subject to a thousand accidental deflections of circumstance.
Every enterprise involves conflicting wills; the
larger the enterprise, the more various and probably the more
conflicting the interests involved. Social movements have
their courses determined by factors altogether beyond the control
of their originators. Statesmen can start wars, but cannot
define their eventual fruits. A man may found a political
party, and live to see it wander far from the ideal which he
had framed. But in the fine arts, to the imaginatively and
technically endowed, the materials are prepared and controllable.
In the hands of a master, action does not wander
from intent. Language to the poet, for example, is an
immediate and responsive instrument; he can mould it precisely
to his ideal intention. The enterprise of poetry is less
dependent almost than any other undertaking on the accidents
of circumstance, outside the poet's initial imaginative resources.
In music, even so simple an instrument as a flute
can yield perfection of sound. The composer of a symphony
can invent a perpetual uncorroded beauty; the sculptor an
immortality of irrefutably persuasive form. This explains in
part why so many artists, of a reflective turn of mind, are
pessimists in practical affairs. The world of action with its
perpetual and pitiful frustrations, failures, and compromises,
seems incomparably poor, paltry, and sordid, in comparison
with the perfection that is attainable in art.

Haunting foreshadowings of the temple appear in the realm of
imagination, in music, in architecture, in the untroubled kingdom of
reason, and in the golden sunset magic of lyrics, where beauty shines
and glows, remote from the touch of sorrow, remote from the fear of
change, remote from the failures and disenchantment of the world of
fact. In the contemplation of these things the vision of heaven will
shape itself in our hearts, giving at once a touchstone to judge the
world about us, and an inspiration by which to fashion to our needs
whatever is capable of serving as a stone in the sacred temple.[1]

[Footnote 1: Bertrand Russell: _Philosophical Essays_, pp. 65-66.]

The creative artist gives such form to the miscellaneous
materials at his disposal that they give satisfaction not only
to the senses or the intellect, but to the imagination. What
constitute some of the chief elements in the aesthetic experience,
we shall presently examine. It must first be pointed
out that