history
of art may betray us if we are not careful to keep it in its place. The
study of art should follow and not lead appreciation. We are apt to
see what we are looking for. So we ought to come to each work
freshly without prejudice or bias; it is only afterwards that we should
bring to bear on it our knowledge about the facts of its production.
Connoisseurship is a science and may hold within itself no element
of aesthetic enjoyment. Appreciation is an art, and the quality of it
depends upon the appreciator himself. The end of historical study is
not a knowledge of facts for their own sake, but through those facts
a deeper penetration and fuller true enjoyment. By the aid of such
knowledge we are enabled to recognize in any work more certainly
and abundantly the expression of an emotional experience which
relates itself to our own life.

The final meaning of art to the appreciator lies in just this sense of
its relation to his own experience. The greatest works are those
which express reality and life, not limited and temporary conditions,
but life universal and for all time. Without commentary these carry
their message, appealing to the wisest and the humblest. Gather into
a single room a fragment of the Parthenon frieze, Michelangelo's
"Day and Night," Botticelli's "Spring," the sprites and children of
Donatello and Delia Robbia, Velasquez's "Pope Innocent,"
Rembrandt's "Cloth-weavers," Frans Hals' "Musician," Millet's
"Sower," Whistler's "Carlyle." There is here no thought of period or
of school. These living, present, eternal verities are all one company.

VI

THE SERVICE OF CRITICISM

THE greatest art is universal. It transcends the merely local
conditions in which it is produced. It sweeps beyond the individual
personality of its creator, and links itself with the common
experience of all men. The Parthenon, so far as it can be
reconstructed in imagination, appeals to a man of any race or any
period, whatever his habit of mind or degree of culture, as a perfect
utterance. The narrow vault of the Sistine Chapel opens into
immensity, and every one who looks upon it is lifted out of himself
into new worlds. Shakespeare's plays were enjoyed by the
apprentices in the pit and royalty in the boxes, and so all the way
between. The man Shakespeare, of such and such birth and training,
and of this or that experience in life, is entirely merged in his
creations; he becomes the impersonal channel of expression o