Let us test this definition with some simple cases. Here is a savage,
shouting and flinging his arms and legs about in wild delight; he is not
an artist, although he may be moved by life and feeling. But let this
shouting be done on some ordered plan, to a rhythm expressive of joy and
delight, and his leg and arm movements governed by it also, and he has
become an artist, and singing and dancing (possibly the oldest of the
arts) will result.

Or take the case of one who has been deeply moved by something he has
seen, say a man killed by a wild beast, which he wishes to tell his
friends. If he just explains the facts as he saw them, making no effort
to order his words so as to make the most telling impression upon his
hearers and convey to them something of the feelings that are stirring
in him, if he merely does this, he is not an artist, although the
recital of such a terrible incident may be moving. But the moment he
arranges his words so as to convey in a telling manner not only the
plain facts, but the horrible feelings he experienced at the sight, he
has become an artist. And if he further orders his words to a rhythmic
beat, a beat in sympathy with his subject, he has become still more
artistic, and a primitive form of poetry will result.

Or in building a hut, so long as a man is interested solely in the
utilitarian side of the matter, as are so many builders to-day, and just
puts up walls as he needs protection from wild beasts, and a roof to
keep out the rain, he is not yet an artist. But the moment he begins to
consider his work with some feeling, and arranges the relative sizes of
his walls and roof so that they answer to some sense he has for
beautiful proportion, he has become an artist, and his hut has some
architectural pretensions. Now if his hut is of wood, and he paints it
to protect it from the elements, nothing necessarily artistic has been
done. But if he selects colours that give him pleasure in their
arrangement, and if the forms his colour masses assume are designed with
some personal feeling, he has invented a primitive form of decoration.

And likewise the savage who, wishing to illustrate his description of a
strange animal he has seen, takes a piece of burnt wood and draws on the
wall his idea of what it looked like, a sort of catalogue of its
appearance in its details, he is not necessarily an artist. It is only
when he draws under the influence of some feeling, of some pleasure he
felt