nal, logical, systematical detachment--the result of reflection
and philosophy--but rather with natural detachment, one innate in the
structure of sense or consciousness, which at once reveals itself by a
virginal manner, so to speak, of seeing, hearing or thinking. Were this
detachment complete, did the soul no longer cleave to action by any of
its perceptions, it would be the soul of an artist such as the world
has never yet seen. It would excel alike in every art at the same time;
or rather, it would fuse them all into one. It would perceive all
things in their native purity: the forms, colours, sounds of the
physical world as well as the subtlest movements of the inner life. But
this is asking too much of nature. Even for such of us as she has made
artists, it is by accident, and on one side only, that she has lifted
the veil. In one direction only has she forgotten to rivet the
perception to the need. And since each direction corresponds to what we
call a SENSE--through one of his senses, and through that sense alone,
is the artist usually wedded to art. Hence, originally, the diversity
of arts. Hence also the speciality of predispositions. This one applies
himself to colours and forms, and since he loves colour for colour and
form for form, since he perceives them for their sake and not for his
own, it is the inner life of things that he sees appearing through
their forms and colours. Little by little he insinuates it into our own
perception, baffled though we may be at the outset. For a few moments
at least, he diverts us from the prejudices of form and colour that
come between ourselves and reality. And thus he realises the loftiest
ambition of art, which here consists in revealing to us nature. Others,
again, retire within themselves. Beneath the thousand rudimentary
actions which are the outward and visible signs of an emotion, behind
the commonplace, conventional expression that both reveals and conceals
an individual mental state, it is the emotion, the original mood, to
which they attain in its undefiled essence. And then, to induce us to
make the same effort ourselves, they contrive to make us see something
of what they have seen: by rhythmical arrangement of words, which thus
become organised and animated with a life of their own, they tell
us--or rather suggest--things that speech was not calculated to
express. Others delve yet deeper still. Beneath these joys and sorrows
which can, at a pinch, be translat