p off the grass, that he makes no solid progress. On
the other hand, the artistic temperament lives in the world and is not
entitled to follow its own laws where those conflict with the interests
of others. The mere possession of this type of temperament involves its
Bohemian owner in many difficulties which do not beset the path of those
who fit into the routine of life as they find it. Certainly it is
advisable for the artist to temper his ways with discretion, for genius
is altogether too apt to make a meteoric blaze and end up in a fizzle.

The possessor of the artistic temperament is frequently deemed
unreliable and capricious, and to a certain extent this is true. It is
the sensitiveness first to one impact and then another, the
susceptibility to the manifold forces that play upon the individual,
which turn him now in the one direction and then in the other. He is
lured and led by this, and then by that. Yet at times he is capable of
the greatest concentration: immersed in his subject he may even forget
the outer world and omit to eat his dinner, or perhaps like the
philosopher he may eat it twice.

It is, however, quite possible to cultivate some of the advantages of
this temperament and to restrict the disadvantages. It is not
necessary, for example, that anyone should be at the mercy of every
transient impulse: this involves an enormous waste of energy, as would
the voyage of a ship which should suffer itself to be blown hither and
thither by every passing breeze. We only respond to that to which we are
mentally attuned, and our minds pick up out of the welter of errant
thought only those which correspond to the note we sing. This, then,
suggests that by attuning the mind to certain things we automatically
throw it out of tune with conflicting ideas. The successful artist, as a
rule, is one who has learnt to render himself oblivious to distractions,
and so is enabled to concentrate his attention solely on the work in
hand. The artist who will be permanently unsuccessful is the one whose
enthusiasms attract him first to one thing and then another, never
allowing him to remain absorbed by the one thing long enough to bring it
to a satisfactory issue. Auto-suggestion applied to this point of
inculcating response to certain things, and immunity from the influence
of others, is an easy and extremely practical help.

One characteristic of genius is an extreme fertility in making mental
associations. A central objec