e that he finds his main pleasure in life in taking
himself apart, can find little of value for others in a masterpiece--a
work of art which is so much alive that it cannot be taken apart, and
which is eternal because its secret is eternally its own. If the time
ever comes when it can be taken apart, it will be done only by a man who
could have put it together, who is more alive than the masterpiece is
alive. Until the masterpiece meets with a master who is more creative
than its first master was, the less the motions of analysis are gone
through with by those who are not masters, the better. A masterpiece
cannot be analysed by the cold and negative process of being taken
apart. It can only be analysed by being melted down. It can only be
melted down by a man who has creative heat in him to melt it down and
the daily habit of glowing with creative heat.

It is a matter of common observation that the fewer resources an artist
has, the more things there are in nature and in the nature of life which
he thinks are not beautiful. The making of an artist is his sense of
selection. If he is an artist of the smaller type, he selects beautiful
subjects--subjects with ready-made beauty in them. If he is an artist of
the larger type, he can hardly miss making almost any subject beautiful,
because he has so many beautiful things to put it with. He sees every
subject the way it is--that is, in relation to a great many other
subjects--the way God saw it, when He made it, and the way it is.

The essential difference between a small mood and a large one is that in
the small one we see each thing we look on, comparatively by itself, or
with reference to one or two relations to persons and events. In our
larger mood we see it less analytically. We see it as it is and as it
lives and as a god would see it, playing its meaning through the whole
created scheme into everything else.

The soul of beauty is synthesis. In the presence of a mountain the sound
of a hammer is as rich as a symphony. It is like the little word of a
great man, great in its great relations. When the spirit is waked and
the man within the man is listening to it, the sound of a hoof on a
lonely road in the great woods is the footstep of cities to him coming
through the trees, and the low, chocking sound of a cartwheel in the
still and radiant valley throngs his being like an opera. All sights and
echoes and thoughts and feelings revel in it. It is music for the smoke,