t, because
it is made to be acted before an audience. A piece of music has musical
form, with its repetitions and developments, because it is made to be
heard. A picture has composition, emphasis, because it is painted to be
seen. The very process of pictorial art is a process of pointing out.
When a man draws he makes a gesture of emphasis; he says--This is what I
have seen and what I want you to see. And in each case the work of art
is a work of art, expression is expression, because it implies an
audience or spectators. Without that implication, without the effort of
address, there could be no art, no expression, at all.

In fact, art in its nature is a social activity, because man in his
nature is a social being. Art does not exist in isolation because man
does not exist in isolation. His very faculties are in their nature
social always and whether for good or for evil. The individual in
isolation is a figment of man's mind, and so is art in isolation.

But although art is a social activity, it is not, as Tolstoy thinks, a
moral activity. The artist does not address mankind with the object of
doing them good. It is useless to say that he ought to have that object;
if he had he would not be an artist. The aim of doing good is itself
incompatible with the artistic aim. But that is not to say that art does
not do good. It may do good all the more because the artist is not
trying to do good.

But what is it that really happens when the artist addresses us, and why
does he wish to address us? To answer this, we must consider our own
experience, not merely as an audience but also as artists, for we are,
as Croce insists, all of us to some extent artists. You have all no
doubt been aware of some failure and dissatisfaction in those of your
experiences which seem to you the highest. Suppose, for instance, you
see some extreme beauty, as of a sunset. It leaves you sad with a
feeling of your own inadequacy. You have not been equal to it, and why?
You will say in speaking of it to others--I wish I could tell you what I
felt or what I saw, but I can't. That wish is itself natural and
instantly stirred in you by the experience of extreme beauty. The
experience seems incomplete, because you cannot tell anyone else what
you felt and saw; and you are hurt by your effort and failure to do so.

It is a fact of human nature that the experience of any beauty does
arouse in us the desire to communicate our experience; and this desire