nearer to our sentient self, if we have ears to take it in, than
the same emotion limited by language. It is intenser, it is more
immediate, as compensation for being less intelligible, less
unmistakable in meaning. It is an infinite, an indistinct, where each
consciousness defines and sets a limitary form.

V

A train of thought which begins with the concrete not unfrequently
finds itself finishing, almost against its will, in abstractions. This
is the point to which the performance of Cherubino's part by Pauline
Lucca at the Scala twenty years ago has led me--that I have to settle
with myself what I mean by art in general, and what I take to be the
proper function of music as one of the fine arts.

'Art,' said Goethe, 'is but form-giving.' We might vary this
definition, and say, 'Art is a method of expression or presentation.'
Then comes the question: If art gives form, if it is a method of
expression or presentation, to what does it give form, what does it
express or present? The answer certainly must be: Art gives form to
human consciousness; expresses or presents the feeling or the thought
of man. Whatever else art may do by the way, in the communication
of innocent pleasures, in the adornment of life and the softening of
manners, in the creation of beautiful shapes and sounds, this, at all
events, is its prime function.

While investing thought, the spiritual subject-matter of all art, with
form, or finding for it proper modes of presentation, each of the arts
employs a special medium, obeying the laws of beauty proper to that
medium. The vehicles of the arts, roughly speaking, are material
substances (like stone, wood, metal), pigments, sounds, and words.
The masterly handling of these vehicles and the realisation of
their characteristic types of beauty have come to be regarded as the
craftsman's paramount concern. And in a certain sense this is a right
conclusion; for dexterity in the manipulation of the chosen vehicle
and power to create a beautiful object, distinguish the successful
artist from the man who may have had like thoughts and feelings. This
dexterity, this power, are the properties of the artist _qua_
artist. Yet we must not forget that the form created by the artist
for the expression of a thought or feeling is not the final end of art
itself. That form, after all, is but the mode of presentation through
which the spiritual content manifests itself. Beauty, in like manner,
is not the final en