re
original his compositions, the greater the difficulty. He must amuse the
men of the senses; satisfy the precision of the men of the schools; and
succeed in rendering intelligible to the uncultured masses the subtile
links of ethereal connection which chain the finite, the relative of his
compositions, to the Infinite, the Absolute.

For it is a pregnant fact, with regard to the masses, that only so far
as they can be made to _feel_ the connection of things with the
Absolute, can they be induced to appreciate them. For instance, tell
them that the stars attract in the direct ratio of their masses, in
inverse ratio to the squares of the distance, and they may almost fail
to understand you; but tell them, in the words of the Divine Book, so
marvellously adapted to their comprehension, that 'the stars declare
the glory of God,' and you are at once understood. Tell them they ought
to love one another, because 'they are members of the same spiritual
body'--and, although, in this concise statement, you have declared to
them the internal constitution of the moral world, revealed the inner
meaning of the laws of order, of social harmony, of their own destiny,
and of the progress of the race--you may utterly fail in awakening their
interest. But show them a Being who lived for this truth, whose life was
one of sacrifice and abnegation, who died for its manifestation--they
are immediately touched, interested, because you have left the
unsympathetic region of abstract formulas; you have given law a visible,
palpitating, feeling, suffering, and rejoicing Body--you awaken their
love, their gratitude--they adore their godlike Brother, and now _feel_
themselves members of the one spiritual body.

It is this very possibility, on a lower plane, of thus clothing his
thoughts with a visible body, which gives the artist an advantage over
the man of science, who presents the formula of the _law_ with the aid
of the contingent finite idea, but without connecting it with its First
Cause. Confining itself to the limits of the thing examined, science
tries to explain the finite rationale of its being; while art gives its
formula by the aid of a material sign, a form or body, which contains or
suggests both limits of its double existence, viz.: the finite and the
infinite. For the true artist always connects the relative with the
Absolute, the second cause with the First; in the finite he seeks the
Infinite--therefore he finds mystic and hidd