r or lesser degree, threaten, disturb, paralyse, in a way
poison or maim him. Hence he is for ever seeking such congruity, such
harmony; and his artistic creativeness is conditioned by the desire
for it, nay, is perhaps mainly seeking to obtain it. Whenever he
spontaneously and truly creates artistic forms, he obeys the imperious
vital instinct for congruity; nay, he seeks to eke out the
insufficient harmony between himself and the things which he _cannot_
command, the insufficient harmony between the uncontrollable parts of
himself, by a harmony created on purpose in the things which he _can_
control. To a large extent man feels himself tortured by discordant
impressions coming from the world outside and the world inside him;
and he seeks comfort and medicine in harmonious impressions of his own
making, in his own strange inward-outward world of art.

This, I think, is the true explanation of that much-disputed-over
_ideal_, which, according to definitions, is perpetually being
enthroned and dethroned as the ultimate aim of all art: the ideal,
the imperatively clamoured-for mysterious something, is neither
conformity to an abstract idea, nor conformity to actual reality, nor
conformity to the typical, nor conformity to the individual; it is, I
take it, simply conformity to man's requirements, to man's inborn and
peremptory demand for greater harmony, for more perfect co-ordination
and congruity in his feelings.

Now, when, in the exercise of the artistic instincts, mankind are
partially obeying some other call than this one--the desire for money,
fame, or for some intellectual formula--things are quite different,
and there is no production of what I have called harmony. There is no
congruity when even great people set about doing pseudo-antique
sculpture in Canova-Thorwaldsen fashion because Winckelmann and Goethe
have made antique sculpture fashionable; there is no congruity when
people set to building pseudo-Gothic in obedience to the romantic
movement and to Ruskin. For neither the desire for making a mark, nor
the most conscientious pressure of formula gives that instinct of
selection and co-ordination characterising even the most rudimentary
artistic efforts in the most barbarous ages, when men are impelled
merely and solely by the aesthetic instinct. Moreover, where people do
not want and need (as they want and need food or drink or warmth or
coolness) one sort of effect, that is to say, one arrangement of
impr