al form in which the emotion is
embodied. The handling of material to the end of making it
expressive is an affair of technique. The layman may ask himself,
then, To what extent is a knowledge of technique necessary for
appreciation? And how may he win that knowledge?

On his road to appreciation the layman is beset with difficulties.
Most of the talk about art which he hears is either the translation of
picture or sonata into terms of literary sentiment or it is a discussion
of the way the thing is done. He knows at least that painting is not
the same as literature and that music has its own province; he
recognizes that the meaning of pictures is not literary but pictorial,
the meaning of music is musical. But the emphasis laid upon the
manner of execution confuses and disturbs him. At the outset he
frankly admits that he has no knowledge of technical processes as
such. Yet each art must be read in its own language, and each has its
special technical problems. He realizes that to master the technique
of any single art is a career. And yet there are many arts, all of
which may have some message for him in their own kind. If he must
be able to paint in order to enjoy pictures rightly, if he cannot listen
intelligently at a concert without being able himself to compose or at
least to perform, his case for the appreciation of art seems hopeless.

If the layman turns to his artist friends for enlightenment and a little
sympathy, it is possible he may encounter a rebuff. Artists
sometimes speak contemptuously of the public. "A painter," they
say, "paints for painters, not for the people; outsiders know nothing
about painting." True, outsiders know nothing about painting, but
perhaps they know a little about life. If art is more than intellectual
subtlety and manual skill, if art is the expression of something the
artist has felt and lived, then the outsider has after all some standard
for his estimate of art and a basis for his enjoyment. He is able to
determine the value of the work to himself according as it expresses
what he already knows about life or reveals to him fuller
possibilities of experience which he can make his own. He does not
pretend to judge painting; but he feels that he has some right to
appreciate art. In reducing all art to a matter of technique artists
themselves are not quite consistent. My friends Jones, a painter, and
Smith, a composer, do not withhold their opinion of this or that
novel and poem