it, and as completely without an answer to
the problem as we were on starting. We have been losing our time, going
round and round a question merely to find ourselves at our original
starting-point. Not so: going round the question indeed, but in
constantly narrowing circles, which will dwindle, let us hope, till we
find ourselves on the only indivisible centre, which is the solution of
the problem. For there are many questions which are like the towns of
this same Umbria of Perugino: built upon the brink of a precipice,
walled round with a wall of unhewn rock, seeming so near if we look up
at them from the ravine below, and see every roof, and cypress-tree,
and pillared balcony; but which we cannot approach by scaling the
unscalable, sheer precipice, but must slowly wind round from below,
circling up and down endless undulations of vineyard and oakwood, coming
for ever upon a tantalising glimpse of towers and walls, for ever
seemingly close above us, and yet forever equally distant; till at last,
by a sharp turn of the gradually ascending road, we find ourselves
before the unexpected gates of the city. And thus we have approached
a little nearer to the solution of the question. We have, in our
wanderings, left behind one part of the ground. We have admitted that
the work of art is produced not by the man, but merely by that portion
of him which we call the artist; we have even dimly foreseen that
the case may be that in one art the artist, that is to say, the
art-producing organism, comprises nearly the whole of the mere
individual: that the artistic part is very nearly the complete human
whole. Now, in order to approach nearer our final conclusion, namely,
whether the man Perugino could have painted those saints and those
angels had he really been the mercenary atheist of Vasari, we must set
afresh to examine what, in the various arts, are the portions of an
individual necessary to constitute the mere artist, that is to say, the
producer of a work of art.

But stop again. Are we quite sure that we know what we mean when we say
"a work of art?" Are we quite sure that we may not, without knowing it,
be talking of two things under one name? Surely not: when we apply the
word to one of Perugino's archangels, we certainly refer to one whole
object. So far, certainly, we mean (let us put it in the crudest way) a
certain amount of colour laid on to a canvas in such a manner, and with
such arrangements of tints and shadows,