ression becomes communication as
his utterance calls out a response in the spirit of a fellow-man. Art
exists not only for the artist's sake but for the appreciator too. As art
has its origin in emotion and is the expression of it, so for the
appreciator the individual work has a meaning and is art in so far as
it becomes for him the expression of what he has himself felt but
could not phrase; and it is art too in the measure in which it is the
revelation of larger possibilities of feeling and creates in him a new
emotional experience. The impulse to expression is common to all;
the difference is one of degree. And the message of art is for all,
according as they are attuned to the response. Art is creation. For the
artist it is creation by expression; for the appreciator it is creation by
evocation. These two principles complete the cycle; abstractly and
very briefly they are the whole story of art.

To be responsive to the needs of life and its emotional appeal is the
first condition of artistic creation. By new combinations of material
elements to bring emotion to expression in concrete harmonious
forms, themselves charged with emotion and communicating it, is to
fashion a work of art. To feel in material, whether in the forms of
nature or in works of art, a meaning for the spirit is the condition of
appreciation.

II

THE ATTITUDE OF RESPONSE

IT is a gray afternoon in late November. The day is gone; evening is
not yet come. Though too dark to read or write longer, it is not dark
enough for drawn shades and the lamp. As I sit in the gathering dusk,
my will hovering between work done and work to do, I surrender to
the mood of the moment. The day is accomplished, but it is not yet a
remembrance, for it is still too near for me to define the details that
made up its hours. Consciousness, not sharp enough for thought,
floats away into diffused and obscure emotion. The sense is upon
me and around me that I am vaguely, unreasoningly, yet pleasantly,
unhappy. Out of the dimness a trick of memory recalls to me the
lines,--

"Tears! tears! tears!
In the night, in solitude, tears,
On the white shore dripping, dripping, suck'd in by the sand,
Tears, not a star shining, all dark and desolate,
Moist tears from the eyes of a muffled head;
O who is that ghost? that form in the dark, with tears?
What shapeless lump is that, bent, crouch'd there on the sand?
Streaming tears, sobbi