay1 if those grumous and speckly viscosities of evil green1 orange1 poppy purple1 and nameless hues1 are the only things which give us any pleasure8 ,is it a reason1 because you arcadian ,optimists of ,evolution extract1 or imagine you extract1 some feeble satisfaction out of white1 that we should pretend to enjoy it1 and the ,antique and ,outdoor ,nature1 and ,early ,painters1 and ,mozart and ,gluck1 and all the whitenesses physical and moral8 ,you say we are abnormal1 unwholesome1 decaying2 very good1 then why should we not get pleasure in decaying1 unwholesome1 and abnormal things8 ,we are like the poison-monger's daughter in ,nathaniel ,hawthorne's story4 ,other people's poison is our meat1 and we should be killed by an antidote2 that is to say1 bored to death1 which1 in our opinion1 is very much worse4 ,to this kind of speech1 common since the romantic and pre-,raphaelite movement1 and getting commoner with the spread of theories of intellectual anarchy and nervous degeneracy1 one is often tempted to answer impatiently1 ,get out of the way1 you wretched young people2 don't you see that there isn't room or time for your posing8 ,but unfortunately it is not all pose4 ,there are a certain number of people who really are bored with white2 for whom1 as a result of constitutional morbidness1 of nervous exhaustion1 or of that very disintegration of soul due to unwholesome sthetic self-indulgence1 to the constant quest for violent artistic emotion1 our soul's best food has really become unpalatable and almost nauseous4 ,these people cannot live without spiritual opium or alcohol1 although that opium or alcohol is killing them by inches4 ,it is absurd to be impatient with them4 ,all one can do is to let them go in peace to their undoing1 and hope that their example will be rather a warning than a model to others4 ,x4 ,but1 letting alone the possibility of art acting as a poison for the soul1 there remains an important question4 ,as ,i said1 although art is one of the most wholesome of our soul's activities1 there are yet kinds of art1 or 7since it is a subjective question of profit or damage to ourselves7 rather kinds of artistic effect1 which1 for some evident reason1 or through some obscure analogy or hidden point of contact awaken those movements of the fancy1 those states of the emotions which disintegrate rather than renew the soul1 and accustom us rather to the yielding and proneness which we shun1 than to the resistance and elasticity which we seek throughout life to increase4 ,i was listening1 last night1 to some very wonderful singing of modern ,german songs2 and the emotion that still remains faintly within me alongside of the traces of those languishing phrases and passionate intonations1 the remembrance of the sense of--how shall ,i call it8--violation of the privacy of the human soul which haunted me throughout that performance1 has brought home to me1 for the hundredth time1 that the ,greek legislators were not so fantastic in considering music a questionable art1 which they thought twice before admitting into their ideal commonwealths4 ,for music can do more by our emotions than the other arts1 and it can1 therefore1 separate itself from them and their holy ways2 it can1 in a measure1 actually undo the good they do to our soul4 ,but1 you may object1 poetry does the very same2 it also expresses1 strengthens1 brings home our human1 momentary1 individual emotions1 instead of uniting with the arts of visible form1 with the harmonious things of nature1 to create for us another kind of emotion1 the emotion of the eternal1 unindividual1 universal life1 in whose contemplation our souls are healed and made whole after the disintegration inflicted by what is personal and fleeting4 ,it is true that much poetry expresses merely such personal and momentary emotion2 but it does so through a mechanism differing from that of music1 and possessing a saving grace which the emotion-compelling mechanism of music does not4 ,for by the very nature of the spoken or written word1 by the word's strictly intellectual concomitants1 poetry1 even while rousing emotion1 brings into play what is most different to emotion1 emotion's sifter and chastener1 the great force which reduces all things to abstraction1 to the eternal and typical3 reason4 ,you cannot express in words1 even the most purely instinctive1 half-conscious feeling1 without placing that dumb and blind emotion in the lucid1 balanced relations which thought has given to words2 indeed1 words rarely1 if ever1 reproduce emotion as it is1 but instead1 emotion as it is instinctively conceived1 in its setting of cause and effect4 ,hence there is in all poetry a certain reasonable element which1 even in the heyday of passion1 makes us superior to passion by explaining its why and wherefore2 and even when the poet succeeds in putting us in the place of him who feels1 we enter only into one-half of his personality1 the half which contemplates while the other suffers3 we know the feeling1 rather than feel it4 ,now1 it is different with music4 ,its relations to our nerves are such that it can reproduce emotion1 or1 at all events1 emotional moods1 directly and without any intellectual manipulation4 ,we weep1 but know not why4 ,its specifically artistic emotion1 the power it shares with all other arts of raising our state of consciousness to something more complete1 more vast1 and more permanent--the specific musical emotion of music can become subservient to the mere awakening of our latent emotional possibilities1 to the stimulating of emotions often undesirable in themselves1 and always unable1 at the moment1 to find their legitimate channel1 whence enervation and perhaps degradation of the soul4 ,there are kinds of music which add the immense charm1 the subduing1 victorious quality of art1 to the power of mere emotion as such2 and in these cases we are pushed1 by the delightfulness of beauty and wonder1 by the fascination of what is finer than ourselves1 into deeper consciousness of our innermost1 primval1 chaotic self3 the stuff in which soul has not yet dawned4 ,we are made to enjoy what we should otherwise dread2 and the dignity of beauty1 and beauty's frankness and fearlessness1 are lent to things such as we regard1 under other circumstances1 as too intimate1 too fleeting1 too obscure1 too unconscious1 to be treated1 in ourselves and our neighbours1 otherwise than with decorous reserve4 ,it is astonishing1 when one realises it1 that the charm of music1 the good renown it has gained in its more healthful and more decorous days1 can make us sit out what we do sit out under its influence3 violations of our innermost secrets1 revelations of the hidden possibilities of our own nature and the nature of others2 stripping away of all the soul's veils2 nay1 so to speak1 melting away of the soul's outward forms1 melting away of the soul's active structure1 its bone and muscle1 till there is revealed only the shapeless primval nudity of confused instincts1 the soul's vague viscera4 ,when music does this1 it reverts1 ,i think1 towards being the nuisance which1 before it had acquired the possibilities of form and beauty it now tends to despise1 it was felt to be by ancient philosophers and law-givers4 ,at any rate1 it sells its artistic birthright4 ,it renounces its possibility of constituting1 with the other great arts1 a sort of supplementary contemplated nature2 an element wherein to buoy up and steady those fluctuations which we express in speech2 a vast emotional serenity1 an abstract universe in which our small and fleeting emotions can be transmuted1 and wherein they can lose themselves in peacefulness and strength4 ,,xi4 ,i mentioned this one day to my friend the composer4 ,his answer is partly what ,i was prepared for3 this emotionally disintegrating element ceases to exist1 or continues to exist only in the very slightest degree1 for the real musician4 ,the effect on the nerves is overlooked1 neutralised1 in the activity of the intellect2 much as the emotional effect of the written word is sent into the background by the perception of cause and effect which the logical associations of the word produce4 ,for the composer1 even for the performer1 says my friend1 music has a logic of its own1 so strong and subtle as to overpower every other consideration4 ,but music is not merely for musicians2 the vast majority will always receive it not actively through the intellect1 but passively through the nerves2 the mood will1 therefore1 be induced before1 so to speak1 the image1 the musical structure1 is really appreciated4 ,and1 meanwhile1 the soul is being made into a sop4 ,for the moment1 answers my composer1 perhaps2 but only for the moment4 ,once the nerves accustomed to those modulations and rhythms2 once the form perceived by the mind1 the emotional associations will vanish2 the hearer will have become what the musician originally was4444 ,how do you know that1 in its heyday1 all music may not have affected people as ,wagner's music affects them nowadays8 ,what proof have you got that the strains of ,mozart and ,gluck1 nay1 those of ,palestrina1 which fill our soul with serenity1 may not have been full of stress and trouble when they first were heard2 may not have laid bare the chaotic elements of our nature1 brought to the surface its primval instincts8 ,historically1 all you know is that ,gluck's ,orpheus made our ancestors weep2 and that ,wagner's ,tristram makes our contemporaries sob4444 ,this is the musician's defence4 ,does it free his art from my rather miserable imputation8 ,i think not4 ,if all this be true1 if ,orpheus has been what ,tristram is1 all one can say is the more's the pity4 ,if it be true1 all music would require the chastening influence of time1 and its spiritual value would be akin to that of the ,past and ,distant2 it would be innocuous1 because it had lost half of its vitality4 ,we should have to lay down music1 like wine1 for the future2 poisoning ourselves with the acrid fumes of its must1 the heady1 enervating scent of scum and purpled vat1 in order that our children might drink vigour and warmth after we were dead4 ,,xii4 ,but ,i doubt very much whether this is true4 ,it is possible that the music of ,wagner may eventually become serene like the music of ,handel2 but was the music of ,handel ever morbid like the music of ,wagner8 ,i do not base my belief on any preference from ,handel's contemporaries4 ,we may1 as we are constantly being told1 be degenerates2 but there was no special grace whence to degenerate in our perruked forefathers4 ,moreover1 ,i believe that any very spontaneous art is to a very small degree the product of one or even two or three generations of men4 ,it has been growing to be what it is for centuries and centuries4 ,its germ and its necessities of organism and development lie far1 far back in the soul's world-history2 and it is but later1 if at all1 when the organic growth is at an end1 that times and individuals can fashion it in their paltry passing image4 ,no2 we may be as strong and as pure as ,handel's audiences1 and our music yet be less strong and pure than theirs4 ,my reason for believing in a fundamental emotional difference between that music and ours is of another sort4 ,i think that in art1 as in all other things1 the simpler1 more normal interest comes first1 and the more complex1 less normal1 follows when the simple and normal has become1 through familiarity1 the insipid4 ,while pleasure unspiced by pain is still a novelty there is no reason thus to spice it4 ,,xiii4 ,the question can1 however1 be tolerably settled by turning over the means which enable music to awaken emotion--emotion which we recognise as human1 as distinguished from the mere emotion of pleasure attached to all beautiful sights and sounds4 ,once we have understood what these means are1 we can enquire to what extent they are employed in the music of various schools and epochs1 and thus judge1 with some chance of likelihood1 whether the music which strikes us as serene and vigorous could have affected our ancestors as turbid and enervating4 ',tis a dull enough psychological examination2 but one worth making1 not merely for the sake of music itself1 but because music1 being the most emotional of all the arts1 can serve to typify the good or mischief which all art may do1 according to which of our emotions it fosters4 99 99 99 99 99 ',tis repeating a fact in different words1 not stating anything new1 to say that all beautiful things awaken a specific sort of emotion1 the emotion or the mood of the beautiful4 ,yet this statement1 equivalent to saying that hot objects give us the sensation of heat1 and wet objects the sensation of wetness1 is well worth repeating1 because we so often forget that the fact of beauty in anything is merely the fact of that thing setting up in ourselves a very specific feeling4 99 99 99 99 99 ,now1 besides this beauty or quality producing the emotion of the beautiful1 there exist in things a lot of other qualities also producing emotion1 each according to its kind2 or rather1 the beautiful thing may also be qualified in some other way1 as the thing which is useful1 useless1 old1 young1 common1 rare1 or whatever you choose4 ,and this coincidence of qualities produces a coincidence of states of mind4 ,we shall experience the feeling not merely of beauty because the thing is beautiful1 but also of surprise because it is startling1 of familiarity because we meet it often1 of attraction 7independently of beauty7 because the thing suits or benefits us1 or of repulsion 7despite the beauty7 because the thing has done us a bad turn or might do us one4 ,this is saying that beauty is only one of various relations possible between something not ourselves and our feelings1 and that it is probable that other relations between them may exist at the same moment1 in the same way that a woman may be a man's wife1 but also his cousin1 his countrywoman1 his school-board representative1 his landlady1 and his teacher of ,latin1 without one qualification precluding the others4 ,now1 in the arts of line1 colour1 and projection1 the arts which usually copy the appearance of objects existing outside the art1 these other qualities1 these other relations between ourselves and the object which exists in the relation of beauty1 are largely a matter of superficial association--,i mean1 of association which may vary1 and of which we are most often conscious4 ,we are reminded by the picture or statue of qualities which do not exist in it1 but in its prototype in reality4 ,a certain face will awaken disgust when seen in a picture1 or reverence or amusement1 besides the specific impression of beauty 7or its reverse71 because we have experienced disgust1 awe1 amusement in connection with a similar face outside the picture4 ,so far1 therefore1 as art is imitative1 its non-artistic emotional capacities are due 7with a very few exceptions7 to association2 for the feelings traceable directly to fatigue or disintegration of the perceptive faculty usually1 indeed almost always1 prevent the object from affecting us as beautiful4 ,it is quite otherwise when we come to music4 ,here the coincidence of other emotion resides1 ,i believe1 not in the musical thing itself1 not in the musician's creation without prototype in reality1 resembling nothing save other musical structures2 the coincidence resides in the elements out of which that structure is made1 and which1 for all its complexities1 are still very strongly perceived by our senses4 ,for instance1 certain rhythms existing in music are identical with1 or analogous to1 the rhythm of our bodily movements under varying circumstances3 we know alternations of long and short1 variously composed regularities and irregularities of movement1 fluctuations1 reinforcements or subsidences1 from experience other than that of music2 we know them in connection with walking1 jumping1 dragging2 with beating of heart and arteries1 expansion of throat and lungs2 we knew them1 long before music was1 as connected with energy or oppression1 sickness or health1 elation or depression1 grief1 fear1 horror1 or serenity and happiness4 ,and when they become elements of a musical structure their associations come along with them4 ,and these associations are the more powerful that1 while they are rudimentary1 familiar like our own being1 perhaps even racial1 the musical structure into which they enter is complete1 individual1 new3 'tis comparing the efficacy of1 say1 ,mozart ,op4 ,so-and-so1 with the efficacy of somebody sobbing or dancing in our presence4 ,so far for the associational power of music in awakening emotions4 ,but music has another source of such power over us4 ,existing as it does in a sequence1 it is able to give sensations which the arts dealing with space1 and not with time1 could not allow themselves1 since for them a disagreeable effect could never prelude an agreeable one1 but merely co-exist with it2 whereas for music a disagreeable effect is effaceable by an agreeable one1 and will even considerably heighten the latter by being made to precede it4 ,now we not merely associate fatigue or pain with any difficult perception1 we actually feel it2 we are aware of real discomfort whenever our senses and attention are kept too long on the stretch1 or are stimulated too sharply by something unexpected4 ,in these cases we are conscious of something which is exhausting1 overpowering1 unendurable if it lasted3 experiences which are but too familiar in matters not musical1 and1 therefore1 evoke the remembrance of such non-musical discomfort1 which reacts to increase the discomfort produced by the music2 the reverse taking place1 a sense of freedom1 of efficiency1 of strength arising in us whenever the object of perception can be easily1 though energetically1 perceived4 ,hence intervals which the ear has difficulty in following1 dissonances to which it is unaccustomed1 and phrases too long or too slack for convenient scansion1 produce a degree of sensuous and intellectual distress1 which can be measured by the immense relief--relief as an acute satisfaction--of return to easier intervals1 of consonance1 and of phrases of normal rhythm and length4 ,thus does it come to pass that music can convey emotional suggestions such as painting and sculpture1 for all their imitations of reality1 can never match in efficacy2 since music conveys the suggestions not of mere objects which may have awakened emotion1 but of emotion itself1 of the expression thereof in our bodily feelings and movements4 ,and hence also the curious paradox that musical emotion is strong almost in proportion as it is vague4 ,a visible object may1 and probably will1 possess a dozen different emotional values1 according to our altering relations therewith2 for one relation1 one mood1 one emotion succeeds and obliterates the other1 till nothing very potent can remain connected with that particular object4 ,but it matters not how different the course of the various emotions which have expressed themselves in movements of slackness1 agitation1 energy1 or confusion2 it matters not through what circumstances our vigour may have leaked away1 our nerves have been harrowed1 our attention worn out1 so long as those movements1 those agitations1 slackenings1 oppressions1 reliefs1 fatigues1 harrowings1 and reposings are actually taking place within us4 ,in briefer phrase1 while painting and sculpture present us only with objects possibly connected with emotions1 but probably connected with emotions too often varied to affect us strongly2 music gives us the actual bodily consciousness of emotion2 nay 7in so far as it calls for easy or difficult acts of perception71 the actual mental reality of comfort or discomfort4 ,,xiv4 ,the emotion uppermost in the music of all these old people is the specific emotion of the beautiful2 the emotional possibilities1 latent in so many elements of the musical structure1 never do more than qualify the overwhelming impression due to that structure itself4 ,the music of ,handel and ,bach is beautiful1 with a touch of awe2 that of ,gluck1 with a tinge of sadness2 ,mozart's and his contemporaries' is beautiful1 with a reminiscence of all tender and happy emotions2 then again1 there are the great ,italians of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries1 ,carissimi1 ,scarlatti the elder1 ,marcello1 whose musical beauty is oddly emphasised with energy and sternness1 due to their powerful1 simple rhythms and straightforward wide intervals4 ,but whatever the emotional qualification1 the chief1 the never varying1 all-important characteristic1 is the beauty2 the dominant emotion is the serene happiness which beauty gives3 happiness1 strong and delicate2 increase of our vitality2 evocation of all cognate beauty1 physical and moral1 bringing back to our consciousness all that which is at once wholesome and rare4 ,for beauty such as this is both desirable and1 in a sense1 far-fetched2 it comes naturally to us1 and we meet it half-way2 but it does not come often enough4 ,hence it is that the music of these masters never admits us into the presence of such feelings as either were better not felt1 or at all events1 not idly witnessed4 ,there is not ever anything in the joy or grief suggested by this music1 in the love of which it is an expression1 which should make us feel abashed in feeling or witnessing4 ,the whole world may watch ,orpheus or ,alcestis1 as the whole world may stand 7with ,bach or ,pergolese to make music7 at the foot of the ,cross4 ,but may the whole world sit idly watching the raptures and death-throes of ,tristram and ,yseult8 ,surely the world has grown strangely intrusive and unblushing4 ,,xv4 ,i have spoken of this old music as an expression of love2 and this1 in the face of the emotional effects of certain modern composers1 may make some persons smile4 ,perhaps ,i should rather have said that this old music expresses1 above everything else1 the lovable2 for does not eminent beauty inevitably awaken love1 either as respect or tenderness2 the lovable1 loveliness8 ,and at the same time the love itself such loveliness awakens4 ,love far beyond particular cases or persons1 fitting all noble things1 real and imaginary1 complex or fragmentary4 ,love as a lyric essence4 ,,xvi4 ,but why not more than merely that8 ,i used at one time to have frequent discussions on art and life with a certain poor friend of mine1 who should have found sweetness in both1 giving both sweetness in return1 but1 alas1 did neither4 ,we were sitting in the fields where the frost-bitten green was just beginning to soften into minute starlike buds and mosses1 and the birds were learning to sing in the leafless lilac hedgerows1 the sunshine1 as it does in spring1 seeming to hold the world rather than merely to pour on to it4 ,you see1 said my friend1 you see1 there is a fundamental difference between us4 ,you are satisfied with what you call happiness2 but ,i want rapture and excess4 ,alas1 a few years later1 the chance of happiness had gone4 ,that door was opened1 of which ,epictetus wrote that we might always pass through it2 in this case not because the room was too full of smoke1 but1 what is sadder by far1 because the room was merely whitewashed and cleanly swept4 ,but those words rapture and excess1 spoken in such childlike simplicity of spirit1 have always remained in my mind4 ,should we not teach our children1 among whom there may be such as that one was1 that the best thing life can give is just that despised thing happiness8 ,,xvii4 ,now art1 to my mind1 should be one of our main sources of happiness2 and under the inappropriate word art1 ,i am obliged1 as usual1 to group all such activities of soul as deal with beauty1 quite as much when it exists in what is 7in this sense7 not art's antithesis1 but art's origin and completion1 nature4 ,nay1 art--the art exercised by the craftsman1 but much more so the art1 the selecting1 grouping process performed by our own feelings--art can do more towards our happiness than increase the number of its constituent items3 it can mould our preferences1 can make our souls more resisting and flexible1 teach them to keep pace with the universal rhythm4 ,now1 there is not room enough in the world1 and not stuff enough in us1 for much rapture1 or for any excess4 ,the space1 as it were1 the material which these occupy and exhaust1 has to be paid for2 rapture is paid for by subsequent stinting1 and excess by subsequent bankruptcy4 ,we all know this in even trifling matters2 the dulness1 the lassitude or restlessness1 the incapacity for enjoyment following any very acute or exciting pleasure4 ,a man after a dangerous ride1 a girl after her first wildly successful ball1 are not merely exhausted in body and in mind2 they are momentarily deprived of the enjoyment of slighter emotions2 'tis like the inability to hear one's own voice after listening to a tremendous band4 ,the gods1 one might say in ,goethian phrase1 did not intend us to share their own manner of being2 or1 if you prefer it1 in the language of ,darwin or ,weissmann1 creatures who died of sheer bliss1 were unable to rear a family and to found a species4 ,be it as it may1 rapture must needs be rare1 because it destroys a piece of us 7makes our precious piece of chagrin skin1 as in ,balzac's story1 shrink each time74 ,and1 as we have seen1 it destroys 7which is more important than destruction of mere life7 our sensibility to those diffuse1 long-drawn1 gentle1 restorative pleasures which are not merely durable1 but1 because they invigorate our spirit1 are actually reproductive of themselves1 multiplying1 like all sane desirable things1 like grain and fruit1 ten-fold4 ,pleasures which ,i would rather call1 but for the cumbersome words1 items of happiness4 ,it is therefore no humiliating circumstance if art and beauty should be unable to excite us like a game of cards1 a steeplechase1 a fight1 or some violent excitement of our senses or our vanity4 ,this inability1 on the contrary1 constitutes our chief reason for considering our pleasure in beautiful sights1 sounds1 and thoughts1 as in a sense1 holy4 ,,xviii4 ,yesterday morning1 riding towards the cypress woods1 ,i had the first impression of spring2 and1 in fact1 to-day the first almond-tree had come out in blossom on our hillside4 ,a cool morning2 loose1 quickly moving clouds1 and every now and then a gust of rain swept down from the mountains4 ,the path followed a brook1 descending in long1 steep steps from the hillside2 water perfectly clear1 bubbling along the yellow stones between the grassy banks and making now and then a little leap into a lower basin2 along the stream great screens of reeds1 sere1 pale1 with barely a pennon of leaves1 rustling ready for the sickle2 and behind1 beneath the watery sky1 rainy but somehow peaceful1 the russet oak-scrub of the hill4 ,of spring there was indeed visible only the green of the young wheat beneath the olives2 not a bud as yet had moved4 ,and still1 it is spring4 ,the world is renewing itself4 ,one feels it in the gusts of cool1 wet wind1 the songs of the reeds1 the bubble of the brook2 one feels it1 above all1 in oneself4 ,all things are braced1 elastic1 ready for life4 ,,the ,,art ,,and ,,the ,,country4 ,,tuscan ,,notes4 444 all these are inhabitants of truly mountain cities1 ,florence being as completely among the hills as ,innsbruck is1 only the hills have softer outlines4--,modern ,painters1 iv41 chap4 xx4 ,i4 ,sitting in the ,january sunshine on the side of this ,fiesole hill1 overlooking the opposite quarries 7a few long-stalked daisies at my feet in the gravel1 still soft from the night's frost71 my thoughts took the colour and breath of the place4 ,they circled1 as these paths circle round the hill1 about those ancient ,greek and old ,italian cities1 where the cyclopean walls1 the carefully-terraced olives1 followed the tracks made first by the shepherd's and the goat's foot1 even as we see them now on the stony hills all round4 ,what civilisations were those1 thus sowed on the rock like the wild mint and grey myrrh-scented herbs1 and grown under the scorch of sun upon stone1 and the eddy of winds down the valleys6 ,they are gone1 disappeared1 and their existence would be impossible in our days4 ,but they have left us their art1 the essence they distilled from their surroundings4 ,and that is as good for our souls as the sunshine and the wind1 as the aromatic scent of the herbs of their mountains4 ,,ii4 ,i am tempted to think that the worst place for getting to know1 getting to feel1 any school of painting1 is the gallery1 and the best1 perhaps1 the fields3 the fields 7or in the case of the ,venetians1 largely the waters71 to which1 with their qualities of air1 of light1 their whole train of sensations and moods1 the artistic temperament1 and the special artistic temperament of a local school1 can very probably be traced4 ,for to appreciate any kind of art means1 after all1 not to understand its relations with other kinds of art1 but to feel its relations with ourselves4 ,it is a matter of living1 thanks to that art1 according to the spiritual and organic modes of which it is an expression4 ,now1 to go from room to room of a gallery1 allowing oneself to be played upon by very various kinds of art1 is to prevent the formation of any definite mood1 and to set up what is most hostile to all mood1 to all unity of being3 comparison1 analysis1 classification4 ,you may know quite exactly the difference between ,giotto and ,simon ,martini1 between a ,ferrarese and a ,venetian1 between ,praxiteles and ,scopas2 and yet be ignorant of the meaning which any of these might have in your life1 and unconscious of the changes they might work in your being4 ,and this1 ,i fear1 is often the case with connoisseurs and archologists1 accounting for the latent suspicion of the ignoramus and the good philistine1 that such persons are somehow none the better for their intercourse with art4 ,all art which is organic1 short of which it cannot be efficient1 depends upon tradition4 ,to say so sounds a truism1 because we rarely realise all that tradition implies3 on the side of the artist1 what to do1 and on the side of his public1 how to feel3 a habit1 an expectation which accumulates the results of individual creative genius and individual appreciative sensibility1 giving to each its greatest efficacy4 ,when one remembers1 in individual instances--,kant1 ,darwin1 ,michel ,angelo1 ,mozart--how very little which is absolutely new1 how slight a variation1 how inevitable a combination1 marks1 after all1 the greatest strokes of genius in all things1 it seems quite laughable to expect the mediocre person1 mere looker-on or listener1 far from creative1 to reach at once1 without a similar sequence of initiation1 a corresponding state of understanding and enjoyment4 ,but1 as a rule1 this thought does not occur to us2 and1 while we expatiate on the creative originality of artists and poets1 we dully take for granted the instant appreciation of their creation2 forgetting1 or not understanding1 in both cases1 the wonderful efficacy of tradition4 ,as regards us moderns1 for whom the tradition of1 say1 ,tuscan art has so long been broken off or crossed by various other and very different ones--as regards ourselves1 ,i am inclined to think that we can best recover it by sympathetic attention to those forms of art1 humbler or more public1 which must originally have prepared and kept up the interest of the people for whom the ,tuscan craftsmen worked4 ,pictures and statues1 even in a traditional period1 embody a large amount of merely personal peculiarities of individual artists1 testifying to many activities--imitation1 self-assertion1 rivalry--which have no real sthetic value4 ,and1 during the fifteenth century and in ,tuscany especially1 the flow of traditional sthetic feeling is grievously altered and adulterated by the merest scientific tendencies3 a painter or sculptor being often1 in the first instance1 a student of anatomy1 archology or perspective4 ,one may1 therefore1 be familiar for twenty years with ,tuscan ,renaissance painting or sculpture1 and yet remain very faintly conscious of the special sthetic character1 the virtues 7in the language of herbals7 of ,tuscan art4 ,hence ,i should almost say1 better let alone the pictures and statues until you are sufficiently acquainted with the particular quality lurking therein to recognise1 extricate and assimilate it1 despite irrelevant ingredients4 ,learn the quality of ,tuscan art from those categories of it which are most impersonal1 most traditional1 and most organic and also freer from scientific interference1 say architecture and decoration2 and from architecture rather in its humble1 unobtrusive work than in the great exceptional creations which imply1 like the cupola of ,florence1 the assertion of a personality1 the surmounting of a difficulty1 and even the braving of other folks' opinion4 ,i believe that if one learned1 not merely to know1 but to feel1 to enjoy very completely and very specifically1 the quality of distinctness and reserve1 slightness of means and greatness of proportions1 of the domestic architecture and decoration of the fifteenth century1 if one made one's own the mood underlying the special straight lines and curves1 the symmetry and hiatus of the colonnades1 for instance1 inside ,florentine houses2 of the little bits of carving on escutcheon and fireplace of ,tuscan hillside farms2 let alone of the plainest sepulchral slabs in ,santa ,croce1 one would be in better case for really appreciating1 say1 ,botticelli or ,pier della ,francesca than after ever so much comparison of their work with that of other painters4 ,for1 through familiarity with that humbler1 more purely impersonal and traditional art1 a certain mode of being in oneself1 which is the special sthetic mood of the ,tuscan's would have become organised and be aroused at the slightest indication of the qualities producing it1 so that their presence would never escape one4 ,this1 ,i believe1 is the secret of all sthetic training3 the growing accustomed1 as it were automatically1 to respond to the work of art's bidding2 to march or dance to ,apollo's harping with the irresistible instinct with which the rats and the children followed the pied piper's pipe4 ,this is the sthetic training which quite unconsciously and incidentally came to the men of the past through daily habit of artistic forms which existed and varied in the commonest objects just as in the greatest masterpieces4 ,and through it alone was the highest art brought into fruitful contact with even the most everyday persons3 the tradition which already existed making inevitable the tradition which followed4 ,but to return to us moderns1 who have to reconstitute deliberately a vanished sthetic tradition1 it seems to me that such familiarity with ,tuscan art once initiated1 we can learn more1 producing and canalising its special moods1 from a frosty afternoon like this one on the hillside1 with its particular taste of air1 its particular line of shelving rock and twisting road and accentuating reed or cypress in the delicate light1 than from hours in a room where ,signorelli and ,lippi1 ,angelico and ,pollaiolo1 are all telling one different things in different languages4 ,,iii4 ,these thoughts1 and the ones ,i shall try to make clear as ,i go on1 began to take shape one early winter morning some ten years ago1 while ,i was staying among the vineyards in the little range of hills which separate the valley of the ,ombrone from the lower valley of the ,arno4 ,stony hills1 stony paths between leafless lilac hedges1 stony outlines of crest1 fringed with thin rosy bare trees2 here and there a few bright green pines2 for the rest1 olives and sulphur-yellow sere vines among them2 the wide valley all a pale blue wash1 and ,monte ,morello opposite wrapped in mists4 ,it was visibly snowing on the great ,apennines1 and suddenly1 though very gently1 it began to snow here also1 wrapping the blue distance1 the yellow vineyards1 in thin veils4 ,brisk cold4 ,at the house1 when ,i returned from my walk1 the children were flattened against the window-panes1 shouting for joy at the snow4 ,we grown-up folk1 did we live wiser lives1 might be equally delighted by similar shows4 ,a very ,tuscan1 or rather 7what ,i mean when ,i make use of that word1 for geographically ,tuscany is very large and various7 a very ,florentine day4 ,beauty1 exquisiteness1 serenity2 but not without austerity carried to a distinct bitingness4 ,and this is the quality which we find again in all very characteristic ,tuscan art4 ,such a country as this1 scorched in summer1 wind-swept in winter1 and constantly stony and uphill1 a country of eminently dry1 clear1 moving air1 puts us into a braced1 active1 self-restrained mood2 there is in it1 as in these frosty days which suit it best1 something which gives life and demands it3 a quality of happy effort4 ,the art produced by people in whom such a condition of being is frequent1 must necessarily reproduce this same condition of being in others4 ,therefore the connection between a country and its art must be sought mainly in the fact that all art expresses a given state of being1 of emotion1 not human necessarily1 but vital2 that is to say1 expresses not whether we love or hate1 but rather how we love or hate1 how we are4 ,the mountain forms1 colour1 water1 etc41 of a country are incorporated into its art less as that art's object of representation1 than as the determinant of a given mode of vitality in the artist4 ,hence music and literature1 although never actually reproducing any part of them1 may be strongly affected by their character4 ,the ,vita ,nuova1 the really great 7not merely historically interesting7 passages of the ,divine ,comedy1 and the popular songs of ,tigri's collection1 are as much the outcome of these ,tuscan mountains and hills1 as is any picture in which we recognise their outlines and colours4 ,indeed1 it happens that of literal rendering 7as distinguished from ever-present reference to quality of air or light1 to climbing1 to rock and stone as such7 there is little in the ,commedia1 none at all in either the old or the more modern lyrics1 and not so much even in painted landscape4 ,the ,tuscan backgrounds of the fifteenth century are not these stony places1 sun-burnt or wind-swept2 they are the green lawns and pastures in vogue with the whole international ,middle ,ages1 but rendered with that braced1 selecting1 finishing temper which is the product of those stony hills4 ,similarly the ,tuscans must have been influenced by the grace1 the sparseness1 the serenity of the olive1 its inexhaustible vigour and variety2 yet how many of them ever painted it8 ,that a people should never paint or describe their landscape may mean that they have not consciously inventoried the items2 but it does not mean that they have not sthetically1 so to speak nervously1 felt them4 ,their quality1 their virtue1 may be translated into that people's way of talking of or painting quite different things3 the ,tuscan quality is a quality of form1 because it is a quality of mood4 ,,iv4 ,this ,tuscan1 and more than ,attic1 quality--for there is something akin to it in certain ,greek archaic sculpture--is to be found1 already perfect and most essential1 in the faades of the early medival churches of ,pistoia4 ,is to be found2 because this quality1 tense and restrained and distributed with harmonious evenness1 reveals itself only to a certain fineness and carefulness of looking4 ,the little churches 7there are four or five of them7 belong to the style called ,pisan-,romanesque2 and their fronts1 carved arches1 capitals1 lintels1 and doorposts1 are identical in plan1 in all that the mind rapidly inventories1 with the fronts of the numerous contemporary churches of ,lucca4 ,but a comparison with these will bring out most vividly the special quality of the ,pistoia churches4 ,the ,lucchese ones 7of some of which1 before their restoration1 ,mr4 ,ruskin has left some marvellous coloured drawings at ,oxford7 run to picturesqueness and even something more2 they do better in the picture than in the reality1 and weathering and defacement has done much for them4 ,whereas the little churches at ,pistoia1 with less projection1 less carving in the round1 few or no animal or clearly floral forms1 and1 as a rule1 pilasters or half-pillars instead of columns1 must have been as perfect the day they were finished2 the subtle balancings and tensions of lines and curves1 the delicate fretting and inlaying of flat surface pattern1 having gained only1 perhaps1 in being drawn more clearly by dust and damp upon a softer colour of marble4 ,i have mentioned these first1 because their apparent insignificance--tiny flat faades1 with very little decoration--makes it in a way easier to grasp the special delicate austerity of their beauty4 ,but they are humble offshoots1 naturally1 of two great and complex masterpieces1 and very modest sisters of a masterpiece only a degree less marvellous3 ,pisa ,cathedral1 the ,baptistery of ,florence and ,san ,miniato4 ,the wonderful nature of the most perfect of these three buildings 7and yet ,i hesitate to call it so1 remembering the apse and lateral gables of ,pisa7 can be the better understood that1 standing before the ,baptistery of ,florence1 one has by its side ,giotto's very beautiful belfry4 ,looking at them turn about1 one finds that the ,gothic boldness of light and shade of the ,campanile makes the windows1 pillars and cornices of the ,baptistery seem at first very flat and uninteresting4 ,but after the first time1 and once that sense of flatness overcome1 it is impossible to revert to the belfry with the same satisfaction4 ,the eye and mind return to the greater perfection of the ,baptistery2 by an odd paradox there is deeper feeling in those apparently so slight and superficial carvings1 those lintels and fluted columns of green marble which scarcely cast a shadow on their ivory-tinted wall4 ,the ,tuscan quality of these buildings is the better appreciated when we take in the fact that their architectural items had long existed1 not merely in the ,romanesque1 but in the ,byzantine and late ,roman4 ,the series of temple-shaped windows on the outside of the ,florence ,baptistery and of ,san ,miniato1 has1 for instance1 its original in the ,baptistery of ,ravenna and the arch at ,verona4 ,what the ,tuscans have done is to perfect the inner and subtler proportions1 to restrain and accentuate1 to phrase 7in musical language7 every detail of execution4 ,by an accident of artistic evolution1 this style of architecture1 rather dully elaborated by a worn-out civilisation1 has had to wait six centuries for life to be put into it by a finer-strung people at a chaster and more braced period of history4 ,nor should we be satisfied with such loose phrases as this1 leading one to think1 in a slovenly fashion 7quite unsuitable to ,tuscan artistic lucidity71 that the difference lay in some vague metaphysical entity called spirit3 the spirit of the ,tuscan stonemasons of the early ,middle ,ages altered the actual tangible forms in their proportions and details3 this spiritual quality affects us in their carved and inlaid marbles1 their fluted pilasters and undercut capitals1 as a result of actual work of eye and of chisel3 they altered the expression by altering the stone1 even as the frosts and ,august suns and trickling water had determined the expression1 by altering the actual surface1 of their lovely austere hills4 ,v4 ,the ,tuscan quality in architecture must not be sought for during the hundred years of ,gothic--that is to say1 of foreign--supremacy and interregnum4 ,the stonemasons of ,pisa and of ,florence did indeed apply their wholly classic instincts to the detail and ornament of this alien style2 and one is struck by the delicacy and self-restraint of1 say1 the ,tuscan ones among the ,scaliger tombs compared with the more picturesque looseness of genuine ,veronese and ,venetian ,gothic sculpture4 ,but the constructive1 and1 so to speak1 space enclosing1 principles of the great art of medival ,france were even less understood by the ,tuscan than by any other ,italian builders2 and1 as the finest work of ,tuscan faade architecture was given before the ,gothic interregnum1 so also its most noble work1 as actual spatial arrangement1 must be sought for after the return to the round arch1 the cupola and the entablature of genuine ,southern building4 ,and then1 by a fortunate coincidence 7perhaps because this style affords no real unity to vast naves and transepts71 the architectural masterpieces of the fifteenth century are all of them 7excepting1 naturally1 ,brunelleschi's dome7 very small buildings3 the ,sacristies of ,s4 ,lorenzo and ,s4 ,spirito1 the chapel of the ,pazzi1 and the late1 but exquisite1 small church of the ,carceri at ,prato4 ,the smallness of these places is fortunate1 because it leaves no doubt that the sense of spaciousness--of our being1 as it were1 enclosed with a great part of world and sky around us--is an artistic illusion got by co-ordination of detail1 greatness of proportions1 and1 most of all1 perhaps1 by quite marvellous distribution of light4 ,these small squares1 or octagons1 most often with a square embrasure for the altar1 seem ample habitations for the greatest things2 one would wish to use them for ,palestrina's music1 or ,bach's1 or ,handel's2 and then one recognises that their actual dimensions in yards would not accommodate the band and singers and the organ6 ,such music must remain in our soul1 where1 in reality1 the genius of those ,florentine architects has contrived the satisfying ampleness of their buildings4 ,that they invented nothing in the way of architectural ornament1 nay1 took their capitals1 flutings1 cornices1 and so forth1 most mechanically from the worst antique1 should be no real drawback to this architecture2 it was1 most likely1 a matter of negative instinct4 ,for these meagre details leave the mind free1 nay1 force it rather1 to soar at once into the vaultings1 into the serene middle space opposite the windows1 and up into the enclosed heaven of the cupolas4 ,,vi4 ,the ,tuscan sculpture of this period stands1 ,i think1 midway between the serene perfection of the buildings 7being itself sprung from the architecture of the ,gothic time71 and the splendid but fragmentary accomplishment of the paintings1 many of whose disturbing problems1 of anatomy and anatomic movement1 it shared to its confusion4 ,it is not for beautiful bodily structure or gesture1 such as we find even in poor antiques1 that we should go to the ,florentine sculptors1 save1 perhaps1 the two ,robbias4 ,it is the almost architectural distribution of space and light1 the treatment of masses1 which makes the immeasurable greatness of ,donatello1 and gives dignity to his greatest contemporary1 ,jacopo della ,quercia4 ,and it is again an architectural quality1 though in the sense of the carved portals of ,pistoia1 the flutings and fretwork and surface pattern of the ,baptistery and ,s4 ,miniato1 which gives such poignant pleasure in the work of a very different1 but very great1 sculptor1 ,desiderio4 ,the marvel 7for it is a marvel7 of his great monument in ,santa ,croce1 depends not on anatomic forms1 but on the exquisite variety and vivacity of surface arrangement2 the word symphony 7so often misapplied7 fitting exactly this complex structure of minute melodies and harmonies of rhythms and accents in stone4 ,but the quality of ,tuscan sculpture exists in humbler1 often anonymous and infinitely pathetic work4 ,i mean those effigies of knights and burghers1 coats of arms and mere inscriptions1 which constitute so large a portion of what we walk upon in ,santa ,croce4 ,things not much thought of1 maybe1 and ruthlessly defaced by all posterity4 ,but the masses1 the main lines1 were originally noble1 and defacement has only made their nobleness and tenderness more evident and poignant3 they have come to partake of the special solemnity of stone worn by frost and sunshine4 ,,vii4 ,there are a great many items which go to make up ,tuscany and the specially ,tuscan mood4 ,the country is at once hilly and mountainous1 but rich in alluvial river valleys1 as flat and as wide1 very often1 as plains2 and the chains which divide and which bound it are as various as can be3 the crystalline crags of ,carrara1 the washed away cones and escarpments of the high ,apennines1 repeating themselves in counter forts and foothills1 and the low1 closely packed ridges of the hills between ,florence and ,siena4 ,hence there is always a view1 definite and yet very complex1 made up of every variety of line1 but always of clearest perspective3 perfect horizontals at one's feet1 perfect perpendiculars opposite the eye1 a constant alternation of looking up and looking down1 a never-failing possibility of looking beyond1 an outlet everywhere for the eye1 and for the breath2 and endless intricacy of projecting spur and engulfed ravine1 of valley above valley1 and ridge beyond ridge2 and all of it1 whether definitely modelled by stormy lights or windy dryness1 or washed to mere outline by sunshine or mist1 always massed into intelligible1 harmonious1 and ever-changing groups4 ,ever changing as you move1 hills rising or sinking as you mount or descend1 furling or unfurling as you go to the right or to the left1 valleys and ravines opening or closing up1 the whole country altering1 so to speak1 its attitude and gesture as quickly almost1 and with quite as perfect consecutiveness1 as does a great cathedral when you walk round it4 ,and1 for this reason1 never letting you rest2 keeping you also in movement1 feet1 eyes and fancy4 ,add to all this a particular topographical feeling1 very strong and delightful1 which ,i can only describe as that of seeing all the kingdoms of the earth4 ,in the high places close to ,florence 7and with that especial lie of the land everything is a high place7 a view is not only of foregrounds and backgrounds1 river troughs and mountain lines of great variety1 but of whole districts1 or at least indications of districts--distant peaks making you feel the places at their feet--which you know to be extremely various3 think of the ,carraras with their ,mediterranean seaboard1 the high ,apennines with ,lombardy and the ,adriatic behind them1 the ,siena and ,volterra hills leading to the ,maremma1 and the great range of the ,falterona1 with the ,tiber issuing from it1 leading the mind through ,umbria to ,rome6 ,the imagination is as active among these ,florentine hills as is the eye1 or as the feet and lungs have been1 pleasantly tired1 delighting in the moment's rest1 after climbing those steep places among the pines or the myrtles1 under the scorch of the wholesome summer sun1 or in the face of the pure1 snowy wind4 ,the wind1 so rarely at rest1 has helped to make the ,tuscan spirit1 calling for a certain resoluteness to resist it1 but1 in return1 taking all sense of weight away1 making the body merge1 so to speak1 into eye and mind1 and turning one1 for a little while1 into part of the merely visible and audible4 ,the frequent possibility of such views as ,i have tried to define1 of such moments of fulness of life1 has given1 methinks1 the quality of definiteness and harmony1 of active1 participated in1 greatness1 to the art of ,tuscany4 ,,viii4 ,it is a pity that1 as regards painting1 this ,tuscan feeling 7for ,giottesque painting had the cosmopolitan1 as distinguished from local1 quality of the ,middle ,ages and of the ,franciscan movement7 should have been at its strongest just in the century when mere scientific interest was uppermost4 ,nay1 one is tempted to think that matters were made worse by that very love of the strenuous1 the definite1 the lucid1 which is part of the ,tuscan spirit4 ,so that we have to pick out1 in men like ,donatello1 ,uccello1 ,pollaiolo and ,verrocchio1 nay1 even in ,lippi and ,botticelli1 the fragments which correspond to what we get quite unmixed and perfect in the ,romanesque churches of ,pisa1 ,florence1 and ,pistoia1 in the sacristies and chapels of ,brunelleschi1 ,alberti1 and ,sangallo1 and in a hundred exquisite cloisters and loggias of unnoticed town houses and remote farms4 ,but perhaps there is added a zest 7by no means out of keeping with the ,tuscan feeling7 to our enjoyment by the slight effort which is thus imposed upon us3 ,tuscan art does not give its exquisiteness for nothing4 ,be this as it may1 the beauty of ,florentine ,renaissance painting must be sought1 very often1 not in the object which the picture represents1 but in the mode in which that object is represented4 ,our habits of thought are so slovenly in these matters1 and our vocabulary so poor and confused1 that ,i find it difficult to make my exact meaning clear without some insistence4 ,i am not referring to the mere moral qualities of care1 decision1 or respectfulness1 though the recognition thereof adds undoubtedly to the noble pleasure of a work of art2 still less to the technical or scientific lucidity which the picture exhibits4 ,the beauty of fifteenth-century painting is a visible quality1 a quality of the distribution of masses1 the arrangement of space2 above all1 of the lines of a picture4 ,but it is independent of the fact of the object represented being or not what in real life we should judge beautiful2 and it is1 in large works1 unfortunately even more separate from such arrangement as will render a complicated composition intelligible to the mind or even to the eye4 ,the problems of anatomy1 relief1 muscular action1 and perspective which engrossed and in many cases harassed the ,florentines of the ,renaissance1 turned their attention away from the habit of beautiful general composition which had become traditional even in the dullest and most effete of their ,giottesque predecessors1 and left them neither time nor inclination for wonderful new invention in figure distribution like that of their contemporary ,umbrians4 ,save in easel pictures1 therefore1 there is often a distressing confusion1 a sort of dreary random packing1 in the works of men like ,uccello1 ,lippi1 ,pollaiolo1 ,filippino1 ,ghirlandaio1 and even ,botticelli4 ,and even in the more simply and often charmingly arranged easel pictures1 the men and women represented1 even the angels and children1 are often very far from being what in real life would be deemed beautiful1 or remarkable by any special beauty of attitude and gesture4 ,they are1 in truth1 studies1 anatomical or otherwise1 although studies in nearly every case dignified by the habit of a very serious and tender devoutness3 rarely soulless or insolent studio drudgery or swagger such as came when art ceased to be truly popular and religious4 ,studies1 however1 with little or no selection of the reality studied1 and less thought even for the place or manner in which they were to be used4 ,but these studies are executed1 however scientific their intention1 under the guidance of a sense and a habit of beauty1 subtle and imperious in proportion1 almost1 as it is self-unconscious4 ,these figures1 sometimes ungainly1 occasionally ill-made1 and these features1 frequently homely or marred by some conspicuous ugliness1 are made up of lines as enchantingly beautiful1 as seriously satisfying1 as those which surrounded the ,tuscans in their landscape4 ,and it is in the extracting of such beauty of lines out of the bewildering confusion of huge frescoes1 it is in the seeing as arrangements of such lines the sometimes unattractive men and women and children painted 7and for that matter1 often also sculptured7 by the great ,florentines of the fifteenth century1 that consists the true appreciation and habitual enjoyment of ,tuscan ,renaissance painting4 ,the outline of an ear and muscle of the neck by ,lippi2 the throw of drapery by ,ghirlandaio2 the wide and smoke-like rings of heavy hair by ,botticelli2 the intenser1 more ardent spiral curls of ,verrocchio or the young ,leonardo2 all that is flower-like1 flame-like1 that has the swirl of mountain rivers1 the ripple of rocky brooks1 the solemn and poignant long curves and sudden crests of hills1 all this exists in the paintings of the ,florentines2 and it is its intrinsic nobility and exquisiteness1 its reminiscence and suggestion of all that is loveliest and most solemn in nature1 its analogy to all that is strongest and most delicate in human emotion1 which we should seek for and cherish in their works4 ,,ix4 ,the hour of low lights1 which the painters of the past almost exclusively reproduced1 is naturally that in which we recognise easiest1 not only the identity of mood awakened by the art and by the country1 but the closer resemblance between the things which art was able to do1 and the things which the country had already done4 ,even more1 immediately after sunset4 ,the hills1 becoming uniform masses1 assert their movement1 strike deep into the valley1 draw themselves strongly up towards the sky4 ,the valleys also1 with their purple darkness1 rising like smoke out of them1 assert themselves in their turn4 ,and the sky1 the more diaphanous for all this dark solidity against it1 becomes sky more decisively2 takes1 moreover1 colour which only fluid things can have2 turns into washes of pale gold1 of palest tea-rose pink and beryl green4 ,against this sky the cypresses are delicately finished off in fine black lacework1 even as in the background of ,botticelli's ,spring1 and ,leonardo's or ,verrocchio's ,annuniciation4 ,one understands that those passionate lovers of line loved the moment of sunset apart even from colour4 ,the ridges of pines and cypresses soon remain the only distinguishable thing in the valleys1 pulling themselves 7as one feels it7 rapidly up1 like great prehistoric shapes of ,saurians4 ,soon the sky only and mountains will exist4 ,then begins the time1 before the starlit night comes to say its say1 when everything grows drowsy1 a little vague1 and the blurred mountains go to sleep in the smoke of dusk4 ,then only1 due west1 the great ,carrara peaks stand out against the sanguine sky1 long pointed curves and flame-shaped sudden crests1 clear and keen beyond the power of mortal hand to draw4 ,x4 ,the quality of such sights as these1 as ,i have more than once repeated1 requires to be diligently sought for1 and extricated from many things which overlay or mar it1 throughout nearly the whole of ,florentine ,renaissance painting4 ,but by good luck there is one painter in whom we can enjoy it as subtle1 but also as simple1 as in the hills and mountains outlined by sunset or gathered into diaphanous folds by the subduing radiance of winter moon4 ,i am speaking1 of course1 of ,pier della ,francesca2 although an over literal school of criticism stickles at classing him with the other great ,florentines4 ,nay1 by a happy irony of things1 the reasons for this exclusion are probably those to which we owe the very purity and perfection of this man's ,tuscan quality4 ,for the remoteness of his home on the southernmost border of ,tuscany1 and in a river valley--that of the ,upper ,tiber--leading away from ,florence and into ,umbria1 may have kept him safe from that scientific rivalry1 that worry and vexation of professional problems1 which told so badly on so many ,florentine craftsmen4 ,and1 on the other hand1 the north ,italian origin of one of his masters1 the mysterious ,domenico ,veneziano1 seems to have given him1 instead of the colouring1 always random and often coarse1 of contemporary ,florence1 a harmonious scheme of perfectly delicate1 clear1 and flower-like colour4 ,these two advantages are so distinctive that1 by breaking through the habits one necessarily gets into with his ,florentine contemporaries1 they have resulted in setting apart1 and almost outside the pale of ,tuscan painting1 the purest of all ,tuscan artists4 ,for with him there is no need for making allowances or disentangling essentials4 ,the vivid organic line need not be sought in details nor1 so to speak1 abstracted3 it bounds his figures1 forms them quite naturally and simply1 and is therefore not thought about apart from them4 ,and the colour1 integral as it is1 and perfectly harmonious1 masses the figures into balanced groups1 bossiness and bulk1 detail and depth1 all unified1 co-ordinated1 satisfying as in the sun-merged mountains and shelving valleys of his country2 and with the immediate charm of whiteness as of rocky water1 pale blue of washed skies1 and that ineffable lilac1 russet1 rose1 which makes the basis of all southern loveliness4 ,one thinks of him1 therefore1 as something rather apart1 a sort of school in himself1 or at most with ,domenico1 his master1 and his follower1 della ,gatta4 ,but more careful looking will show that his greatest qualities1 so balanced and so clear in him1 are shared--though often masked by the ungainlinesses of hurried artistic growth--by ,pollaiolo1 ,baldovinetti1 ,pesellino1 let alone ,uccello1 ,castagno1 and ,masaccio2 are1 in a word1 ,tuscan1 ,florentine4 ,but more than by such studies1 the kinship and nationality of ,pier della ,francesca is proved by reference to the other branches of ,tuscan art3 his peculiarities correspond to the treatment of line and projection by those early stonemasons of the ,baptistery and the ,pistoia churches1 to the treatment of enclosed spaces and manipulated light in those fifteenth-century sacristies and chapels1 to the treatment of mass and boundary in the finest reliefs of ,donatello and ,donatello's great decorative follower ,desiderio4 ,to persons1 however1 who are ready to think with me that we may be trained to art in fields and on hillsides1 the essential ,tuscan character of ,pier della ,francesca is brought home quite as strongly by the particular satisfaction with which we recognise his pictures in some unlikely place1 say a ,northern gallery4 ,for it is a satisfaction1 sui generis and with its own emotional flavour1 like that which we experience on return to ,tuscany1 on seeing from the train the white houses on the slopes1 the cypresses at the cross roads1 the subtler1 lower lines of hills1 the blue of distant peaks1 on realising once more our depth of tranquil love for this austere and gentle country4 ,,xi4 ,save in the lushness of early summer1 ,tuscany is1 on the whole1 pale2 a country where the loveliness of colour is that of its luminousness1 and where light is paramount4 ,from this arises1 perhaps1 the austerity of its true summer--summer when fields are bare1 grass burnt to delicate cinnamon and russet1 and the hills1 with their sere herbs and bushes1 seem modelled out of pale rosy or amethyst light2 an austerity for the eye corresponding to a sense of healthfulness given by steady1 intense heat1 purged of all damp1 pure like the scents of dry leaves1 of warm1 cypress resin and of burnt thyme and myrrh of the stony ravines and stubbly fields4 ,on such ,august days the plain and the more distant mountains will sometimes be obliterated1 leaving only the inexpressible suavity of the hills on the same side as the sun1 made of the texture of the sky1 lying against it like transparent and still luminous shadows4 ,all pictures of such effects of climate are false1 even ,perugino's and ,claude's1 because even in these the eye is not sufficiently attracted and absorbed away from the foreground1 from the earth to the luminous sky4 ,that effect is the most powerful1 sweetest1 and most restorative in all nature perhaps2 a bath for the soul in pure light and air4 ,that is the incomparable buoyancy and radiance of deepest ,tuscan summer4 ,but the winter is1 perhaps1 even more ,tuscan and more austerely beautiful4 ,i am not even speaking of the fact that the mountains1 with their near snows and brooding blue storms and ever contending currents of wind and battles and migrations of great clouds1 necessarily make much of winter very serious and solemn1 as it sweeps down their ravines and across their ridges4 ,i am thinking of the serene winter days of mist and sun1 with ranges of hills made of a luminous bluish smoke1 and sky only a more luminous and liquid kind1 and the olives but a more solid specimen1 of the mysterious silvery substance of the world4 ,the marvellous part of it all1 and quite impossible to convey1 is that such days are not pensive1 but effulgent1 that the lines of the landscape are not blurred1 but exquisitely selected and worked4 ,,xii4 ,a quality like that of ,tuscan art is1 as ,i have once before remarked1 in some measure1 abstract2 a general character1 like that of a composite photograph1 selected and compounded by the repetition of the more general and the exclusion of more individual features4 ,in so far1 therefore1 it is something rather tended towards in reality than thoroughly accomplished2 and its accomplishment1 to whatever extent1 is naturally due to a tradition1 a certain habit among artists and public1 which neutralises the refractory tendencies of individuals 7the personal morbidness evident1 for instance1 in ,botticelli7 and makes the most of what the majority may have in common--that dominant interest1 let us say1 in line and mass4 ,such being the case1 this ,tuscan quality comes to an end with the local art of the middle ages1 and can no longer be found1 or only imperfect1 after the breaking up and fusion of the various schools1 and the arising of eclectic personalities in the earliest sixteenth century4 ,after the painters born between #adej and #adfj1 there are no more genuine ,tuscans4 ,leonardo1 once independent of ,verrocchio and settled in ,lombardy1 is barely one of them2 and ,michel ,angelo never at all--,michel ,angelo with his moods all of ,rome or the great mountains1 full of trouble1 always1 and tragedy4 ,these great personalities1 and the other eclectics1 ,raphael foremost1 bring qualities to art which it had lacked before1 and are required to make its appeal legitimately universal4 ,i should shrink from judging their importance1 compared with the older and more local and traditional men4 ,still further from me is it to prefer this ,tuscan art to that1 as local and traditional in its way1 of ,umbria or ,venetia1 which stands to this as the most poignant lyric or the richest romance stands1 let us say1 to the characteristic quality1 sober yet subtle1 of ,dante's greatest passages4 ,there is1 thank heaven1 wholesome art various enough to appeal to many various healthy temperaments2 and perhaps for each single temperament more than one kind of art is needful4 ,my object in the foregoing pages has not been to put forward reasons for preferring the art of the ,tuscans any more than the climate and landscape of ,tuscany2 but merely to bring home what the especial charm and power of ,tuscan art and ,tuscan nature seem to me to be4 ,more can be gained by knowing any art lovingly in itself than by knowing twenty arts from each other through dry comparison4 ,i have tried to suggest rather than to explain in what way the art of a country may answer to its natural character1 by inducing recurrent moods of a given kind4 ,i would not have it thought1 however1 that such moods need be dominant1 or even exist at all1 in all the inhabitants of that country4 ,art1 wide as its appeal may be1 is no more a product of the great mass of persons than is abstract thought or special invention1 however largely these may be put to profit by the generality4 ,the bulk of the inhabitants help to make the art by furnishing the occasional exceptionally endowed creature called an artist1 by determining his education and surroundings1 in so far as he is a mere citizen2 and finally by bringing to bear on him the stored-up habit of acquiescence in whatever art has been accepted by that public from the artists of the immediate past4 ,in fact1 the majority affects the artist mainly as itself has been affected by his predecessors4 ,if1 therefore1 the scenery and climate call forth moods in a whole people definite enough to influence the art1 this will be due1 ,i think1 to some especially gifted individual having1 at one time or another1 brought home those moods to them4 ,therefore we need feel no surprise if any individual1 peasant or man of business or abstract thinker1 reveal a lack1 even a total lack1 of such impressions as ,i am speaking of2 nor even if among those who love art a great proportion be still incapable of identifying those vague contemplative emotions from which all art is sprung4 ,it is not merely the special endowment of eye1 ear1 hand1 not merely what we call artistic talent1 which is exceptional and vested in individuals only4 ,it takes a surplus of sensitiveness and energy to be determined in one's moods by natural surroundings instead of solely by one's own wants or circumstances or business4 ,now art is born of just this surplus sensitiveness and energy2 it is the response not to the impressions made by our private ways and means1 but to the impressions made by the ways and means of the visible1 sensible universe4 ,but once produced1 art is received1 and more or less assimilated1 by the rest of mankind1 to whom it gives1 in greater or less degree1 more of such sensitiveness and energy than it could otherwise have had4 ,art thus calls forth contemplative emotions1 otherwise dormant1 and creates in the routine and scramble of individual wants and habits a sanctuary where the soul stops elbowing and trampling1 and being elbowed and trampled2 nay1 rather1 a holy hill1 neither ploughed nor hunted over1 a free high place1 in which we can see clearly1 breathe widely1 and1 for awhile1 live harmlessly1 serenely1 fully4 ,,xiii4 ,thinking these thoughts for the hundredth time1 feeling them in a way as ,i feel the landscape1 ,i walk home by the dear rock path girdling ,fiesole1 within sound of the chisels of the quarries4 ,blackthorn is now mixed in the bare purple hedgerows1 and almond blossom1 here and there1 whitens the sere oak1 and the black rocks above4 ,these are the heights from which1 as tradition has it1 ,florence descended1 the people of which ,dante said-- ,che discese da ,fiesole ab antico1 ,e tiene ancor del monte e del macigno1 meaning it in anger4 ,but it is true1 and truer1 in the good sense also4 ,mountain and rock6 the art of ,tuscany is sprung from it1 from its arduous fruitfulness1 with the clear stony stream1 and the sparse gentle olive1 and the cypress1 unshaken by the wind1 unscorched by the sun1 and shooting inflexibly upwards4 ,,art ,,and ,,usefulness4 ,time was when everybody that made anything made a work of art besides a useful piece of goods1 and it gave them pleasure to make it4--,,william ,,morris1 ,address delivered at ,burslem1 #ahha4 ,i4 ,among the original capitals removed from the outer colonnade of the ducal palace at ,venice there is a series devoted to the teaching of natural history1 and another to that of such general facts about the races of man1 his various moral attributes and activities1 as the ,venetians of the fourteenth century considered especially important4 ,first1 botany1 illustrated by the fruits most commonly in use1 piled up in baskets which constitute the funnel-shaped capital2 each kind separate1 with the name underneath in funny ,venetian spelling3 ,huva1 grapes2 ,fici1 figs2 ,moloni1 melons2 ,zuche1 pumpkins2 and ,persici1 peaches4 ,then1 with ,latin names1 the various animals3 ,ursus1 holding a honeycomb with bees on it2 ,chanis1 mumbling only a large bone1 while his cousins1 wolf and fox1 have secured a duck and a cock2 ,aper1 the wild boar1 munching a head of millet or similar grain4 ,now had these beautiful carvings been made with no aim besides their own beauty1 had they represented and taught nothing1 they would have received only a few casual glances1 quite insufficient to make their excellence familiar or even apparent2 at best the occasional discriminative examination of some art student2 while the pleased1 spontaneous attentiveness which carries beauty deep into the soul and the soul's storehouse would have been lacking4 ,but consider these capitals to have been what they undoubtedly were meant for3 the picture books and manuals off which young folks learned1 and older persons refreshed1 their notions of natural history1 of geography1 ethnology1 and even of morals1 and you will realise at once how much attention1 and of how constant and assimilative a kind1 they must have received4 ,the child learns off them that figs 7which he never sees save packed in baskets in the barges at ,rialto7 have leaves like funny gloves1 while huva1 grapes1 have leaves all ribbed and looking like tattered banners2 that the bear is blunt-featured and eats honeycomb2 that foxes and wolves1 who live on the mainland1 are very like the dogs we keep in ,venice1 but that they steal poultry instead of being given bones from the kitchen4 ,also that there are in the world1 besides these clean-shaved ,venetians in armour or doge's cap1 bearded ,asiatics and thick-lipped negroes--the sort of people with whom uncle and cousins traffic in the big ships1 or among whom grandfather helped the ,doge to raise the standard of ,st4 ,mark4 ,also that carpenters work with planes and vices1 and stonemasons with mallets and chisels2 and that good and wise men are remembered for ever3 for here is the story of how ,solomon discovered the true mother1 and here again the ,emperor ,trajan going to the wars1 and reining in his horse to do justice first to the poor widow4 ,the child looks at the capitals in order to see with his eyes all these interesting things of which he has been told2 and1 during the holiday walk1 drags his parents to the spot1 to look again1 and to beg to be told once more4 ,and later1 he looks at the familiar figures in order to show them to his children2 or1 perhaps1 more wistfully1 loitering along the arcade in solitude1 to remember the days of his own childhood4 ,and in this manner1 the things represented1 fruit1 animals and persons1 and the exact form in which they are rendered3 the funnel shape of the capitals1 the cling and curl of the leafage1 the sharp black undercutting1 the clear1 lightly incised surfaces1 the whole pattern of line and curve1 light and shade1 the whole pattern of the eye's progress along it1 of the rhythm of expansion and restraint1 of pressure and thrust1 in short1 the real work of art1 the visible form--become well-known1 dwelling in the memory1 cohabiting with the various moods1 and haunting the fancy2 a part of life1 familiar1 everyday1 liked or disliked1 discriminated in every particular1 become part and parcel of ourselves1 for better or for worse1 like the tools we handle1 the boats we steer1 the horses we ride and groom1 and the furniture and utensils among which and through whose help we live our lives4 ,,ii4 ,furniture and utensils2 things which exist because we require them1 which we know because we employ them1 these are the type of all great works of art4 ,and from the selfsame craving which insists that these should be shapely as well as handy1 pleasant to the eye as well as rational2 through the selfsame processes of seeing and remembering and altering their shapes--according to the same sthetic laws of line and curve1 of surface and projection1 of spring and restraint1 of clearness and compensation2 and for the same organic reasons and by the same organic methods of preference and adaptation as these humblest things of usefulness1 do the proudest and seemingly freest works of art come to exist2 come to be just what they are1 and even come to be at all4 ,i should like to state very clearly1 before analysing its reasons1 what seems to me 7and ,i am proud to follow ,ruskin in this as in so many essential questions of art and life7 the true formula of this matter4 ,namely3 that while beauty has always been desired and obtained for its own sake1 the works in which we have found beauty embodied1 and the arts which have achieved beauty's embodying1 have always started from impulses or needs1 and have always aimed at purposes or problems entirely independent of this embodiment of beauty4 ,,iii4 ,the desire for beauty stands to art as the desire for righteousness stands to conduct4 ,people do not feel and act from a desire to feel and act righteously1 but from a hundred different and differently-combined motives2 the desire for righteousness comes in to regulate this feeling and acting1 to subject it all to certain preferences and repugnances which have become organic1 if not in the human being1 at least in human society4 ,like the desire for righteousness1 the desire for beauty is not a spring of action1 but a regulative function2 it decides the how of visible existence2 in accordance with deep-seated and barely guessed at necessities of body and soul1 of nerves and perceptions1 of brain and judgments2 it says to all visible objects3 since you needs must be1 you shall be in this manner1 and not in that other4 ,the desire for beauty1 with its more potent negative1 the aversion to ugliness1 has1 like the sense of right and wrong1 the force of a categorical imperative4 ,such1 to my thinking1 is the sthetic instinct4 ,and ,i call ,art whatever kind of process1 intellectual and technical1 creates1 incidentally or purposely1 visible or audible forms1 and creates them under the regulation of this sthetic instinct4 ,art1 therefore1 is art whenever any object or any action1 or any arrangement1 besides being such as to serve a practical purpose or express an emotion or transfer a thought1 is such also as to afford the sui generis satisfaction which we denote by the adjective3 beautiful4 ,but1 asks the reader1 if every human activity resulting in visible or audible form is to be considered1 at least potentially1 as art2 what becomes of art as distinguished from craft1 or rather what is the difference between what we all mean by art and what we all mean by craft8 ,to this objection1 perfectly justified by the facts of our own day1 ,i would answer quite simply3 ,there is no necessary or essential distinction between what we call art and what we call craft4 ,it is a pure accident1 and in all probability a temporary one1 which has momentarily separated the two in the last hundred years4 ,throughout the previous part of the world's history art and craft have been one and the same1 at the utmost distinguishable only from a different point of view3 craft from the practical side1 art from the contemplative4 ,every trade concerned with visible or audible objects or movements has also been an art2 and every one of those great creative activities1 for which1 in their present isolation1 we now reserve the name of art1 has also been a craft2 has been connected and replenished with life by the making of things which have a use1 or by the doing of deeds which have a meaning4 ,,iv4 ,we must1 of course1 understand usefulness in its widest sense2 otherwise we should be looking at the world in a manner too little utilitarian1 not too much so4 ,houses and furniture and utensils1 clothes1 tools and weapons1 must undoubtedly exemplify utility first and foremost because they serve our life in the most direct1 indispensable and unvarying fashion1 always necessary and necessary to everyone4 ,but once these universal unchanging needs supplied1 a great many others become visible3 needs to the individual or to individuals and races under definite and changing circumstances4 ,the sonnet or the serenade are useful to the romantic lover in the same manner that carriage-horses and fine clothes are useful to the man who woos more practically-minded ladies4 ,the diamonds of a rich woman serve to mark her status quite as much as to please the unpleasable eye of envy2 in the same way that the uniform1 the robes and vestments1 are needed to set aside the soldier1 the magistrate or priest1 and give him the right of dealing ex officio1 not as a mere man among men4 ,and the consciousness of such apparent superfluities1 whether they be the expression of wealth or of hierarchy1 of fashion or of caste1 gives to their possessor that additional self-importance which is quite as much wanted by the ungainly or diffident moral man as the additional warmth of his more obviously needed raiment is by the poor1 chilly1 bodily human being4 ,i will not enlarge upon the practical uses which recent ethnology has discovered in the tattooing1 the painting1 the masks1 headdresses1 feather skirts1 cowries and beads1 of all that elaborate ornamentation with which1 only a few years back1 we were in the habit of reproaching the poor1 foolish1 naked savages2 additional knowledge of their habits having demonstrated rather our folly than theirs1 in taking for granted that any race of men would prefer ornament to clothes1 unless1 as was the case1 these ornaments were really more indispensable in their particular mode of life4 ,for an ornament which terrifies an enemy1 propitiates a god1 paralyses a wild beast1 or gains a wife1 is a matter of utility1 not of sthetic luxury1 so long as it happens to be efficacious1 or so long as its efficacy is believed in4 ,indeed1 the gold coach and liveried trumpeters of the nostrum vendor of bygone days1 like their less enlivening equivalents in many more modern professions1 are of the nature of trade tools1 although the things they fashion are only the foolish minds of possible customers4 ,and this function of expressing and impressing brings us to the other great category of utility4 ,the sculptured pediment or frescoed wall1 the hieroglyph1 or the map or the book1 everything which records a fact or transmits a feeling1 everything which carries a message to men or gods1 is an object of utility3 the coat-of-arms painted on a panel1 or the emblem carved upon a church front1 as much as the helmet of the knight or the shield of the savage4 ,a church or a religious ceremony1 nay1 every additional ounce of gilding or grain of incense1 or day or hour1 bestowed on sanctuary and ritual1 are not useful only to the selfish devotee who employs them for obtaining celestial favours2 they are more useful and necessary even to the pure-minded worshipper1 because they enable him to express the longing and the awe with which his heart is overflowing4 ,for every oblation faithfully brought means so much added moral strength2 and love requires gifts to give as much as hunger needs food and vanity needs ornament and wealth4 ,all things which minister to a human need1 bodily or spiritual1 simple or complex1 direct or indirect1 innocent or noble1 or base or malignant1 all such things exist for their use4 ,they do exist1 and would always have existed equally if no such quality as beauty had ever arisen to enhance or to excuse their good or bad existence4 ,v4 ,the conception of art as of something outside1 and almost opposed to1 practical life1 and the tendency to explain its gratuitous existence by a special play instinct more gratuitous itself1 are due in great measure to our wrong way of thinking and feeling upon no less a matter than human activity as such4 ,the old-fashioned psychology which1 ignoring instinct and impulse1 explained all action as the result of a kind of calculation of future pleasure and pain1 has accustomed us to account for all fruitful human activity1 whatever we call work1 by a wish for some benefit or fear of some disadvantage4 ,and1 on the other hand1 the economic systems of our time 7or1 at all events1 the systematic exposition of our economic arrangements7 have furthermore accustomed us to think of everything like work as done under compulsion1 fear of worse1 or a kind of bribery4 ,it is really taken as a postulate1 and almost as an axiom1 that no one would make or do anything useful save under the goad of want2 of want not in the sense of wanting to do or make that thing1 but of wanting to have or be able to do something else4 ,hence everything which is manifestly done from no such motive1 but from an inner impulse towards the doing1 comes to be thought of as opposed to work1 and to be designated as play4 ,now art is very obviously carried on for its own sake3 experience1 even of our mercantile age1 teaches that if a man does not paint a picture or compose a symphony from an inner necessity as disinterested as that which makes another man look at the picture or listen to the symphony1 no amount of self-interest1 of disadvantages and advantages1 will enable him to do either otherwise than badly4 ,hence1 as ,i said1 we are made to think of art as play1 or a kind of play4 ,but play itself1 being unaccountable on the basis of external advantage and disadvantage1 being1 from the false economic point of view1 unproductive1 that is to say1 pure waste1 has in its turn to be accounted for by the supposition of surplus energy occasionally requiring to be let off to no purpose1 or merely to prevent the machine from bursting4 ,this opposition of work and play is founded in our experience of a social state which is still at sixes and sevens2 of a civilisation so imperfectly developed and organised that the majority does nothing save under compulsion1 and the minority does nothing to any purpose2 and where that little boy's ,scylla and ,charybdis all work and all play is effectually realised in a nightmare too terrible and too foolish1 above all too wakingly true1 to be looked at in the face without flinching4 ,one wonders1 incidentally1 how any creature perpetually working from the reasons given by economists1 that is to say1 working against the grain1 from no spontaneous wish or pleasure1 can possibly store up1 in such exhausting effort1 a surplus of energy requiring to be let off6 ,and one wonders1 on the other hand1 how any really good work of any kind1 work not merely kept by dire competitive necessity up to a standard1 but able to afford any standard to keep up to1 can well be produced save by the letting off of surplus energy2 that is to say1 how good work can ever be done otherwise than by impulses and instincts acting spontaneously1 in fact as play4 ,the reality seems to be that1 imperfect as is our poor life1 present and past1 we are maligning it2 founding our theories1 for simplicity's sake and to excuse our lack of hope and striving1 upon its very worst samples4 ,wasteful as is the mal-distribution of human activities 7mal-distribution worse than that of land or capital671 cruel as is the consequent pressure of want1 there yet remains at the bottom of an immense amount of work an inner push different from that outer constraint1 an inner need as fruitful as the outer one is wasteful3 there remains the satisfaction in work1 the wish to work4 ,however outer necessity1 competition1 minimum of cost1 iron law of wages1 call it what you choose1 direct and misdirect1 through need of bread or greed of luxury1 the application of human activity1 that activity has to be there1 and with it its own alleviation and reward3 pleasure in work4 ,all decent human work partakes 7let us thank the great reasonablenesses of real things67 of the quality of play3 if it did not it would be bad or ever on the verge of badness2 and if ever human activity attains to fullest fruitfulness1 it will be 7every experience of our own best work shows it7 when the distinction of work and of play will cease to have a meaning1 play remaining only as the preparatory work of the child1 as the strength-repairing1 balance-adjusting work of the adult4 ,and meanwhile1 through all the centuries of centuries1 art1 which is the type and sample of all higher1 better modes of life1 art has given us in itself the concrete sample1 the unmistakable type of that needful reconciliation of work and play2 and has shown us that there is1 or should be1 no difference between them4 ,for art has made the things which are useful1 and done the things which are needed1 in those shapes and ways of beauty which have no aim but our satisfaction4 ,,vi4 ,the way in which the work of art is born of a purpose1 of something useful to do or desirable to say1 and the way in which the suggestions of utility are used up for beauty1 can best be shown by a really existing object4 ,expressed in practical terms the object is humble enough3 a little trough with two taps built into a recess in a wall2 a place for washing hands and rinsing glasses1 as you see the ,dominican brothers doing it all day1 for ,i am speaking of the ,lavabo by ,giovanni della ,robbia in the ,sacristy of ,santa ,maria ,novella in ,florence4 ,the whole thing is small1 and did not allow of the adjoining room usually devoted to this purpose4 ,the washing and rinsing had to take place in the sacristy itself4 ,but this being the case1 it was desirable that the space set apart for these proceedings should at least appear to be separate2 the trough1 therefore1 was sunk in a recess1 and the recess divided off from the rest of the wall by pillars and a gable1 becoming in this manner1 with no loss of real standing room1 a building inside a building2 the operations1 furthermore1 implying a certain amount of wetting and slopping1 the dryness of the rest of the sacristy1 and particularly the idea of its dryness 7so necessary where precious stuffs and metal vessels are kept7 had to be secured not merely by covering a piece of wainscot and floor with tiles1 but by building the whole little enclosure 7all save the marble trough7 of white and coloured majolica1 which seemed to say to the oaken and walnut presses1 to the great table covered with vestments3 ,don't be afraid1 you shall not feel a drop from all this washing and rinsing4 ,so far1 therefore1 we have got for our lavabo-trough a shallow recess1 lined and paved with tiles1 and cut off from the frescoed and panelled walls by two pilasters and a rounded gable1 of tile work also1 the general proportions being given by the necessity of two monks or two acolytes washing the sacred vessels at the same moment4 ,the word sacred now leads us to another determining necessity of our work of art4 ,for this place1 where the lavabo stands1 is actually consecrated2 it has an altar2 and it is in it that take place all the preparations and preliminaries for the most holy and most magnificent of rites4 ,the sacristy1 like the church1 is moreover an offering to heaven2 and the lavabo1 since it has to exist1 can exist with fitness only if it also be offered1 and made worthy of offering1 to heaven4 ,besides1 therefore1 those general proportions which have had to be made harmonious for the satisfaction not merely of the builder1 but of the people whose eye rests on them daily and hourly2 besides the shapeliness and dignity which we insist upon in all things needful2 we further require of this object that it should have a certain superabundance of grace1 that it should have colour1 elaborate pattern1 what we call ornament2 details which will show that it is a gift1 and make it a fit companion for the magnificent embroideries and damasks1 the costly and exquisite embossed and enamelled vessels which inhabit that place2 and a worthy spectator of the sacred pageantry which issues from this sacristy4 ,the little tiled recess1 the trough and the little piece of architecture which frames it all1 shall not only be practically useful1 they shall also be spiritually useful as the expression of men's reverence and devotion4 ,to whom8 ,why1 to the dear mother of ,christ and her gracious angels1 whom we place1 in effigy1 on the gable1 white figures on a blue ground4 ,and since this humble thing is also an offering1 what can be more appropriate than to hang it round with votive garlands1 such as we bind to mark the course of processions1 and which we garnish 7filling the gaps of glossy bay and spruce pine branches7 with the finest fruits of the earth1 lemons1 and pears1 and pomegranates1 a grateful tithe to the ,powers who make the orchards fruitful4 ,but1 since such garlands wither and such fruits decay1 and there must be no withering or decaying in the sanctuary1 the bay leaves and the pine branches1 and the lemons and pears and pomegranates1 shall be of imperishable material1 majolica coloured like reality1 and majolica1 moreover1 which leads us back1 pleasantly1 to the humble necessity of the trough1 the spurting and slopping of water1 which we have secured against by that tiled floor and wainscot4 ,but here another suggestion arises4 ,water is necessary and infinitely pleasant in a hot country and a hot place like this domed sacristy4 ,but we have very1 oh1 so very1 little of it in ,florence6 ,we cannot even1 however great our love and reverence1 offer ,our ,lady and the ,angels the thinnest perennial spurt2 we must let out the water only for bare use1 and turn the tap off instantly after4 ,there is something very disappointing in this2 and the knowledge of that dearth of water1 of those two taps symbolical of chronic drought1 is positively disheartening4 ,beautiful proportions1 delicate patterns1 gracious effigies of the ,madonna and the angels we can have1 and also the most lovely garlands4 ,but we cannot have a fountain4 ,for it is useless calling this a fountain1 this poor little trough with two taps4444 ,but you shall have a fountain6 ,giovanni della ,robbia answers in his heart2 or1 at least1 you shall feel as if you had one6 ,and here we may witness1 if we use the eyes of the spirit as well as of the body1 one of the strangest miracles of art1 when art is married to a purpose4 ,the idea of a fountain1 the desirability of water1 becomes1 unconsciously1 dominant in the artist's mind2 and under its sway1 as under the divining rod1 there trickle and well up every kind of thought1 of feeling1 about water2 until the images thereof1 visible1 audible1 tactile1 unite and steep and submerge every other notion4 ,nothing deliberate2 and1 in all probability1 nothing even conscious2 those watery thoughts merely lapping dreamily round1 like a half-heard murmur of rivers1 the waking work with which his mind is busy4 ,nothing deliberate or conscious1 but all the more inevitable and efficacious1 this multifold suggestion of water4 ,and behold the result1 the witness of the miracle3 ,in the domed sacristy1 the fountain cooling this sultry afternoon of ,june as it has cooled four hundred ,junes and more since set up1 arch and pilasters and statued gables hung with garlands by that particular ,robbia2 cooling and refreshing us with its empty trough and closed taps1 without a drop of real water6 ,for it is made of water itself1 or the essence1 the longing memory of water4 ,it is water1 this shining pale amber and agate and grass-green tiling and wainscotting1 starred at regular intervals by wide-spread patterns as of floating weeds2 water which makes the glossiness of the great leaf-garlands and the juiciness of the smooth lemons and cool pears and pomegranates2 water which has washed into ineffable freshness this piece of blue heaven within the gable2 and water1 you would say1 as of some shining fountain in the dusk1 which has gathered together into the white glistening bodies and draperies which stand out against that newly-washed ther4 ,all this is evident1 and yet insufficient to account for our feelings4 ,the subtlest and most potent half of the spell is hidden2 and we guess it only little by little4 ,in this little ,grecian tabernacle1 every line save the bare verticals and horizontals is a line suggestive of trickling and flowing and bubbles2 a line suggested by water and water's movement2 and every light and shadow is a light or a shadow suggested by water's brightness or transparent gloom2 it is water which winds in tiny meanders of pattern along the shallow shining pillars1 and water which beads and dimples along the shady cornice4 ,the fountain has been thought out in longing for water1 and every detail of it has been touched by the memory thereof4 ,water6 they wanted water1 and they should have it4 ,by a coincidence almost1 ,giovanni della ,robbia has revealed the secret which himself most probably never guessed1 in the little landscape of lilac and bluish tiles with which he filled up the arch behind the taps4 ,some ,tuscan scene1 think you8 ,hills and a few cypresses1 such as his contemporaries used for background8 ,not a bit4 ,a great lake1 an estuary1 almost a sea1 with sailing ships1 a flooded country1 such as no ,florentine had ever seen with mortal eyes2 but such as1 in his longing for water1 he must have dreamed about4 ,thus the landscape sums up this dream1 this realisation of every cool and trickling sight and touch and sound which fills that sacristy as with a spray of watery thoughts4 ,in this manner1 with perhaps but a small effort of invention and a small output of fancy1 and without departing in the least from the general proportions and shapes and ornaments common in his day1 has an artist of the second order left us one of the most exquisitely shapely and poetical of works1 merely by following the suggestions of the use1 the place1 the religious message and that humble human wish for water where there was none4 ,,vii4 ,it is discouraging and humiliating to think 7and therefore we think it very seldom7 that nowadays we artists1 painters of portraits and landscapes1 builders and decorators of houses1 pianists1 singers1 fiddlers1 and1 quite as really though less obviously1 writers1 are all of us indirectly helping to keep up the greed which makes the privileged and possessing classes cling to their monopolies and accumulate their possessions4 ,bitter to realise that1 disinterested as we must mostly be 7for good artistic work means talent1 talent preference1 and preference disinterestedness71 we are1 as ,ruskin has already told us1 but the parasites of parasites4 ,for of the pleasure-giving things we make1 what portion really gives any pleasure1 or comes within reach of giving pleasure1 to those whose hands as a whole class 7as distinguished from the brain of an occasional individual of the other class7 produce the wealth we all of us have to live1 or try to live1 upon8 ,of course there is the seeming consolation that1 like the ,reynoldses and ,gainsboroughs1 the ,watteaus and the ,fragonards of the past1 the ,millais and the ,sargents 7charming sitters1 or the reverse1 and all71 and the ,monets and ,brabazons1 will sooner or later become what we call public property in public galleries4 ,but1 meanwhile1 the ,reynoldses and ,gainsboroughs and ,watteaus and ,fragonards themselves1 though the legal property of everybody1 are really reserved for those same classes who own their modern equivalents1 simply because those alone have the leisure and culture necessary to enjoy them4 ,the case is not really different for the one or two seemingly more independent and noble artistic individualities1 the great decorators like ,watts or ,besnard2 their own work1 like their own conscience1 is indeed the purer and stronger for their intention of painting not for smoking-rooms and private collections1 but for places where all men can see and understand2 but then all men cannot see--they are busy or too tired--and they cannot understand1 because the language of art has become foreign to them4 ,the same applies to composers and to writers3 music and books are cheap enough1 but the familiarity with musical forms and literary styles1 without which music and books are mere noise and waste-paper1 is practically unattainable to the classes who till the ground1 extract its stone and minerals1 and make1 with their hands1 every material thing 7save works of art7 that we possess4 ,indeed1 one additional reason why1 ever since the eighteenth century1 art has been set up as the opposite of useful work1 and explained as a form of play 7though its technical difficulties grew more exorbitant and exhausting year by year7 is probably that1 in our modern civilisations1 art has been obviously produced for the benefit of the classes who virtually do not work1 and by artists born or bred to belong to those idle classes themselves4 ,for it is a fact that1 as the artist nowadays finds his public only among the comparatively idle 7or1 at all events1 those whose activity distributes wealth in their own favour rather than creates it71 so also he requires to be1 more and more1 in sympathy with their mode of living and thinking3 the friend1 the client1 most often the son1 of what we call 7with terrible unperceived irony in the words7 leisured folk4 ,as to the folk who have no leisure 7and therefore1 according to our modern sthetics1 no art because no play7 they can receive from us privileged persons 7when privilege happens to be worth its keep7 no benefits save very practical ones4 ,the only kind of work founded on leisure--which does in our day not merely increase the advantages of already well-off persons1 but actually filter down to help the unleisured producers of our wealth--is not the work of the artist1 but of the doctor1 the nurse1 the inventor1 the man of science2 who knows8 ,perhaps almost of the philosopher1 the historian1 the sociologist3 the clearer away of convenient error1 the unmaker and remaker of consciences4 ,as ,i began by saying1 it is not very comfortable1 nowadays1 to be an artist1 and yet possess a mind and heart4 ,and two of the greatest artists of our times1 ,ruskin and ,tolstoi1 have done their utmost to make it more uncomfortable still4 ,so that it is natural for our artists to decide that art exists only for art's own sake1 since it cannot nowadays be said to exist for the sake of anything else4 ,and as to us1 privileged persons1 with leisure and culture fitting us for artistic enjoyment1 it is even more natural to consider art as a kind of play3 play in which we get refreshed after somebody else's work4 ,,viii4 ,and are we really much refreshed8 ,watching the face and manner1 listless1 perfunctory or busily attentive1 of our fellow-creatures in galleries and exhibitions1 and in great measure in concert rooms and theatres1 one would imagine that1 on the contrary1 they were fulfilling a social duty or undergoing a pedagogical routine4 ,the object of the proceeding would rather seem to be negative2 one might judge that they had come lest their neighbours should suspect that they were somewhere else1 or perhaps lest their neighbours should come instead1 according to our fertile methods of society intercourse and of competitive examinations4 ,at any rate1 they do not look as if they came to be refreshed1 or as if they had taken the right steps towards such spiritual refreshment3 the faces and manner of children in a playground1 of cricketers on a village green1 of ,sunday trippers on the beach1 or of ,german townsfolk walking to the beerhouse or caf in the deep fragrant woods1 present a different appearance4 ,and if we examine into our own feelings1 we shall find that even for the most art-loving of us the hours spent in galleries of pictures and statues1 or listening to music at concerts1 are largely stolen from our real life of real interests and real pleasures2 that there enters into them a great proportion of effort and boredom2 at the very best that we do not enjoy 7nor expect to enjoy7 them at all in the same degree as a good dinner in good company1 or a walk in bright1 bracing weather1 let alone1 of course1 fishing1 or hunting1 or digging and weeding our little garden4 ,of course1 if we are really artistic1 and if we have the power of analysing our own feelings and motives1 we shall know that the gallery or the concert afford occasion for laying in a store of pleasurable impressions1 to be enjoyed at the right moment and in the right mood later3 outlines of pictures1 washes of colour1 grouped masses of sculpture1 bars of melody1 clang of especial chords or timbre combinations1 and even the vague sthetic emotion1 the halo surrounding blurred recollections of sights and sounds4 ,and knowing this1 we are content that the act of garnering1 of preparing1 for such future enjoyment1 should lack any steady or deep pleasurableness about itself4 ,but1 thinking over the matter1 there seems something wrong1 derogatory to art and humiliating to ourselves1 in this admission that the actual presence of the work of art1 sometimes the masterpiece1 should give us the minimum1 and not the maximum1 of our artistic enjoyment4 ,and comparing the usual dead level of such merely potential pleasure with certain rare occasions when we have enjoyed art more at the moment than afterwards1 quite vividly1 warmly and with the proper reluctant clutch at the divine minute as it passes2 making this comparison1 we can1 ,i think1 guess at the nature of the mischief and the possibility of its remedy4 ,examining into our experience1 we shall find that1 while our lack of enjoyment 7our state of sthetic aridity1 to borrow the expression of religious mystics7 had coincided with a deliberate intention to see or hear works of art1 and a consequent clearing away of other claims1 and on our attention1 in fact1 to an effort made more or less in vacuo2 on the contrary1 our ,faust-moments 7,stay1 thou art beautiful67 of plenitude and consummation1 have always come when our activity was already flowing1 our attention stimulated1 and when1 so to speak1 the special artistic impressions were caught up into our other interests1 and woven by them into our life4 ,we can all recall unexpected delights like ,hazlitt's in the odd volume of ,rousseau found on the window-seat1 and discussed1 with his savoury supper1 in the roadside inn1 after his long day's pleasant tramp4 ,indeed1 this preparing of the artistic impression by many others1 or focussing of others by it1 accounts for the keenness of our sthetic pleasure when on a journey2 we are thoroughly alive1 and the seen or heard thing of beauty lives into1 us1 or we into it 7there is an important psychological law1 a little too abstract for this moment of expansiveness1 called the ,law of the ,summation of ,stimuli74 ,the truth of what ,i say is confirmed by the frequent fact that the work of art which gives us this full and vivid pleasure 7actually refreshing6 for here1 at last1 is refreshment67 is either fragmentary or by no means first-rate4 ,we have remained arid1 hard1 incapable of absorbing1 while whole ,joachim quartets flowed and rippled all round1 but never into1 us2 and then1 some other time1 our soul seems to have drunk up 7every fibre blissfully steeping7 a few bars of a sonata 7it was ,beethoven's #ajth violin1 and they were stumbling through it for the first time7 heard accidentally while walking up and down under an open window4 ,it is the same with painting and sculpture4 ,i shall never forget the exquisite poetry and loveliness of that ,matteo di ,giovanni1 ,the ,giving of the ,virgin's ,girdle1 when ,i saw it for the first time1 in the chapel of that villa1 once a monastery1 near ,siena4 ,even through the haze of twenty years 7like those delicate blue ,december mists which lay between the sunny hills7 ,i can see that picture1 illumined piecemeal by the travelling taper on the sacristan's reed1 far more distinctly than ,i see it to-day with bodily eyes in the ,national ,gallery4 ,indeed1 it is no exaggeration to say that where it hangs in that gallery it has not once given me one half-second of real pleasure4 ,it is a third-rate picture now2 but even the masterpieces1 ,perugino's big fresco1 ,titian's ,bacchus and ,ariadne1 ,pier della ,francesca's ,baptism2 have they ever given me the complete and steady delight which that mediocre ,sienese gave me at the end of the wintry drive1 in the faintly illumined chapel8 ,more often than not1 as ,coleridge puts it1 ,i have seen1 not felt1 how beautiful they are4 ,but1 apart even from fortunate circumstances or enhancing activities1 we have all of us experienced how much better we see or hear a work of art with the mere dull help of some historical question to elucidate or technical matter to examine into2 we have been able to follow a piece of music by watching for some peculiarity of counterpoint or excellence or fault of execution2 and our attention has been carried into a picture or statue by trying to make out whether a piece of drapery was repainted or an arm restored4 ,indeed1 the irrelevant literary programme of concerts and all that art historical lore 7information about things of no importance1 or none to us7 conveyed in dreary monographs and hand-books1 all of them perform a necessary function nowadays1 that of bringing our idle and alien minds into some sort of relation of business with the works of art which we should otherwise1 nine times out of ten1 fail really to approach4 ,and here ,i would suggest that this necessity of being1 in some way1 busy about beautiful things in order thoroughly to perceive them1 may represent some sterner necessity of life in general2 art being1 in this as in so many other cases1 significantly typical of what is larger than itself4 ,can we get the full taste of pleasure sought for pleasure's own sake8 ,and is not happiness in life1 like beauty in art1 rather a means than an aim3 the condition of going on1 the replenishing of force2 in short1 the thing by whose help1 not for the sake of which1 we feel and act and live8 ,,ix4 ,beauty is an especial quality in visible or audible shapes and movements which imposes on our soul a certain rhythm and pattern of feeling entirely sui generis1 but unified1 harmonious1 and1 in a manner1 consummate4 ,beauty is a power in our life1 because1 however intermittent its action and however momentary1 it makes us live1 by a kind of sympathy with itself1 a life fuller1 more vivid1 and at the same time more peaceful4 ,but1 as the word sympathy1 with-feeling--7,einfhlen1 feeling into1 the ,germans happily put it7--as the word sympathy is intended to suggest1 this subduing and yet liberating1 this enlivening and pacifying power of beautiful form over our feelings is exercised only when our feelings enter1 and are absorbed into1 the form we perceive2 so that 7very much as in the case of sympathy with human vicissitudes7 we participate in the supposed life of the form while in reality lending our life to it4 ,just as in our relations with our fellow-men1 so also in our subtler but even more potent relations with the appearances of things and actions1 our heart can be touched1 purified1 and satisfied only just in proportion as we give our heart4 ,and even as it is possible to perceive other human beings and to adjust our action 7sometimes heartlessly enough7 to such qualities in them as we find practically important to ourselves1 without putting out one scrap of sympathy with their own existence as felt by them2 so also it is possible to recognise things and actions1 to become rapidly aware of such of their peculiarities as most frequently affect us practically1 and to consequently adjust our behaviour1 without giving our sympathy to their form1 without entering into and living into those forms2 and in so far it is possible for us to remain indifferent to those forms' quality of beauty or ugliness1 just as1 in the hurry of practical life1 we remain indifferent to the stuff our neighbours' souls are made of4 ,this rapid1 partial1 superficial1 perfunctory mode of dealing with what we see and hear constitutes the ordinary1 constant1 and absolutely indispensable act of recognising objects and actions1 of spotting their qualities and twigging their meaning3 an act necessarily tending to more and more abbreviation and rapidity and superficiality1 to a sort of shorthand which reduces what has to be understood1 and enables us to pass immediately to understanding something else2 according to that law of necessarily saving time and energy4 ,and so we rush on1 recognising1 naming1 spotting1 twigging1 answering1 using1 or parrying2 we need not fully see the complete appearance of the word we read1 of the man we meet1 of the street we run along1 of the water we drink1 the fire we light1 the adversary whom we pursue or whom we evade2 and in the selfsame manner we need not fully see the form of the building of which we say ,this is a ,gothic cathedral--of the picture of which we say ,christ before ,pilate--or of the piece of music of which we say ,a cheerful waltz by ,strauss or ,a melancholy adagio by ,beethoven4 ,now it is this fragmentary1 superficial attention which we most often give to art2 and giving thus little1 we find that art gives us little1 perhaps nothing1 in return4 ,for understand3 you can be utterly perfunctory towards a work of art without hurrying away from in front of it1 or setting about some visible business in its presence4 ,standing ten minutes before a picture or sitting an hour at a concert1 with fixed sight or tense hearing1 you may yet be quite hopelessly inattentive if1 instead of following the life of the visible or audible forms1 and living yourself into their pattern and rhythm1 you wander off after dramatic or sentimental associations suggested by the picture's subject2 or if you let yourself be hypnotised1 as pious ,wagnerians are apt to be1 into monotonous over response 7and over and over again response7 to the merely emotional stimulation of the sounds4 ,the activity of the artist's soul has been in vain for you1 since you do not let your soul follow its tracks through the work of art2 he has not created for you1 because you have failed to create his work afresh in vivid contemplation4 ,but attention cannot be forced on to any sort of contemplation1 or at least it cannot remain1 steady and abiding1 by any act of forcing4 ,attention1 to be steady1 must be held by the attraction of the thing attended to2 and1 to be spontaneous and easy1 must be carried by some previous interest within the reach of that attractiveness4 ,above all1 attention requires that its ways should have been made smooth by repetition of similar experience2 it is excluded1 rebutted by the dead wall of utter novelty2 for seeing1 hearing1 understanding is interpreting the unknown by the known1 assimilation in the literal sense also of rendering similar the new to the less new4 ,this will explain why it is useless trying to enjoy a totally unfamiliar kind of art3 as soon expect to take pleasure in dancing a dance you do not know1 and whose rhythm and step you fail as yet to follow4 ,and it is not only music1 as ,nietzsche said1 but all art1 that is but a kind of dancing1 a definite rhythmic carrying and moving of the soul4 ,and for this reason there can be no artistic enjoyment without preliminary initiation and training4 ,art cannot be enjoyed without initiation and training4 ,i repeat this statement1 desiring to impress it on the reader1 because1 by a coincidence of misunderstanding1 it happens to constitute the weightiest accusation in the whole of ,tolstoi's very terrible 7and1 in part1 terribly justified7 recent arraignment of art4 ,for of what use is the restorative and refreshing power1 this quality called beauty1 if the quality itself cannot be recognised save after previous training8 ,and what moral dignity1 nay1 what decent innocence1 can there be in a kind of relaxation from which lack of initiation excludes the vast majority of men1 the majority which really labours1 and therefore has a real claim to relaxation and refreshment8 ,this question of ,tolstoi's arises from that same limiting of examination to a brief1 partial1 and1 as it happens1 most transitional and chaotic present1 which has given us that cut-and-dried distinction between work and play2 and1 indeed1 the two misconceptions are very closely connected4 ,for even as our present economic system of production for exchange rather than for consumption has made us conceive work as work done under compulsion for someone else1 and play as play1 with no result even to ourselves2 so also has the economic system which employs the human hand and eye merely as a portion of a complicated1 monotonously working piece of machinery1 so also has our present order of mechanical and individual production divided the world into a small minority which sees and feels what it is about1 and a colossal majority which has no perception1 no conception1 and1 consequently1 no preferences attached to the objects it is employed 7by the methods of division of labour7 to produce1 so to speak1 without seeing them4 ,tolstoi has realised that this is the present condition of human labour1 and his view of it has been corrected neither by historical knowledge nor by psychological observation4 ,he has shown us art1 as it nowadays exists1 divided and specialised into two or three fine arts1 each of which employs exceptional and highly trained talent in the production of objects so elaborate and costly1 so lacking in all utility1 that they can be possessed only by the rich few2 objects1 moreover1 so unfamiliar in form and in symbol that only the idle can learn to enjoy 7or pretend to enjoy7 them after a special preliminary initiation and training4 ,x4 ,initiation and training1 we have returned to those wretched words1 for we also had recognised that without initiation and training there could be no real enjoyment of art4 ,but1 looking not at this brief1 transitional1 and topsy-turvey present1 but at the centuries and centuries which have evolved1 not only art1 but the desire and habit thereof1 we have seen what ,tolstoi refused to see1 namely1 that wherever and whenever 7that is to say1 everywhere and at all times save these present ,european days7 art has existed spontaneously1 it has brought with it that initiation and training4 ,the initiation and training1 the habit of understanding given qualities of form1 the discrimination and preference thereof1 have come1 ,i maintain1 as a result of practical utility4 ,or rather3 out of practical utility has arisen the art itself1 and the need for it4 ,the attention1 the familiarity which made beauty enjoyable had previously made beauty necessary4 ,it was because the earthenware lamp1 the bronze pitcher1 the little rude household idols displayed the same arrangements of lines and surfaces1 presented the same patterns and features1 embodied1 in a word1 the same visible rhythms of being1 that the ,greeks could understand without being taught the temples and statues of ,athens1 ,delphi or ,olympia4 ,it was because the special form qualities of ogival art 7so subtle in movement1 unstable in balance and poignant in emotion that a whole century of critical study has scarce sufficed to render them familiar to us7 were present in every village tower1 every window coping1 every chair-back1 in every pattern carved1 painted1 stencilled or woven during the ,gothic period2 it was because of this that every artisan of the ,middle ,ages could appreciate less consciously than we1 but far more deeply1 the loveliness and the wonder of the great cathedrals4 ,nay1 even in our own times we can see how1 through the help of all the cheapest and most perishable household wares1 the poorest ,japanese is able to enjoy that special peculiarity and synthesis of line and colour and perspective which strikes even initiated ,westerns as so exotic1 far-fetched and almost wilfully unintelligible4 ,i have said that thanks to the objects and sights of everyday use and life the qualities of art could be perceived and enjoyed4 ,it may be that it was thanks to them that art had any qualities and ever existed at all4 ,for1 however much the temple1 cathedral1 statue1 fresco1 the elaborate bronze or lacquer or coloured print1 may have reacted on the form1 the proportions and linear rhythms and surface arrangements1 of all common useful objects2 it was in the making of these common useful objects 7first making by man of genius and thousandfold minute adaptation by respectful mediocrity7 that the form qualities came to exist4 ,one may at least hazard this supposition in the face of the extreme unlikeliness that the complexity and perfection of the great works of art could have been obtained solely in works so necessarily rare and few2 and that the particular forms constituting each separate style could have originated save under the repeated suggestion of everyday use and technique4 ,and can we not point to the patterns grown out of the necessities of weaving or basket-making1 the shapes started by the processes of metal soldering or clay squeezing2 let alone the innumerable categories of form manifestly derived from the mere convenience of handling or using1 of standing1 pouring1 holding1 hanging up or folding8 ,this much is certain1 that only the manifold application of given artistic forms in useful common objects is able to account for that very slow1 gradual and unconscious alteration of them which constitutes the spontaneous evolution of artistic form2 and only such manifold application could have given that almost automatic certainty of taste which allowed the great art of the past to continue perpetually changing1 through centuries and centuries1 and adapting itself over immense geographical areas to every variation of climate1 topography1 mode of life1 or religion4 ,unless the forms of ancient art had been safely embodied in a hundred modest crafts1 how could they have undergone the imperceptible and secure metamorphosis from ,egyptian to ,hellenic1 from ,greek to ,grco-,roman1 and thence1 from ,byzantine1 have passed1 as one great half1 into ,italian medival art8 or how1 without such infinite and infinitely varied practice of minute adaptation to humble needs1 could ,gothic have given us works so different as the ,french cathedrals1 the ,ducal ,palace1 the tiny chapel at ,pisa1 and remained equally great and wonderful1 equally ,gothic1 in the ornament of a buckle as in the porch of ,amiens or of ,reims8 ,beauty is born of attention1 as happiness is born of life1 because attention is rendered difficult and painful by lack of harmony1 even as life is clogged1 diminished or destroyed by pain4 ,and therefore1 when there ceases to exist a close familiarity with visible objects or actions2 when the appearance of things is passed over in perfunctory and partial use 7as we see it in all mechanical and divided labour72 when the attention of all men is not continually directed to shape through purpose1 then there will cease to be spontaneous beauty and the spontaneous appreciation of beauty1 because there will be no need for either4 ,beauty of music does not exist for the stone-deaf1 nor beauty of painting for the purblind2 but beauty of no kind whatever1 nor in any art1 can really exist for the inattentive1 for the over-worked or the idle4 ,,xi4 ,that music should be so far the most really alive of all our modern arts is a fact which confirms all ,i have argued in the foregoing pages4 ,for music is of all arts the one which insists on most co-operation on the part of its votaries4 ,requiring to be performed 7ninety-nine times out of a hundred7 in order to be enjoyed1 it has made merely musical people into performers1 however humble2 and has by this means called forth a degree of attention1 of familiarity1 of practical effort1 which makes the art enter in some measure into life1 and in that measure1 become living4 ,to play an instrument1 however humbly1 to read at sight1 or to sing1 if only in a choir1 is something wholly different from lounging in a gallery or wandering on a round of cathedrals3 it means acquired knowledge1 effort1 comparison1 self-restraint1 and all the realities of manipulation2 quite apart even from trying to read the composer's intentions1 there is in learning to strike the keys with a particular part of the finger-tips1 or in dealing out the breath and watching intonation and timbre in one's own voice1 an output of care and skill akin to those of the smith1 the potter or the glass blower3 all this has a purpose and is work1 and brings with it disinterested work's reward1 love4 ,to find the analogy of this co-operation in the arts addressing themselves to the eye1 we require1 nowadays1 to leave the great number who merely enjoy 7or ought to enjoy7 painting1 sculpture or architecture1 and seek1 now that craft is entirely divorced from art1 among the small minority which creates1 or tries to create4 ,artistic enjoyment exists nowadays mainly among the class of executive artists2 and perhaps it is for this very reason1 and because all chance of seeing or making shapely things has ceased in other pursuits1 that the fine arts are so lamentably overstocked2 the man or woman who would have been satisfied with playing the piano enough to read a score or sing sufficiently to take part in a chorus1 has1 in the case of other arts1 to undergo the training of a painter1 sculptor or art critic1 and often to delude himself or herself with grotesque ambitions in one of these walks4 ,,xii4 ,be this as it may1 and making the above happy and honourable exception in favour of music1 it is no exaggeration to say that in our time it is only artists who get real pleasure out of art1 because it is only artists who approach art from the side of work and bring to it work's familiar attention and habitual energy4 ,indeed1 paradoxical as it may sound1 art has remained alive during the nineteenth century1 and will remain alive during the twentieth1 only and solely because there has been a large public of artists4 ,of artists1 ,i would add1 of quite incomparable vigour and elasticity of genius1 and of magnificent disinterestedness and purity of heart4 ,for let us remember that they have worked without having the sympathy of their fellow-men1 and worked without the aid and comfort of allied crafts3 that they have created while cut off from tradition1 unhelped by the manifold suggestiveness of useful purpose or necessary message2 separated entirely from the practical and emotional life of the world at large2 tiny little knots of voluntary outlaws from a civilisation which could not understand them2 and1 whatever worldly honours may have come to mock their later years1 they have been weakened and embittered by early solitude of spirit4 ,no artistic genius of the past has been put through such cruel tests1 has been kept on such miserably short commons1 as have our artists of the last hundred years1 from ,turner to ,rossetti and ,watts1 from ,manet and ,degas and ,whistler to ,rodin and ,albert ,besnard4 ,and if their work has shown lapses and failings2 if it has been1 alas1 lacking at times in health or joy or dignity or harmony1 let us ask ourselves what the greatest individualities of ,antiquity and the ,middle ,ages would have produced if cut off from the tradition of the ,past and the suggestion of the ,present--if reduced to exercise art outside the atmosphere of life2 and let us look with wonder and gratitude on the men who have been able to achieve great art even for only art's own sake4 ,,xiii4 ,no better illustration of this could be found than the sections of the ,paris ,exhibition which came under the heading of ,decorative ,art4 ,decoration4 ,but decoration of what8 ,in reality of nothing4 ,all the objects--from the jewellery and enamels to the furniture and hangings--which this decorative art is supposed to decorate1 are the merest excuse and sham4 ,not one of them is the least useful1 or at all events useful once it is decorated4 ,and nobody wants it to be useful4 ,what is wanted is a pretext1 for doing art on the side of the artist1 for buying costly things on the side of the public4 ,and behind this pretext there is absolutely no genuine demand for any definite object serving any definite use2 none of that insistence 7which we see in the past7 that the shape1 material1 and colour should be the very best for practical purposes2 and of that other insistence1 marvellously blended with the requirements of utility1 that the shape1 material and colour should also be as beautiful as possible4 ,the invaluable suggestions of real practical purpose1 the organic dignity of integrated habit and necessity1 the safety of tradition1 the spiritual weightiness of genuine message1 all these elements of creative power are lacking4 ,and in default of them we see a great amount of artistic talent1 artificially fed and excited by the teaching and the example of every possible past or present art1 exhausting itself in attempts to invent1 to express1 to be something1 anything1 so long as it is new4 ,hence forms gratuitous1 without organic quality or logical cogency1 pulled about1 altered and re-altered1 carried to senseless finish and then wilfully blurred4 ,hence that sickly imitation1 in a brand-new piece of work1 of the effects of time1 weather1 and of every manner of accident or deterioration3 the pottery and enamels reproducing the mere patina of age or the trickles of bad firing2 the relief work in marble or metal which looks as if it had been rolled for centuries in the sea1 or corroded by acids under ground4 ,and the total effect1 increased by all these methods of wilful blunting and blurring1 is an art without stamina1 tired1 impotent1 short-lived1 while produced by an excessive expense of talent and effort of invention4 ,for here we have the mischief3 all the artistic force is spent by the art in merely keeping alive2 and there is no reserve energy for living with serenity and depth of feeling4 ,the artist wears himself out1 to a great extent1 in wondering what he shall do 7there being no practical reason for doing one thing more than another1 or indeed anything at all71 instead of applying his power1 with steady1 habitual certainty of purpose and efficiency of execution1 to doing it in the very best way4 ,hence1 despite this outlay of inventive force1 or rather in direct consequence thereof1 there is none of that completeness and measure and congruity1 that restrained exuberance of fancy1 that more than adequate carrying out1 that all-round harmony1 which are possible only when the artist is altering to his individual taste some shape already furnished by tradition or subduing to his pleasure some problem insisted on by practical necessity4 ,meanwhile1 all round these galleries crammed with useless objects barely pretending to any utility1 round these pavilions of the ,decorative ,arts1 the ,exhibition exhibits 7most instructive of all its shows7 samples of the most marvellous indifference not merely to beauty1 peace and dignity1 but to the most rudimentary sthetic and moral comfort4 ,for all the really useful things which men take seriously because they increase wealth and power1 because they save time and overcome distance2 all these useful things have the nave and colossal ugliness of rudimentary animals1 or of abortions1 of everything hurried untimely into existence3 machines1 sheds1 bridges1 trams1 motor-cars3 not one line corrected1 not one angle smoothed1 for the sake of the eye1 of the nerves of the spectator4 ,and all of it1 both decorative futility and cynically hideous practicality 7let alone the various exotic raree shows from distant countries or more distant centuries7 expect to be enjoyed after a jostle at the doors and a scurry along the crowded corridors1 and to the accompaniment of every rattling and shrieking and jarring sound4 ,for mankind in our days intends to revel in the most complicated and far-fetched kinds of beauty while cultivating convenient callousness to the most elementary and atrocious sorts of ugliness4 ,the art itself reveals it2 for even in its superfine isolation and existence for its own sake only1 art cannot escape its secondary mission of expressing and recording the spirit of its times4 ,these elaborate sthetic baubles of the ,decorative ,arts are full of quite incredibly gross barbarism4 ,and1 even as the iron chest1 studded with nails1 or the walnut press1 unadorned save by the intrinsic beauty and dignity of their proportions1 and the tender irregularities of their hammered surface1 the subtle bevelling of their panels2 even as these humble objects in some dark corner of an ,italian castle or on the mud floor of a ,breton cottage1 symbolise in my mind the most intense artistic sensitiveness and reverence of the ,past2 so1 here at this ,exhibition1 my impressions of contemporary over-refinement and callousness are symbolised in a certain cupboard1 visibly incapable of holding either linen or garments or crockery or books1 of costly and delicately polished wood1 but shaped like a packing-case1 and displaying with marvellous impartiality two exquisitely cast and chased doorguard plates of far-fetched1 many-tinted alloys of silver1 and--a set of hinges1 a lock and a key1 such as the village ironmonger supplies in blue paper parcels of a dozen4 ,a mere coincidence1 an accident1 you may object2 an unlucky oversight which cannot be fairly alleged against the art of our times4 ,pardon me3 there may be coincidences and accidents in other matters1 but there are none in art2 because the essence of art is to sacrifice even the finest irrelevancies1 to subordinate the most refractory details1 to subdue coincidence and accident into seeming purpose and harmony4 ,and whatever our practical activity1 in its identification of time and money1 may allow itself in the way of scamping and of shoddy--art can never plead an oversight1 because art1 in so far as it is art1 represents those organic and organised preferences in the domain of form1 those imperative and stringent demands for harmony1 which see everything1 feel everything1 and know no law or motive save their own complete satisfaction4 ,art for art's sake6 ,we see it nowhere revealed so clearly as in the ,exhibition1 where it masks as ,decorative ,art4 ,art answering no claim of practical life and obeying no law of contemplative preference1 art without root1 without organism1 without logical reason or moral decorum1 art for mere buying and selling1 art which expresses only self-assertion on the part of the seller1 and self-satisfaction on the part of the buyer4 ,a walk through this ,exhibition is an object-lesson in a great many things besides sthetics2 it forces one to ask a good many of ,tolstoi's angriest questions2 but it enables one also1 if duly familiar with the art of past times1 to answer them in a manner different from ,tolstoi's4 ,one carries away the fact1 which implies so many others1 that not one of these objects is otherwise than expensive2 expensive1 necessarily and intentionally1 from the rarity both of the kind of skill and of the kind of material2 these things are reserved by their price as well as their uselessness1 for a small number of idle persons4 ,they have no connection with life1 either by penetrating1 by serviceableness1 deep into that of the individual2 or by spreading1 by cheapness1 over a wide surface of the life of the nations4 ,,xiv4 ,the moment has now come for that inevitable question1 with which friendly readers unintentionally embarrass1 and hostile ones purposely interrupt1 any exposition of mal-adjustment in the order of the universe3 ,but what remedy do you propose8 ,mal-adjustments of a certain gravity are not set right by proposable arrangements3 they are remedied by the fulness and extent of the feeling against them1 which employs for its purposes and compels into its service all the unexpected and incalculable coincidences and accidents which would otherwise be wasted1 counteracted or even used by some different kind of feeling4 ,and the use that a writer can be--even a ,ruskin or a ,tolstoi--is limited not to devising programmes of change 7mere symptoms often that some unprogrammed change is preparing71 but to nursing the strength of that great motor which creates its own ways and instruments3 impatience with evil conditions1 desire for better4 ,a cessation of the special sthetic mal-adjustment of our times1 by which art is divorced from life and life from art1 is as difficult to foretell in detail as the new-adjustment between labour and the other elements of production which will1 most probably1 have to precede it4 ,a healthy artistic life has indeed existed in the past through centuries of social wrongness as great as our own1 and even greater2 indeed1 such artistic life1 more or less continuous until our day1 attests the existence of great mitigations in the world's former wretchedness 7such as individuality in labour1 spirit of co-operative solidarity1 religious feeling3 but perhaps the most important alleviations lie far deeper and more hidden7--mitigations without which there would not have been happiness and strength enough to produce art2 nor1 for the matter of that1 to produce what was then the future1 including ourselves and our advantages and disadvantages4 ,the existence of art has by no means implied1 as ,ruskin imagined1 with his teleological optimism and tendency to believe in ,eden and banishment from ,eden1 that people once lived in a kind of millennium2 it merely shows that1 however far from millennial their condition1 there was stability enough to produce certain alleviations1 and notably the alleviations without which art cannot exist1 and the alleviations which art itself affords4 ,it is not therefore the badness of our present social arrangements 7in many ways far less bad than those of the past7 which is responsible for our lack of all really vital1 deep-seated1 widely spread and happiness-giving art2 but merely the feature in this latter-day badness which1 after all1 is our chief reason for hope3 the fact that the social mal-adjustments of this century are1 to an extent hitherto unparalleled1 the mal-adjustments incident to a state of over-rapid and therefore insufficiently deep-reaching change1 of superficial legal and material improvements extending in reality only to a very small number of persons and things1 and unaccompanied by any real renovation in the thought1 feeling or mode of living of the majority2 the mal-adjustment of transition1 of disorder1 and perfunctoriness1 by the side of which the regularly recurring disorders of the past--civil wars1 barbarian invasions1 plagues1 etc41 are incidents leaving the foundation of life unchanged1 transitional disorders1 which we fail to remark only because we are ourselves a part of the hurry1 the scuffle1 and the general wastefulness4 ,how soon and how this transition period of ours will come to an end1 it is difficult1 perhaps impossible1 to foretell2 but that it must soon end is certain1 if only for one reason3 namely1 that the changes accumulated during our times must inevitably work their way below the surface2 the new material and intellectual methods must become absorbed and organised1 and thereby produce some kind of interdependent and less easily disturbed new conditions2 briefly1 that the amount of alteration we have witnessed will occasion a corresponding integration4 ,and with this period of integration and increasing organisation and comparative stability there will come new alleviations and adjustments in life1 and with these1 the reappearance in life of art4 ,,xv4 ,in what manner it is absurd1 merely foolishly impatient or foolishly cavilling1 to ask4 ,not certainly by a return to the past and its methods1 but by the coming of the future with new methods having the same result3 the maintenance and tolerable quality of human life1 of body and soul4 ,hence probably by a further development of democratic institutions and machine industry1 but democratic institutions neither authoritative nor laissez faire2 machinery of which the hand and mind of men will be the guide1 not the slave4 ,one or two guesses may perhaps be warranted4 ,first1 that the distribution of wealth1 or more properly of work and idleness1 will gradually be improved1 and the exploitation of individuals in great gangs cease2 hence that the workman will be able once more to see and shape what he is making1 and that1 on the other side1 the possessor of objects will have to use them1 and therefore learn their appearance and care for them2 also that many men will possess enough1 and scarcely any men possess much more than enough1 so that what there is of houses1 furniture1 chattels1 books or pictures in private possession may be enjoyed at leisure and with unglutted appetite1 and for that reason be beautiful4 ,we may also guess that willing co-operation in peaceful employments1 that spontaneous formation of groups of opinion as well as of work1 and the multiplication of small centres of activity1 may create a demand for places of public education and amusement and of discussion and self-expression1 and revive those celebrations1 religious and civil1 in which the art of ,antiquity and of the ,middle ,ages found its culmination2 the service of large bodies and of the community absorbing the higher artistic gifts in works necessarily accessible to the multitude2 and the humbler talents--all the good amateur quality at present wasted in ambitious efforts--being applied in every direction to the satisfaction of individual artistic desire4 ,if such a distribution of artistic activity should seem1 to my contemporaries1 ,utopian1 ,i would point out that it has existed throughout the past1 and in states of society infinitely worse than are ever likely to recur4 ,for even slaves and serfs could make unto themselves some kind of art befitting their conditions2 and even the most despotic aristocracies and priesthoods could adequately express their power and pride only in works which even the slave and serf was able to see4 ,in the whole of the world's art history1 it is this present of ours which forms the exception2 and as the changes of the future will certainly be for greater social health and better social organisation1 it is not likely that this bad exception will be the beginning of a new rule4 ,,xvi4 ,meanwhile we can1 in some slight measure1 foretell one or two of the directions in which our future artistic readjustment is most likely to begin1 even apart from that presumable social reorganisation and industrial progress which will give greater leisure and comfort to the workers1 and make their individual character the guide1 and not the slave1 of this machinery4 ,such a direction is already indicated by one of our few original and popular forms of art3 the picture-book and the poster1 which1 by the new processes of our colour printing1 have placed some of the most fanciful and delicate of our artists--men like ,caldecott and ,walter ,crane1 like ,cheret and ,boutet de ,monvel1 at the service of everyone equally4 ,moreover1 it is probable that long before machinery is so perfected as to demand individual guidance1 preference and therefore desire for beauty1 and long before a corresponding readjustment of work and leisure1 the eye will have again become attentive through the necessities of rational education4 ,the habit of teaching both adults and children by demonstration rather than precept1 by awaking the imagination rather than burdening the memory1 will quite undoubtedly recall attention to visible things1 and thereby open new fields to art3 geography1 geology1 natural history1 let alone history in its vaster modern sociological and anthropological aspect1 will insist upon being taught no longer merely through books1 but through collections of visible objects2 and1 for all purposes of reconstructive and synthetic conception1 through pictures4 ,and1 what is more1 the sciences will afford a new field for poetic contemplation2 while the philosophy born of such sciences will synthetise new modes of seeing life and demand new visible symbols4 ,the future will create cosmogonies and ,divine ,comedies more numerous1 more various1 than those on sculptured ,egyptian temples and ,gothic cathedrals1 and ,bibles more imaginative perhaps than the ones painted in the ,pisa ,campo ,santo and in the ,sixtine ,chapel4 ,the future8 ,nay1 we can see a sample already in the present4 ,i am alluding to the panels by ,albert ,besnard in the ,school of ,pharmacy in ,paris1 a series illustrating the making of medicinal drugs1 their employment and the method and subject-matter of the sciences on which pharmaceutical practice is based4 ,not merely the plucking and drying of the herbs in sunny1 quiet botanical gardens1 and the sorting and mingling of earths and metals among the furnaces of the laboratory2 not merely the first tremendous tragic fight between the sudden sickness and the physician1 and the first pathetic1 hard-won victory1 the first weary but rapturous return out of doors of the convalescent2 but the life of the men on whose science our power for life against death is based3 the botanists knee-deep in the pale spring woods2 the geologists in the snowy hollows of the great blue mountain2 the men themselves1 the youths listening and the elder men teaching1 grave and eager intellectual faces1 in the lecture rooms4 ,and1 finally1 the things which fill the minds of these men1 their thoughts and dreams1 the poetry they have given to the world2 the poetry of that infinitely remote1 dim past1 evoked out of cavern remains and fossils--the lake dwellers among the mists of melting glaciers2 the primval horses playing on the still manless shores2 the great saurians plunging in the waves of long-dried seas2 the jungles which are now our coal beds2 and see6 the beginning of organic life1 the first callow vegetation on the stagnant waters in the dawn-light of the world4 ,the place is but a mean boarded and glazed vestibule2 full of the sickly fumes of chemicals2 and the people who haunt it are only future apothecaries4 ,but the compositions are as spacious and solemn1 the colours as tender and brilliant1 and the poetry as high and contemplative as that of any medival fresco2 it is all new also1 undreamed of1 sui generis1 in its impersonal cosmic suggestiveness1 as in its colouring of opal1 and metallic patinas1 and tea rose and ,alpine ice cave4 ,,xvii4 ,i have alluded already to the fact that1 perhaps because of the part of actual participating work which it entails1 music is the art which has most share in life and of life1 nowadays4 ,it seems probable therefore that its especial mission may be to keep alive in us the feeling and habit of art1 and to transmit them back to those arts of visible form to which it owes1 perhaps1 the training necessary to its own architectural structure and its own colour combinations4 ,compared with the arts of line and projection1 music seems at a certain moral disadvantage1 as not being applicable to the things of everyday use1 and also not educating us to the better knowledge of the beautiful and significant things of nature4 ,in connection with this kind of blindness1 music is also compatible 7as we see by its flourishing in great manufacturing towns7 with a great deal of desecration of nature and much hand-to-mouth ruthlessness of life4 ,but1 on the other hand1 music has the especial power of suggesting and regulating emotion1 and the still more marvellous faculty of creating an inner world for itself1 inviolable because ubiquitous4 ,and1 therefore1 with its audible rhythms and harmonies1 its restrained climaxes and finely ordered hierarchies1 music may discipline our feelings1 or rather what underlies our feelings1 the almost unconscious life of our nerves1 to modalities of order and selection1 and make the spaceless innermost of our spirit into some kind of sanctuary1 swept and garnished1 until the coming of better days4 ,,xviii4 ,according to a certain class of thinkers1 among whom ,i find ,guyau and other men of note1 art is destined partially to replace religion in our lives4 ,but with what are you going to replace religion itself in art8 ,for the religious feeling1 whenever it existed1 gave art an element of thoroughness which the desire for pleasure and interest1 even for sthetic pleasure and interest1 does not supply4 ,an immense fulness of energy is due to the fact that beautiful things1 as employed by religion1 were intended to be beautiful all through1 adequate in the all-seeing eye of ,god or ,gods1 not merely beautiful on the surface1 on the side turned towards the glance of man4 ,for1 in religious art1 beautiful things are an oblation2 they are the best that we can give1 as distinguished from a pleasure arranged for ourselves and got as cheap as possible4 ,herein lies the impassable gulf between the church and theatre1 considered sthetically2 for it is only in the basest times1 of formalism in art as in religion1 of superstition and sensualism1 that we find the church imitating the theatre in its paper glories and plaster painted like marble4 ,the real1 living religious spirit insists on bringing1 as in ,st ,mark's1 a gift of precious material1 of delicate antique ornament1 with every shipload4 ,the crown of the ,madonna is not1 like the tragedy queen's1 of tinsel1 the sacrament is not given in an empty chalice4 ,the priest1 even where he makes no effort to be holy as a man1 is at least sacred as a priest2 whereas there is something uncomfortable in the sense that the actor is only pretending to be this or the other1 and we ourselves pretending to believe him2 there is a thin and acid taste in the shams of the stage and in all art which1 like that of the stage1 exists only to the extent necessary to please our fancy or excite our feelings4 ,why so8 ,for is not pleasing the fancy and exciting the feelings the real1 final use of art8 ,doubtless4 ,but there would seem to be in nature a law not merely of the greater economy of means1 but also of the greatest output of efficacy3 effort helping effort1 and function1 function2 and many activities1 in harmonious interaction1 obtaining a measure of result far surpassing their mere addition4 ,the creations of our mind are1 of course1 mere spiritual existences1 things of seeming1 akin to illusions2 and yet our mind can never rest satisfied with an unreality1 because our mind is active1 penetrative and grasping1 and therefore craves for realisation1 for completeness and truth1 and feels bruised and maimed whenever it hits against a dead wall or is pulled up by a contradiction2 nay1 worst of all1 it grows giddy and faint when suddenly brought face to face with emptiness4 ,all insufficiency and shallowness means loss of power2 and it is such loss of power that we remark when we compare with the religious art of past times the art which1 every day more and more1 is given us by the hurried and over-thrifty 7may ,i say ,reach-me-down87 hands of secularism4 ,the great art of ,greece and of the ,middle ,ages most often represents something which1 to our mind and feelings1 is as important1 and even as beautiful1 as the representation itself2 and the representation1 the actual work of art itself1 gains by that added depth and reverence of our mood1 is carried deeper 7while helping to carry deeper7 into our soul4 ,instead of which we moderns try to be satisfied with allowing the seeing part of us to light on something pleasant and interesting1 while giving the mind only triviality to rest upon2 and the mind goes to sleep or chafes to move away4 ,we cannot live intellectually and morally in presence of the idea1 say1 of a jockey of ,degas or one of his ballet girls in contemplation of her shoe1 as long as we can live sthetically in the arrangement of lines and masses and dabs of colour and interlacings of light and shade which translate themselves into this idea of jockey or ballet girl2 we are therefore bored1 ruffled1 or1 what is worse1 we learn to live on insufficient spiritual rations1 and grow anmic4 ,our shortsighted practicality1 which values means while disregarding ends1 and conceives usefulness only as a stage in making some other utility1 has led us to suppose that the desire for beauty is compatible1 nay commensurate1 with indifference to reality3 the real having come to mean that which you can plant1 cook1 eat or sell1 not what you can feel and think4 ,this notion credits us with an actual craving for something which should exist as little as possible1 in one dimension only1 so to speak1 or as upon a screen 7for fear of occupying valuable space which might be given to producing more food than we can eat72 whereas what we desire is just such beauty as will surround us on all sides1 such harmony as we can live in2 our soul1 dissatisfied with the reality which happens to surround it1 seeks on the contrary to substitute a new reality of its own making1 to rebuild the universe1 like ,omar ,khayyam1 according to the heart's desire4 ,and nothing can be more different than such an instinct from the alleged satisfaction in playing with dolls and knowing that they are not real people4 ,by an odd paradoxical coincidence1 that very disbelief in the real character of art1 and that divorce betwixt art and utility1 is really due to our ultra-practical habit of taking seriously only the serviceable or instructive sides of things3 the quality of beauty1 which the healthy mind insists upon in everything it deals with1 getting to be considered as an idle adjunct1 fulfilling no kind of purpose2 and therefore1 as something detachable1 separate1 and speedily relegated to the museum or lumber-room where we keep our various shams3 ideals1 philosophies1 all the playthings with which we sometimes wile away our idleness4 ,whereas in fact a great work of art1 like a great thought of goodness1 exists essentially for our more thorough1 our more real satisfaction3 the soul goes into it with all its higher hankerings1 and rests peaceful1 satisfied1 so long as it is enclosed in this dwelling of its own choice4 ,and it is1 on the contrary1 the flux of what we call real life1 that is to say1 of life imposed on us by outer necessities and combinations1 which is so often one-sided1 perfunctory1 not to be dwelt upon by thought nor penetrated into by feeling1 and endurable only according to the angle or the lighting up--the angle or lighting up called purpose which we apply to it4 ,,xix4 ,with what1 ,i ventured to ask just now1 are you going to fill the place of religion in art8 ,with nothing1 ,i believe1 unless with religion itself4 ,religion1 perhaps externally unlike any of which we have historical experience2 but religion1 whether individual or collective1 possessing1 just because it is immortal1 all the immortal essence of all past and present creeds4 ,and just because religion is the highest form of human activity1 and its utility is the crowning one of thoughtful and feeling life1 just for this reason will religion return1 sooner or later1 to be art's most universal and most noble employer4 ,,xx4 ,in the foregoing pages ,i have tried to derive the need of beauty from the fact of attention1 attention to what we do1 think and feel1 as well as see and hear2 and to demonstrate therefore that all spontaneous and efficient art is the making and doing of useful things in such manner as shall be beautiful4 ,during this demonstration ,i have1 incidentally1 though inexplicitly1 pointed out the utility of art itself and of beauty4 ,for beauty is that mode of existence of visible or audible or thinkable things which imposes on our contemplating energies rhythms and patterns of unity1 harmony and completeness2 and thereby gives us the foretaste and the habit of higher and more perfect forms of life4 ,art is born of the utilities of life2 and art is in itself one of life's greatest utilities4 ,,wasteful ,,pleasures4 ,er muss lernen edler begehren1 damit er nicht ntig habe1 erhaben zu wollen4--,,schiller1 sthetische ,erziehung4 ,i4 ,a pretty1 ,caldecott-like moment1 or rather minute1 when the huntsmen stood on the green lawn round the moving1 tail-switching1 dapple mass of hounds2 and the red coats trotted one by one from behind the screens of bare trees1 delicate lilac against the slowly moving grey sky4 ,a delightful moment1 followed1 as the hunt swished past1 by the sudden sense that these men and women1 thus whirled off into what may well be the sole poetry of their lives1 are but noisy intruders into these fields and spinnies1 whose solemn1 secret speech they drown with clatter and yelp1 whose mystery and charm stand aside on their passage1 like an interrupted1 a profaned rite4 ,gone2 the yapping and barking1 the bugle-tootling fade away in the distance2 and the trees and wind converse once more4 ,this ,west ,wind1 which has been whipping up the wan northern sea1 and rushing round the house all this last fortnight1 singing its big ballads in corridor and chimney1 piping its dirges and lullabies in one's back-blown hair on the sand dunes--this ,west ,wind1 with its many chaunts1 its occasional harmonies and sudden modulations mocking familiar tunes1 can tell of many things3 of the different way in which the great trunks meet its shocks and answer vibrating through innermost fibres2 the smooth1 muscular boles of the beeches1 shaking their auburn boughs2 the stiff1 rough hornbeams and thorns isolated among the pastures2 the ashes whose leaves strew the roads with green rushes2 the creaking1 shivering firs and larches4 ,the ,west ,wind tells us of the way how the branches spring outwards1 or balance themselves1 or hang like garlands in the air1 and carry their leaves1 or needles1 or nuts2 and of their ways of bending and straightening1 of swaying and trembling4 ,it tells us also1 this ,west ,wind1 how the sea is lashed and furrowed2 how the little waves spring up in the offing1 and the big waves rise and run forward and topple into foam2 how the rocks are shaken1 the sands are made to hiss and the shingle is rattled up and down2 how the great breakers vault over the pier walls1 leap thundering against the breakwaters1 and disperse like smoke off the cannon's mouth1 like the whiteness of some vast explosion4 ,these are the things which the ,wind and the ,woods can talk about with us1 nay1 even the gorse and the shaking bents4 ,but the hunting folk pass too quickly1 and make too much noise1 to hear anything save themselves and their horses' hoofs and their bugle and hounds4 ,,ii4 ,i have taken fox-hunting as the type of a pleasure which destroys something1 just because it is1 in many ways1 the most noble and1 if ,i may say so1 the most innocent of such pleasures4 ,the death1 the1 perhaps agonising1 flight of the fox1 occupy no part of the hunter's consciousness1 and form no part of his pleasure2 indeed1 they could1 but for the hounds1 be dispensed with altogether4 ,there is a fine community of emotion between men and creatures1 horses and dogs adding their excitement to ours2 there is also a fine lack of the mere feeling of trying to outrace a competitor1 something of the collective and almost altruistic self-forgetfulness of a battle4 ,there is the break-neck skurry1 the flying across the ground and through the air at the risk of limbs and life1 and at the mercy of one's own and one's horse's pluck1 skill and good fellowship4 ,all this makes up a rapture in which many ugly things vanish1 and certain cosmic intuitions flash forth for some1 at least1 of the hunters4 ,the element of poetry is greater1 the element of brutality less1 in this form of intoxication than in many others4 ,it has a handsomer bearing than its modern successor1 the motor-intoxication1 with its passiveness and 7for all but the driver7 its lack of skill1 its confinement1 moreover1 to beaten roads1 and its petrol-stench and dustcloud of privilege and of inconvenience to others4 ,and the intoxication of hunting is1 to my thinking at least1 cleaner1 wholesomer1 than the intoxication of1 let us say1 certain ways of hearing music4 ,but just because so much can be said1 both positive and negative1 in its favour1 ,i am glad that hunting1 and not some meaner or some less seemly amusement1 should have set me off moralising about such pleasures as are wasteful of other things or of some portion of our soul4 ,,iii4 ,for nothing can be further from scientific fact than that cross-grained and ill-tempered puritanism identifying pleasure with something akin to sinfulness4 ,philosophically considered1 ,pain is so far stronger a determinant than ,pleasure1 that its vis a tergo might have sufficed to ensure the survival of the race1 without the far milder action of ,pleasure being necessary at all2 so that the very existence of ,pleasure would lead us to infer that1 besides its function of selecting1 like ,pain1 among life's possibilities1 it has the function of actually replenishing the vital powers1 and thus making amends1 by its healing and invigorating1 for the wear and tear1 the lessening of life's resources through life's other great ,power of ,selection1 the terror-angel of ,pain4 ,this being the case1 ,pleasure tends1 and should tend more and more1 to be consistent with itself1 to mean a greater chance of its own growth and spreading 7as opposed to ,pain's dwindling and suicidal nature71 and in so far to connect itself with whatsoever facts make for the general good1 and to reject1 therefore1 all cruelty1 injustice1 rapacity and wastefulness of opportunities and powers4 ,nay1 paradoxical though such a notion may seem in the face of our past and present state of barbarism1 ,pleasure1 and hence amusement1 should become incompatible with1 be actually spoilt by1 any element of loss to self and others1 of mischief even to the distant1 the future1 and of impiety to that principle of ,good which is but the summing up of the claims of the unseen and unborn4 ,,iv4 ,i was struck1 the other day1 by the name of a play on a theatre poster3 ,a ,life of ,pleasure4 ,the expression is so familiar that we hear and employ it without thinking how it has come to be4 ,yet1 when by some accident it comes to be analysed1 its meaning startles with an odd revelation4 ,pleasure1 a life of pleasure4444 ,other lives1 to be livable1 must contain more pleasure than pain2 and we know1 as a fact1 that all healthy work is pleasurable to healthy creatures4 ,intelligent converse with one's friends1 study1 sympathy1 all give pleasure2 and art is1 in a way1 the very type of pleasure4 ,yet we know that none of all that is meant in the expression3 a life of pleasure4 ,a curious thought1 and1 as it came to me1 a terrible one4 ,for that expression is symbolic4 ,it means that1 of all the myriads of creatures who surround us1 in the present and past1 the vast majority identifies pleasure mainly with such a life2 despises1 in its speech at least1 all other sorts of pleasure1 the pleasure of its own honest strivings and affections1 taking them for granted1 making light thereof4 ,v4 ,we are mistaken1 ,i think1 in taxing the generality of people with indifference to ideals1 with lack of ideas directing their lives4 ,few lives are really lawless or kept in check only by the secular arm1 the judge or policeman4 ,nor is conformity to what others do1 what is fit for one's class or seemly in one's position a result of mere unreasoning imitation or of the fear of being boycotted4 ,the potency of such considerations is largely that of summing up certain rules and defining the permanent tendencies of the individual1 or those he would wish to be permanent2 in other words1 we are in the presence of ideals of conduct4 ,why else are certain things those which have to be done2 whence otherwise such expressions as social duties and keeping up one's position8 ,why such fortitude under boredom1 weariness1 constraint2 such heroism sometimes in taking blows and snubs1 in dancing on with broken heart-strings like the ,princess in ,ford's play8 ,all this means an ideal1 nay1 a religion4 ,yes2 people1 quite matter-of-fact1 worldly people1 are perpetually sacrificing to ideals4 ,and what is more1 quite superior1 virtuous people1 religious in the best sense of the word1 are apt to have1 besides the ostensible and perhaps rather obsolete one of churches and meeting-houses1 another cultus1 esoteric1 unspoken but acted upon1 of which the priests and casuists are ladies'-maids and butlers4 ,now1 if one could only put to profit some of this wasted dutifulness1 this useless heroism2 if some of the energy put into the ideal progress 7as free from self-interest most often as the accumulating merit of ,kim's ,buddhist7 called getting on in the world could only be applied in getting the world along6 ,,vi4 ,an eminent political economist1 to whom ,i once confided my aversion for such butler's and lady's-maid's ideals of life1 admonished me that although useless possessions1 unenjoyable luxury1 ostentation1 and so forth1 undoubtedly represented a waste of the world's energies and resources1 they should nevertheless be tolerated1 inasmuch as constituting a great incentive to industry4 ,people work1 he said1 largely that they may be able to waste4 ,if you repress wastefulness you will diminish1 by so much1 the production of wealth by the wasteful1 by the luxurious and the vain4444 ,this may be true4 ,habits of modesty and of sparingness might perhaps deprive the world of as much wealth as they would save4 ,but even supposing this to be true1 though the wealth of the world did not immediately gain1 there would always be the modesty and sparingness to the good2 virtues which1 sooner or later1 would be bound to make more wealth exist or to make existing wealth go a longer way4 ,appealing to higher motives1 to good sense and good feeling and good taste1 has the advantage of saving the drawbacks of lower motives1 which are lower just because they have such drawbacks4 ,you may get a man to do a desirable thing from undesirable motives2 but those undesirable motives will induce him1 the very next minute1 to do some undesirable thing4 ,the wages of good feeling and good taste is the satisfaction thereof4 ,the wages of covetousness and vanity is the grabbing of advantages and the humiliating of neighbours2 and these make life poorer1 however much bread there may be to eat or money to spend4 ,what are called higher motives are merely those which expand individual life into harmonious connection with the life of all men2 what we call lower motives bring us hopelessly back1 by a series of vicious circles1 to the mere isolated1 sterile egos4 ,sterile1 ,i mean1 in the sense that the supply of happiness dwindles instead of increasing4 ,,vii4 ,waste of better possibilities1 of higher qualities1 of what we call our soul4 ,to denounce this is dignified1 but it is also easy and most often correspondingly useless4 ,i wish to descend to more prosaic matters1 and1 as ,ruskin did in his day1 to denounce the mere waste of money4 ,for the wasting of money implies nearly always all those other kinds of wasting4 ,and although there are doubtless pastimes 7pastimes promoted1 as is our wont1 for fear of yet other pastimes71 which are in themselves unclean or cruel1 these are less typically evil1 just because they are more obviously so1 than the amusements which imply the destruction of wealth1 the destruction of part of the earth's resources and of men's labour and thrift1 and incidentally thereon of human leisure and comfort and the world's sweetness4 ,do you remember ,la ,bruyre's famous description of the peasants under ,louis ,,xiv48 ,one occasionally meets with certain wild animals1 both male and female1 scattered over the country2 black1 livid and parched by the sun1 bound to the soil which they scratch and dig up with desperate obstinacy4 ,they have something which sounds like speech1 and when they raise themselves up they show a human face4 ,and1 as a fact1 they are human beings4 ,the ,ancien ,rgime1 which had reduced them to that1 and was to continue reducing them worse and worse for another hundred years by every conceivable tax1 tithe1 toll1 servage1 and privilege1 did so mainly to pay for amusements4 ,amusements of the ,roi-,soleil1 with his ,versailles and ,marly and aqueducts and waterworks1 plays and operas2 amusements of ,louis ,,xv41 with his ,parc-aux-,cerfs2 amusements of ,marie-,antoinette1 playing the virtuous rustic at ,trianon2 amusements of new buildings1 new equipages1 new ribbons and bibbons1 new diamonds 7including the fatal necklace72 amusements of hunting and gambling and love-making2 amusements sometimes atrocious1 sometimes merely futile1 but all of them leaving nothing behind1 save the ravaged grass and stench of brimstone of burnt-out fireworks4 ,moreover1 wasting money implies getting more4 ,and the processes by which such wasted money is replaced are1 by the very nature of those who do the wasting1 rarely1 nay1 never1 otherwise than wasteful in themselves4 ,to put into their pockets or1 like ,marshall ,villeroi 7a-t-on mis de l'or dans mes poches871 have it put by their valets1 to replace what was lost overnight1 these proud and often honourable nobles would ante-chamber and cringe for sinecures1 pensions1 indemnities1 privileges1 importune and supplicate the ,king1 the ,king's mistress1 pandar or lacquey4 ,and the sinecure1 pension1 indemnity or privilege was always deducted out of the bread--rye-bread1 straw-bread1 grass-bread--which those parched1 prone human animals described by ,la ,bruyre were extracting with desperate obstinacy--out of the ever more sterile and more accursed furrow4 ,it is convenient to point the moral by reference to those kings and nobles of other centuries1 without incurring pursuit for libel1 or wounding the feelings of one's own kind and estimable contemporaries4 ,still1 it may be well to add that1 odd though it appears1 the vicious circle 7in both senses of the words7 continues to exist2 and that1 even in our democratic civilisation1 you cannot waste money without wasting something else in getting more money to replace it4 ,waste1 and lay waste1 even as if your pastime had consisted not in harmless novelty and display1 in gentlemanly games or good-humoured sport1 but in destruction and devastation for their own sake4 ,,viii4 ,it has been laid waste1 that little valley which1 in its delicate and austere loveliness1 was rarer and more perfect than any picture or poem4 ,those oaks1 ivy garlanded like ,maenads1 which guarded the shallow white weirs whence the stream leaps down2 those ilexes1 whose dark1 loose boughs hung over the beryl pools like hair of drinking nymphs2 those trees which were indeed the living and divine owners of that secluded place1 dryads and oreads older and younger than any mortals1--have now been shamefully stripped1 violated and maimed1 their shorn-off leafage1 already withered1 gathered into faggots or trodden into the mud made by woodcutters' feet in the place of violets and tender grasses and wild balm2 their flayed bodies1 hacked grossly out of shape1 and flung into the defiled water until the moment when1 the slaughter and dishonour and profanation being complete1 the dealers' carts will come cutting up the turf and sprouting reeds1 and carry them off to the station or timber-yard4 ,the very stumps and roots will be dragged out for sale2 the earthy banks1 raw and torn1 will fall in1 muddying and clogging that pure mountain brook2 and the hillside1 turning into sliding shale1 will dam it into puddles with the refuse from the quarries above4 ,and thus1 for less guineas than will buy a new motor or cover an hour of ,monte ,carlo1 a corner of the world's loveliness and peace will be gone as utterly as those chairs and tables and vases and cushions which the harlot in ,zola's novel broke1 tore1 and threw upon the fire for her morning's amusement4 ,,ix4 ,there is in our imperfect life too little of pleasure and too much of play4 ,this means that our activities are largely wasted in pleasureless ways2 that1 being more tired than we should be1 we lose much time in needed rest2 moreover1 that being1 all of us more or less1 slaves to the drudgery of need or fashion1 we set a positive value on that negative good called freedom1 even as the pause between pain takes1 in some cases1 the character of pleasure4 ,there is in all play a sense not merely of freedom from responsibility1 from purpose and consecutiveness1 a possibility of breaking off1 or slackening off1 but a sense also of margin1 of permitted pause and blank and change2 all of which answer to our being on the verge of fatigue or boredom1 at the limit of our energy1 as is normal in the case of growing children 7for growth exhausts71 and inevitable in the case of those who work without the renovation of interest in what they are doing4 ,if you notice people on a holiday1 you will see them doing a large amount of nothing1 dawdling1 in fact2 and amusements are1 when they are not excitements1 that is to say1 stimulations to deficient energy1 full of such doing nothing4 ,think1 for instance1 of amusing conversation with its gaps and skippings1 and amusing reading with its perpetual chances of inattention4 ,all this is due to the majority of us being too weak1 too badly born and bred1 to give full attention except under the constraint of necessary work1 or under the lash of some sort of excitement2 and as a consequence to our obtaining a sense of real well-being only from the spare energy which accumulates during idleness4 ,moreover1 under our present conditions 7as under those of slave-labour7 work is rarely such as calls forth the effortless1 the willing1 the pleased attention4 ,either in kind or length or intensity1 work makes a greater demand than can be met by the spontaneous1 happy activity of most of us1 and thereby diminishes the future chances of such spontaneous activity by making us weaker in body and mind4 ,now1 so long as work continues to be thus strained or against the grain1 play is bound to be either an excitement which leaves us poorer and more tired than before 7the fox-hunter1 for instance1 at the close of the day1 or on the off-days71 or else play will be mere dawdling1 getting out of training1 in a measure demoralisation4 ,for demoralisation1 in the etymological sense being debauched1 is the correlative of over-great or over-long effort2 both spoil1 but the one spoils while diminishing the mischief made by the other4 ,art is so much less useful than it should be1 because of this bad division of work and play1 between which two it finds no place4 ,for ,art--and the art we unwittingly practice whenever we take pleasure in nature--is without appeal either to the man who is straining at business and to the man who is dawdling in amusement4 sthetic pleasure implies energy during rest and leisureliness during labour4 ,it means making the most of whatever beautiful and noble possibilities may come into our life2 nay1 it means1 in each single soul1 being for however brief a time1 beautiful and noble because one is filled with beauty and nobility4 ,x4 ,to eat his bread in sorrow and the sweat of his face was1 we are apt to forget1 the first sign of man's loss of innocence4 ,and having learned that we must reverse the myth in order to see its meaning 7since innocence is not at the beginning1 but rather at the end of the story of mankind71 we might accept it as part of whatever religion we may have1 that the evil of our world is exactly commensurate with the hardship of useful tasks and the wastefulness and destructiveness of pleasures and diversions4 ,evil and also folly and inefficiency1 for each of these implies the existence of much work badly done1 of much work to no purpose1 of a majority of men so weak and dull as to be excluded from choice and from leisure1 and a minority of men so weak and dull as to use choice and leisure mainly for mischief4 ,to reverse this original sinful constitution of the world is the sole real meaning of progress4 ,and the only reason for wishing inventions to be perfected1 wealth to increase1 freedom to be attained1 and1 indeed1 the life of the race to be continued at all1 lies in the belief that such continued movement must bring about a gradual diminution of pleasureless work and wasteful play4 ,meanwhile1 in the wretched past and present1 the only aristocracy really existing has been that of the privileged creatures whose qualities and circumstances must have been such that1 whether artisans or artists1 tillers of the ground or seekers after truth1 poets1 philosophers1 or mothers and nurses1 their work has been their pleasure4 ,this means love2 and love means fruitfulness4 ,,xi4 ,there are moments when1 catching a glimpse of the frightful weight of care and pain with which mankind is laden1 ,i am oppressed by the thought that all improvement must come solely through the continued selfish shifting of that burden from side to side1 from shoulder to shoulder2 through the violent or cunning destruction of some of the intolerable effects of selfishness in the past by selfishness in the present and the future4 ,and that in the midst of this terrible but salutary scuffle for ease and security1 the ideals of those who are privileged enough to have any1 may be not much more useful than the fly on the axle-tree4 ,it may be1 it doubtless is so nowadays1 although none of us can tell to what extent4 ,but even if it be so1 let us who have strength and leisure for preference and ideals prepare ourselves to fit1 at least to acquiesce1 in the changes we are unable to bring about4 ,do not let us seek our pleasure in things which we condemn1 or remain attached to those which are ours only through the imperfect arrangements which we deplore4 ,we are1 of course1 all tied tight in the meshes of our often worthless and cruel civilisation1 even as the saints felt themselves caught in the meshes of bodily life4 ,but even as they1 in their day1 fixed their hopes on the life disembodied1 so let us1 in our turn1 prepare our souls for that gradual coming of justice on earth which we shall never witness1 by forestalling its results in our valuations and our wishes4 ,,xii4 ,the other evening1 skirting the ,links1 we came upon a field1 where1 among the brown and green nobbly grass1 was gathered a sort of parliament of creatures3 rooks on the fences1 seagulls and peewits wheeling overhead1 plovers strutting and wagging their tails2 and1 undisturbed by the white darting of rabbits1 a covey of young partridges1 hopping leisurely in compact mass4 ,is it because we see of these creatures only their harmlessness to us1 but not the slaughter and starving out of each other2 or is it because of their closer relation to simple and beautiful things1 to nature2 or is it merely because they are not human beings--who shall tell8 but1 for whatever reason1 such a sight does certainly bring up in us a sense1 however fleeting1 of simplicity1 mansuetude 7,i like the charming medival word71 of the kinship of harmlessness4 ,i was thinking this while wading up the grass this morning to the craig behind the house1 the fields of unripe corn a-shimmer and a-shiver in the light1 bright wind2 the sea and distant sky so merged in delicate white mists that a ship1 at first sight1 seemed a bird poised in the air4 ,and1 higher up1 among the ragwort and tall thistles1 ,i found in the coarse grass a dead baby-rabbit1 shot and not killed at once1 perhaps2 or shot and not picked up1 as not worth taking3 a little soft1 smooth1 feathery young handful1 laid out very decently1 as human beings have to be laid out by one another1 in death4 ,it brought to my mind a passage where ,thoreau1 who understood such matters1 says1 that although the love of nature may be fostered by sport1 such love1 when once consummate1 will make nature's lover little by little shrink from slaughter1 and hanker after a diet wherein slaughter is unnecessary4 ,it is sad1 not for the beasts but for our souls1 that1 since we must kill beasts for food 7though may not science teach a cleaner1 more human diet87 or to prevent their eating us out of house and home1 it is sad that we should choose to make of this necessity 7which ought to be1 like all our baser needs1 a matter if not of shame at least of decorum7 that we should make of this ugly necessity an opportunity for amusement4 ,it is sad that nowadays1 when creatures1 wild and tame1 are bred for killing1 the usual way in which man is brought in contact with the creatures of the fields and woods and streams 7such man1 ,i mean1 as thinks1 feels or is expected to7 should be by slaughtering them4 ,surely it might be more akin to our human souls1 to gentleness of bringing up1 ,christianity of belief and chivalry of all kinds1 to be1 rather than a hunter1 a shepherd4 ,yet the shepherd is the lout in our idle times2 the shepherd1 and the tiller of the soil2 and alas1 the naturalist1 again1 is apt to be the muff4 ,but may the time not come when1 apart from every man having to do some useful thing1 something perchance like tending flocks1 tilling the ground1 mowing and forestering--the mere love of beauty1 the desire for peace and harmony1 the craving for renewal by communion with the life outside our own1 will lead men1 without dogs or guns or rods1 into the woods1 the fields1 to the river-banks1 as to some ancient palace full of frescoes1 as to some silent church1 with solemn rites and liturgy8 ,,xiii4 ,the killing of creatures for sport seems a necessity nowadays4 ,there is more than mere bodily vigour to be got by occasional interludes of outdoor life1 early hours1 discomfort and absorption in the ways of birds and beasts2 there is actual spiritual renovation4 ,the mere reading about such things1 in ,tolstoi's ,cossacks and certain chapters of ,anna ,karenina makes one realise the poetry attached to them2 and we all of us know that the genuine sportsman1 the man of gun and rod and daybreak and solitude1 has often a curious halo of purity about him2 contact with natural things and unfamiliarity with the sordidness of so much human life and endeavour1 amounting to a kind of consecration4 ,a man of this stamp once told me that no emotion in his life had ever equalled that of his first woodcock4 ,you cannot have such open-air life1 such clean and poetic emotion without killing4 ,men are men2 they will not get up at cock-crow for the sake of a mere walk1 or sleep in the woods for the sake of the wood's noises3 they must have an object2 and what object is there except killing beasts or birds or fish8 ,men have to be sportsmen because they can't all be either naturalists or poets4 ,killing animals 7and1 some persons would add1 killing other men7 is necessary to keep man manly4 ,and where men are no longer manly they become cruel1 not for the sake of sport or war1 but for their lusts and for cruelty's own sake4 ,and that seems to settle the question4 ,,xiv4 ,but the question is not really settled4 ,it is merely settled for the present1 but not for the future4 ,it is surely a sign of our weakness and barbarism that we cannot imagine to-morrow as better than to-day1 and that1 for all our vaunted temporal progress and hypocritical talk of duty1 we are yet unable to think and to feel in terms of improvement and change2 but let our habits1 like the vilest vested interests1 oppose a veto to the hope and wish for better things4 ,to realise that what is does not mean what will be1 constitutes1 methinks1 the real spirituality of us poor human creatures1 allowing our judgments and aspirations to pass beyond our short and hidebound life1 to live on in the future1 and help to make that yonside of our mortality1 which some of us attempt to satisfy with theosophic reincarnation and planchette messages6 ,but such spirituality1 whose it shall--or it shall not--will become an ever larger part of all it is1 depends upon the courage of recognising that much of what the past forces us to accept is not good enough for the future2 recognising that1 odious as this may seem to our self-conceit and sloth1 many of the things we do and like and are1 will not bear even our own uncritical scrutiny4 ,above all1 that the lesser evil which we prefer to the greater is an evil for all that1 and requires riddance4 ,much of the world's big mischief is due to the avoidance of a bigger one4 ,for instance1 all this navely insisted on masculine inability to obtain the poet's or naturalist's joys without shooting a bird or hooking a fish1 this inability to love wild life1 early hours and wholesome fatigue unless accompanied by a waste of life and of money2 in short1 all this incapacity for being manly without being destructive1 is largely due among us ,anglo-,saxons to the bringing up of boys as mere playground dunces1 for fear 7as we are told by parents and schoolmasters7 that the future citizens of ,england should take to evil communications and worse manners if they did not play and talk cricket and football at every available moment4 ,for what can you expect but that manly innocence which has been preserved at the expense of every higher taste should grow up into manly virtue unable to maintain itself save by hunting and fishing1 shooting and horse-racing2 expensive amusements requiring1 in their turn1 a further sacrifice of all capacities for innocent1 noble and inexpensive interests1 in the absorbing1 sometimes stultifying1 often debasing processes of making money8 ,the same complacency towards waste and mischief for the sake of moral advantages may be studied in the case also of our womankind4 ,the absorption in their toilettes guards them from many dangers to family sanctity4 ,and from how much cruel gossip is not society saved by the prevalent passion for bridge6 ,so at least moralists1 who are usually the most complacently demoralised of elderly cynics1 are ready to assure us4 ,,xv4 ,we should learn to have noble desires1 wrote ,schiller1 in order to have no need for sublime resolutions4 ,and morality might almost take care of itself1 if people knew the strong and exquisite pleasures to be found1 like the aromatic ragwort growing on every wall and stone-heap in the south1 everywhere in the course of everyday life4 ,but alas6 the openness to cheap and simple pleasures means the fine training of fine faculties2 and mankind asks for the expensive and far-fetched and unwholesome pleasures1 because it is itself of poor and cheap material and of wholesale scamped manufacture4 ,,xvi4 ,biological facts1 as well as our observation of our own self 7which is psychology71 lead us to believe that1 as ,i have mentioned before1 ,pleasure fulfils the function not merely of leading us along livable ways1 but also of creating a surplus of vitality4 ,itself an almost unnecessary boon 7since ,pain is sufficient to regulate our choice71 ,pleasure would thus tend to ever fresh and1 if ,i may use the word1 gratuitous supplies of good4 ,does not this give to ,pleasure a certain freedom1 a humane character wholly different from the awful1 unappeasable tyranny of ,pain8 ,for let us be sincere4 ,pain1 and all the cruel alternatives bidding us obey or die1 are scarcely things with which our poor ideals1 our good feeling and good taste1 have much chance of profitable discussion4 ,there is in all human life a side akin to that of the beast2 the beast hunted1 tracked1 starved1 killing and killed for food2 the side alluded to under decent formul like pressure of population1 diminishing returns1 competition1 and so forth4 ,not but this side of life also tends towards good1 but the means by which it does so1 nature's atrocious surgery1 are evil1 although one cannot deny that it is the very nature of ,pain to diminish its own recurrence4 ,this thought may bring some comfort in the awful earnestness of existence1 this thought that in its cruel fashion1 the universe is weeding out cruel facts4 ,but to pretend that we can habitually exercise much moral good taste1 be of delicate forethought1 squeamish harmony when ,pain has yoked and is driving us1 is surely a bad bit of hypocrisy1 of which those who are being starved or trampled or tortured into acquiescence may reasonably bid us be ashamed4 ,indeed1 stoicism1 particularly in its discourses to others1 has not more sense of shame than sense of humour4 ,but since our power of choosing is thus jeopardised by the presence of ,pain1 it would the more behove us to express our wish for goodness1 our sense of close connection1 wide and complex harmony with the happiness of others1 in those moments of respite and liberty which we call happiness1 and particularly in those freely chosen concerns which we call play4 ,alas1 we cannot help ourselves from becoming unimaginative1 unsympathising1 destructive and brutish when we are hard pressed by agony or by fear4 ,therefore1 let such of us as have stuff for finer things1 seize some of our only opportunities1 and seek to become harmless in our pleasures4 ,who knows but that the highest practical self-cultivation would not be compassed by a much humbler paraphrase of ,schiller's advice3 let us learn to like what does no harm to the present or the future1 in order not to throw away heroic efforts or sentimental intentions1 in doing what we don't like for someone else's supposed benefit4 ,,xvii4 ,the various things ,i have been saying have been said1 or1 better still1 taken for granted1 by ,wordsworth1 ,keats1 ,browning1 ,ruskin1 ,pater1 ,stevenson1 by all our poets in verse and prose4 ,what ,i wish to add is that1 being a poet1 seeing and feeling like a poet1 means quite miraculously multiplying life's resources for oneself and others2 in fact the highest practicality conceivable1 the real transmutation of brass into gold4 ,now what we all waste1 more even than money1 land1 time and labour1 more than we waste the efforts and rewards of other folk1 and the chances of enjoyment of unborn generations 7and half of our so-called practicality is nothing but such waste71 what we waste in short more than anything else1 is our own and our children's inborn capacity to see and feel as poets do1 and make much joy out of little material4 ,,xviii4 ,there is no machine refuse1 cinder1 husk1 paring or rejected material of any kind which modern ingenuity cannot turn to profit1 making useful and pleasant goods out of such rubbish as we would willingly1 at first sight1 shoot out of the universe into chaos4 ,every material thing can be turned1 it would seem1 into new textures1 clean metal1 manure1 fuel or what not4 ,but while we are thus economical with our dust-heaps1 what horrid wastefulness goes on with our sensations1 impressions1 memories1 emotions1 with our souls and all the things that minister to their delight6 ,,xix4 ,an ignorant foreign body--and1 after all1 everyone is a foreigner somewhere and ignorant about something--once committed the enormity of asking his host1 just back from cub-hunting1 whether the hedgerows1 when he went out of a morning1 were not quite lovely with those dewy cobwebs which the ,french call ,veils of the ,virgin4 ,it had to be explained that such a sight was the most unwelcome you could imagine1 since it was a sure sign there would be no scent4 ,the poor foreigner was duly crestfallen1 as happens whenever one has nearly spoilt a friend's property through some piece of blundering4 ,but the blunder struck me as oddly symbolical4 ,are we not most of us pursuing for our pleasure1 though sometimes at risk of our necks1 a fox of some kind3 worth nothing as meat1 little as fur1 good only to gallop after1 and whose unclean scent is incompatible with those sparkling gossamers flung1 for everyone's delight1 over gorse and hedgerow8 99 99 99 99 99 ,,the ,,end4 ,,transcriber',s ,,note3 ,the edition from which this text was drawn is volume #dage of the ,tauchnitz ,edition of ,british ,authors1 where it appeared together with ,the ,spirit of ,rome1 also by ,vernon ,lee4 ,the volume was published in #aiaj4 ,the following changes were made to the text3 solely for the purpose or solely for the purpose of coeteris paribus ceteris paribus ,mautineia 7,higher ,harmonies ,i7 ,mantineia ,the ,gothic boldness of light and ,the ,gothic boldness of light and shade of the ,campanile make shade of the ,campanile makes ,tuskan ,tuscan the workmen will be able 74447 the workman will be able 74447 learn their appearance and care learn their appearance and care for it for them ,the death1 74447 the 74447 ,the death1 74447 the 74447 flight of the fox1 occupy no part flight of the fox1 occupy no part 74447 and forms no part 74447 and form no part the ,monnets the ,monets