y pulsation of interest and
desire, to provide every possible exquisite sensation. The
artist must not be a preacher; he must not tell men what is
the good; he must show them the good, which is identical
with the beautiful. And he must exhibit the beautiful in
every unique and lovely posture which can be imagined,
and which he can skillfully realize in color, in word, or in
sound. Art is its own justification; "a thing of beauty is a
joy forever."

Where art is governed by such intentions, form and material
become more important than expression. Thus there
develops in France in the late nineteenth century a school of
Symbolists and Sensationalists in poetry, whose single aim is
the production of precise and beautiful sensations through
the specific use of evocative words. The form and the style
become everything in literature, in painting, and the plastic
arts. The emphasis is put upon exquisiteness in decoration,
upon precision in technique, upon loveliness of material. The
Pre-Raphaelite movement in poetry, with its emphasis on the
use of picturesque and decorative epithets, the exclusive
emphasis in some modern music on subtlety of technique in tone
and color, are recent examples.

The position taken has clearly this much justification. A
work does not become a work of art through the fact that it
expresses noble sentiments. The most righteous sermon may
not be beautiful. Whatever be the source of its inspiration,
art must make its appeal through the palpable and undeniable
beauty of the formal embodiment it has given to its
vision. However much an object be prized as a moral instrument,
unless it stirs the senses and the imagination, it hardly
can be called a work of art. On the other hand, things intrinsically
beautiful do seem to be their own justification. A
poem of Keats, a Japanese print, a delicate vase, or an exquisite
song demand no moral justification. They are their
own sufficient excuse for being.

But the "art for art's sake" doctrine, carried to extremes,
results in mere decadence or triviality. It produces at best
exquisite decorative trifles rather than works of a large and
serious beauty. Music seems to be the art where sheer beauty
of form is its own justification, for music can hardly be used as
a specific medium of communication. Those compositions
that purport to be "program music," to convey definite
impressions of particular scenes or ideas, are somewhat
halting attempts to use music a