ption. And it is hard to resist the belief, when one
is brought into the presence of perfect beauty, in whatever form it may
come, that the deep craving it arouses is meant to receive a
satisfaction more deep and real than the act of mere contemplation can
give. I have felt in such moments as if I were on the verge of grasping
some momentous secret, as if only the thinnest of veils hung between me
and some knowledge that would set my whole life and being on a
different plane. But the moment passes, and the secret delays. Yet we
are right to regard such emotions as direct messages from God; because
they bring with them no desire of possession, which is the sign of
mortality, but rather the divine desire to be possessed by them; that
the reality, whatever it be, of which beauty is the symbol, may enter
in and enthral the soul. It remains a mystery, like all the best things
to which we draw near. And the joy of all mysteries is the certainty
which comes from their contemplation, that there are many doors yet for
the soul to open on her upward and inward way; that we are at the
threshold and not near the goal; and then, like the glow of sunset,
rises the hope that the grave, far from being the gate of death, may be
indeed the gate of life.

VII

ART

I often wish that we had a more beautiful word than "art" for so
beautiful a thing; it is in itself a snappish explosive word, like the
cry of an angry animal; and it has, too, to bear the sad burden of its
own misuse by affected people. Moreover, it stands for so many things,
that one is never quite sure what the people who use it intend it to
mean; some people use it in an abstract, some in a concrete sense; and
it is unfortunate, too, in bearing, in certain usages, a nuance of
unreality and scheming.

What I mean by art, in its deepest and truest sense, is a certain
perceptiveness, a power of seeing what is characteristic, coupled as a
rule, in the artistic temperament, with a certain power of expression,
an imaginative gift which can raise a large fabric out of slender
resources, building a palace, like the Genie in the story of Aladdin,
in a single night.

The artistic temperament is commoner, I think, than is supposed. Most
people find it difficult to believe in the existence of it, unless it
is accompanied by certain fragile signs of its existence, such as
water-colour drawing, or a tendency to strum on a piano. But, as a
matter of fact, the possession of