bject futility on their own account, if only they can be viewed from
the right angle, and with a cultivated sense for such things. Now thus
to poetize the tragedy of one's own life is fatuous; it is like
enjoying one's dizziness on the brink of a precipice, or the pangs of
sickness without seeking a remedy. But to poetize the tragedy of
others, to fiddle while Rome is burning, is brutal. Nevertheless,
though it is not commonly possible to do things on Nero's scale,
precisely the same attitude is the commonest thing in the world, and is
fostered by the whole aesthetic bias of the race. The meanness of
savage life, the squalid poverty of the slums, suffice in their
picturesqueness to make a holiday for those who are more occupied with
images than with deeds. And there is actually a philosophy of life in
which all things are held to be good because they afford a tragic,
sublime, and, therefore, pleasing spectacle. This is the very extreme
of moral infidelity, the abandonment of the will to make good for the
insidious and relaxing interest in making things seem good as they are.

{201}

VI

That a beautiful object commonly _stimulates_ a motor response is
beyond question. Even when it does not appeal to any definite emotion
it is _generally_ stimulating, through its affording to the natural
powers at some point an unusual harmony with their environment. And
when there is a definite emotional appeal, there is a tendency to act.
For, as we have seen, originally the fundamental emotions were all
co-ordinated reactions to the environment, enlisting the whole organism
to cope with some practical emergency. That the emotions should become
_mere_ emotions is due to the modification of instinct by habit.
Whatever, then, arouses the emotions does in some degree stir to
action. So that one of the most important moral uses of art is its
alliance with other interests in order to intensify their appeal, in
order to make them more instantly moving. Art is a means of enlivening
dormant impulses; as music is a means of rekindling the love of country
or the love of God, so that men may be brought to take up arms with
enthusiasm or endure reverses without complaint.

But this motor excitement which art stimulates may be morally
indeterminate; that is, it may be capable of being discharged in any
way that accident or bias may select. In other words, {202} art may
communicate power without controlling its use, thus merely incre