ful lines of the billows, those sharp contours of
the rock, contain everything which expresses their spirit.

It is not different with the author who writes a historical novel or
drama. Every man's life is crowded with the trivialities of the day. The
scholarly historian may have to look into them; the artist selects those
events in his hero's life which truly express his personality and which
are fit to sustain the significant plot. The more he brings those few
elements out of the many into sharp relief, the more he stimulates our
interest and makes us really feel with the persons of his novel or
drama. The sculptor even selects one single position. He cannot, like
the painter, give us any background, he cannot make his hero move as on
the theater stage. The marble statue makes the one position of the hero
everlasting, but this is so selected that all the chance aspects and
fleeting gestures of the real man appear insignificant compared with the
one most expressive and most characteristic position which is chosen.

However far this selection of the essential traits removes the artistic
creation from the mere imitative reproduction of the world, a much
greater distance from reality results from a second need if the work is
to fulfill the purposes of art. We saw that we have art only when the
work is isolated, that is, when it fulfills every demand in itself and
does not point beyond itself. This can be done only if it is sharply set
off from the sphere of our practical interests. Whatever enters into our
practical sphere links itself with our impulses to real action and the
action would involve a change, an intrusion, an influence from without.
As long as we have the desire to change anything, the work is not
complete in itself. The relation of the work to us as persons must not
enter into our awareness of it at all. As soon as it does, that complete
restfulness of the esthetic enjoyment is lost. Then the object becomes
simply a part of our practical surroundings. The fundamental condition
of art, therefore, is that we shall be distinctly conscious of the
unreality of the artistic production, and that means that it must be
absolutely separated from the real things and men, that it must be
isolated and kept in its own sphere. As soon as a work of art tempts us
to take it as a piece of reality, it has been dragged into the sphere of
our practical action, which means our desire to put ourselves into
connection with it. Its