oming over to
my side!"

"Yes," I said, "like a spy to the enemy's camp to see where your
strength really lies."

"I have no objection," he replied, "if it ends in your discovering new
defences for me."

"Well," I said, "we shall see. Anyhow, this is what I had in my mind.
We were saying just now that when people talk about 'real life,' the
'real world,' and so on, they are not always very clear as to what
they mean. But one thing, I think, perhaps they have obscurely in
their heads--that the Real is something from which you cannot escape;
something which forces itself upon you without reference to choice or
desire, having a nature of its own which may or may not conform, more
or less to yours, but in any case is distinct and independent. That
is why they would say, for example, that the illusions of a madman
are not real, meaning that they do not represent real things, however
vivid their appearance may be, because they are the productions merely
of his own consciousness; whereas the very same appearances presented
to a sane man would be called without hesitation real, because they
would be conceived to proceed from objects having an independent
nature of their own. Something of this kind, I suppose, is included in
the notion 'real' as it is held by ordinary people."

"Perhaps" said Leslie, "but what then? And how does it bear upon Art?"

"I am not sure," I replied, "but it occurred to me that works of
Art, though of course they are real objects, are such that a certain
violence, as it were, has been done to their reality in our interest.
What I mean will be best understood, I think, if we put ourselves for
the moment into the position of the artist. To him certain materials
are presented which of course are real in our present acceptation
of the term, being such as they are of their own nature, without
any dependence upon him. Upon these materials he flings himself, and
shapes them according to his desire, impressing, as it were, his
own nature upon theirs, till they confront him as a kind of image of
himself in an alien stuff. So far, then, he has a Good, and a Good
presented to him as real; but for the Goodness of this reality he is
himself responsible. In so far as it is, so to speak, merely real, it
has still the nature which was first presented to him, before he began
his work--a nature indifferent, if not opposed, to all his operations,
as is shown by the fact that it changes and passes away into something