in the case of sympathy with human
vicissitudes) we participate in the supposed life of the form while in
reality lending _our_ life to it. Just as in our relations with our
fellow-men, so also in our subtler but even more potent relations with
the appearances of things and actions, our heart can be touched,
purified, and satisfied only just in proportion as we _give_ our
heart. And even as it is possible to perceive other human beings and
to adjust our action (sometimes heartlessly enough) to such qualities
in them as we find practically important to ourselves, without putting
out one scrap of sympathy with their own existence as felt by them; so
also it is possible to recognise things and actions, to become rapidly
aware of such of their peculiarities as most frequently affect us
practically, and to consequently adjust our behaviour, without giving
our sympathy to their form, without entering into and _living into_
those forms; and in so far it is possible for us to remain indifferent
to those forms' quality of beauty or ugliness, just as, in the hurry
of practical life, we remain indifferent to the stuff our neighbours'
souls are made of. This rapid, partial, superficial, perfunctory mode
of dealing with what we see and hear constitutes the ordinary,
constant, and absolutely indispensable act of recognising objects and
actions, of _spotting_ their qualities and _twigging_ their meaning:
an act necessarily tending to more and more abbreviation and rapidity
and superficiality, to a sort of shorthand which reduces what has to
be understood, and enables us to pass immediately to understanding
something else; according to that law of necessarily saving time and
energy.

And so we rush on, recognising, naming, spotting, twigging, answering,
using, or parrying; we need not fully _see_ the complete appearance of
the word we read, of the man we meet, of the street we run along, of
the water we drink, the fire we light, the adversary whom we pursue or
whom we evade; 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 Beethoven." Now it is this fragmentary, superficial
attention which we most often give to art; and giving thus little, we
find that art gives us little, perhaps nothing, in return. For
understan