gh impetus_ because they do not seem _to start with
sufficient pressure at the base;_ oblique lines (as in certain imitation
Gothic) which _lose their balance_ for lack of a countervailing
_thrust_ against them, all these, and alas many hundreds of other
possible combinations, are detestable to our feelings. And similarly
we are fussed and bored by the tentative lines, the uncoordinated
directions and impacts, of inferior, even if technically expert and
realistically learned draughtsmen, of artists whose work may charm
at first glance by some vivid likeness or poetic suggestion, but
reveal with every additional day their complete insignificance as
movement, their utter empathic nullity. Indeed, if we analyse the
censure ostensibly based upon engineering considerations of
material instability, or on wrong perspective or anatomical "out of
drawing" we shall find that much of this hostile criticism is really
that of empathic un-satisfactoriness, which escapes verbal detection
but is revealed by the finger _following,_ as we say (and that is
itself an instance of empathy) the movement, the development of,
boring or fussing lines.

Empathy explains not only the universally existing preferences with
regard to shape, but also those particular degrees of liking which are
matters of personal temperament and even of momentary mood
(_cf_. p. 131). Thus Mantegna, with his preponderance of
horizontals and verticals will appeal to one beholder as grave and
reassuring, but repel another beholder (or the same in a different
mood) as dull and lifeless; while the unstable equilibrium and
syncopated rythm of Botticelli may either fascinate or repel as
morbidly excited. And Leonardo's systems of whirling interlaced
circles will merely baffle (the "enigmatic" quality we hear so much
of) the perfunctory beholder, while rewarding more adequate
empathic imagination by allowing us to live, for a while, in the
modes of the intensest and most purposeful and most harmonious
energy.

Intensity and purposefulness and harmony. These are what everyday
life affords but rarely to our longings. And this is what, thanks to
this strange process of Empathy, a few inches of painted canvas, will
sometimes allow us to realise completely and uninterruptedly. And
it is no poetical metaphor or metaphysical figment, but mere
psychological fact, to say that if the interlacing circles and pentacles
of a Byzantine floor-pattern absorb us in satisfied contemplation