in a medium of pure emotion, and the animal element so
fused with the spiritual as to form one organization through which the
same impulse runs with unimpeded energy--then man has made nature his
own, by becoming a conscious partaker of the reason which animates him
and it.[5] The attainment of this consummation is the end of life: but
it is an end that can never be fully realised, while "dualism" remains a
necessary condition of humanity. To most men it is as a land very far
off, of which occasional glimpses are caught from some "specular mount"
of philosophic or poetic thought. It can only approach realisation
through the operation of a power which can penetrate the whole man, and
act on every moment of his life. But that power, which in the form of
religion can make every meal a sacrament, and transform human passion
into the likeness of divine love, is represented at a lower stage, not
only by the unifying action of speculative philosophy, but by the
combining force of art.

FOOTNOTE:

[5] The same thought may be found, in concrete and poetic form, in
Wordsworth's lines:

"And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods,
And mountains."

F. THE ARTIST AS IDEALIZER

6. The artist, even at his lowest level, is more than an imitator of
imitations.[6] Abridgment, selection, combination, are the necessary
instruments of his craft; and by their aid he introduces harmony and
order into the confused multiplicity of sensuous images. He substitutes
for the primary outward aspect of things a new view, in which thought
already finds a resting place. Just as strong emotion tends to make all
known existence the setting of a single form; just as intense meditation
sees in all experience the manifestation of a single idea; so the
artist, even if he be merely telling a story, or painting a common
landscape, puts some of his materials in a relief, and combines all in a
harmony, which the untaught eye does not find in the world as it is. He
presents to us the