s the mutual attraction that exists between things that belong
together. The basis for transmitting an art to other persons is the
natural attraction that exists between persons that belong together. The
more mutual the attraction is,--complementary or otherwise,--the more
condensed and powerful teaching can it be made the conductor of. If a
hundred candidates offer themselves, fifty will be rejected because the
attraction is not mutual enough to insure swift and permanent results.
Out of fifty, forty will be rejected probably for the sake of ten with
whom the mutual attraction is so great that great things cannot help
being accomplished by it.

The thorough and contagious teacher of literature will hold his
power--the power of conveying the current and mood of art to others--as
a public trust. He owes it to the institution in which he is placed to
refuse to surround himself with non-conductors; and inasmuch as his
power--such as it is--is instinctive power, it will be placed where it
instinctively counts the most. In proportion as he loves his art and
loves his kind and desires to get them on speaking terms with each
other, he will devote himself to selected pupils, to those with whom he
will throw the least away. His service to others will be to give to
these such real, inspired, and reproductive knowledge, that it shall
pass on from them to others of its own inherent energy. From the
narrower--that is, the less spiritual--point of view, it has seemed
perhaps a selfish and aristocratic thing for a teacher to make
distinctions in persons in the conduct of his work, but from the point
of view of the progress of the world, it is heartless and sentimental to
do otherwise; and without exception all of the most successful teachers
in all of the arts have been successful quite as much through a kind of
dictatorial insight in selecting the pupils they could teach, as in
selecting the things they could teach them.

In the fifth place, having determined to choose his pupils himself, the
selection will be determined by processes of his own choosing. These
processes, whatever form or lack of form they may take, will serve to
convey to the teacher the main knowledge he desires. They will be an
examination in the capacity of joy in the pupil. Inasmuch as surplus joy
in a pupil is the most promising thing he can have, the sole secret of
any ability he may ever attain of learning literature, the basis of all
discipline, it will be t