er-expanding desire of beauty must needs be less numerous. But these
make up in largeness of utterance, in the intensity of their message,
what they lack in numbers. Nor does this outcome make against a
fancied catholicity of taste. The true appreciator still sees in his
earlier loves something that is good, and he values the good the
more justly that he sees it now in its right relation and apprehends its
real significance. As each in its turn led him to seek further, each
became an instrument in his development. For himself he has need
of them no longer. But far from contemning them, he is rightly
grateful for the solace they have afforded, as by them he has made
his way up into the fuller meaning of art.

II

THE WORK OF ART AS SYMBOL

In the experience of the man who feels himself attracted to pictures
and who studies them intelligently and with sympathy, there comes
a day when suddenly a canvas reveals to him a new beauty in nature
or in life. Much seeing and much thinking, much bewilderment and
some disappointment, have taught him that in the appreciation of
pictures the question at issue is not, how cleverly has the painter
imitated his object, is not, how suggestive is the subject of pleasing
associations; he need simply ask himself, "What has the artist
conceived or felt in the presence of this landscape, this arrangement
of line and color, this human face, that I have not seen and felt, and
that he wants to communicate to me?"

The incident of the single canvas, which by its illuminating
revealment first discloses to the observer the true significance of
pictures, is typical of the whole scope of art. The mission of art is to
reveal. It is the prophet's message to his fellow men, the apocalypse
of the seer. The artist is he to whom is vouchsafed a special
apprehension of beauty. He has the eye to see, the temperament to
feel, the imagination to interpret; it is by virtue of these capacities,
this high, transfiguring vision, that he is an artist; and his skill of
hand, his equipment with the means of expression, is incidental to
the great fact that he has somewhat to express that the common man
has not. To his work, the manifestation of his spirit in material form,
his perception made sensible, is accorded the name of art.

Art is expression. It is not a display of skill; it is not the reproduction
of external forms or appearances; it does not even, as some say,
exist for itself: it is a message, a me