e invariable standard by which
to try a work of art: its significance to the appreciator rests upon his
capacity at the moment to receive it. "A jest's prosperity lies in the
ear of him that hears it." The appreciator need simply ask himself,
"What has this work to reveal to me of beauty that I have not
perceived for myself? I shall not look for the pretty and the
agreeable. But what of new significance, energy, life, has this work
to express to me? I will accept no man entirely and unquestioningly,
I will condemn no one unheard. No man has the whole truth; every
man has some measure of the truth, however small. Let it be my task
to find it and to separate it from what is unessential and false. In my
search for what is true, I will conserve my integrity and maintain my
independence. And I shall recognize my own wherever I may find
it."

"Man is the measure of all things," declared an ancient philosopher.
And his teaching has not been superseded to-day. The individual is
the creator of his own universe; he is the focus of the currents and
forces of his world. The meaning of all things is subjective. So the
measure of beauty in life for a man is determined by his capacity to
receive and understand. Thus it is that a man's joy in experience and
his appreciation of art in any of its manifestations are conditioned by
the opportunity that nature or art furnishes for his spirit to exercise
itself. In the reading of poetry, for example, we seek the expression
of ourselves. Our first emotion is, perhaps, a simple, unreflecting
delight, the delight which a butterfly must feel among the flowers or
that of a child playing in the fields under the warm sun; it is a
delight wholly physical,--pure sensation. A quick taking of the
breath, the escape of a sigh, inarticulate and uncritical, are the only
expression we can find at that instant for what we feel: as when an
abrupt turn of the road spreads out before us a landscape of which
we had not dreamed, or we enter for the first time the presence of
the Apollo Belvedere. We know simply that we are pleased. But
after nerves have ceased to tingle so acutely, we begin to think; and
we seek to give account to ourselves of the beauty which for the
moment we could but feel. Once arrived at the attitude of reflection,
we find that the poetry which affects us most and to which we
oftenest return is the poetry that contains the record of our own
experience, but heightened, the poetry which expr