unged into the
inner depth of soul events, and from out this inmost centre of the
world I fearlessly built up its outer form. . . . Life and death, the
whole import and existence of the outer world, here hang on nothing
but the inner movements of the soul. The whole affecting Action
comes about for the reason only that the inmost soul demands it, and
steps to light with the very shape foretokened in the inner shrine."
The form, thus self-constituted, has the power to delight us, and the
work is at the same time the expression of emotion. The arts of form
please us with the pleasure that attends the perception of formal
beauty; but this pleasure docs not exhaust their capability to minister
to us. What differentiates art from manufacture is the element of
personal expression. Born out of need, whether the need be physical
or spiritual, fulfilling the urge to expression, a work of art embodies
its maker's delight in creating. Correspondingly, beyond our
immediate enjoyment of the work as form, we feel something of
what the man felt who was impelled to create it. His handiwork, his
pattern, his composition, becomes the means of communicating to
us his emotional experience.

Obviously the significance of any work is determined primarily by
the intensity and scope of emotion which has prompted it. The
creation of works of art involves all degrees of intention, from the
hut in the wilderness rudely thrown together, whose purpose was
shelter, to a Gothic cathedral, in its multitudinousness eloquent of
man's worship and aspiration. The man who moulded the first bowl,
adapting its form as closely as possible to its use and shaping its
proportions for his own pleasure to satisfy his sense of harmony and
rhythm, differs from the builders of the Parthenon only in the degree
of intensity of his inspiring emotion and in the measure of his
controlling thought. The beauty of accomplished form of cathedral
and of temple is compelling; and we may forget that they rose out of
need. Both hut and bowl are immediately useful, and their beauty is
not so evident,--that little touch of feeling which wakens a response
in us. But in their adaptation to their function they become
significant; the satisfaction which accompanies expression is
communicated to us as we apprehend in the work the creator's
intention and we realize in ourselves what the creation of it meant to
him as the fulfillment of his need and the utterance of his emotion.

So th