owledge in obedience to the law of growth. Each partial clue to
understanding brings him a step farther on his road; each new
glimmer of insight beckons him to ultimate illumination. Though
baffled at the outset, yet patient under disappointment, undauntedly
he pushes on in spite of obstacles, until he wins his way at last to
true appreciation.

If the layman seeks a standard by which to test the value of any
technical method, he finds it in the success of the work itself. Every
method is to be judged in and for itself on its own merits, and not as
better or worse than some other method. Individually we may prefer
Velasquez to Frans Hals; Whistler may minister to our personal
satisfaction in larger measure than Mr. Sargent; we may enjoy Mr.
James better than Stevenson; Richard Strauss may stir us more
deeply than Brahms. We do not affirm thereby that impressionism is
inherently better than realism, or that subtlety is more to be desired
than strength; the psychological novel is not necessarily greater than
romance; because of our preference "programme music" is not
therefore more significant than "absolute music." The greatness of
an artist is established by the greatness of his ideas, adequately
expressed. And the value of any technical method is determined by
its own effectiveness for expression.

There is, then, no invariable standard external to the work itself by
which to judge technique. For no art is final. A single work is the
manifestation of beauty as the individual artist has conceived or felt
it. The perception of what is beautiful varies from age to age and
with each person. So, too, standards of beauty in art change with
each generation; commonly they are deduced from the practice of
preceding artists. Classicism formulates rules from works that have
come to be recognized as beautiful, and it requires of the artist
conformity to these rules. By this standard, which it regards as
absolute, it tries a new work, and it pretends to adjudge the work
good or bad according as it meets the requirements. Then a Titan
emerges who defies the canons, wrecks the old order, and in his own
way, to the despair or scorn of his contemporaries, creates a work
which the generation that follows comes to see is beautiful. "Every
author," says Wordsworth, "as far as he is great and at the same time
_original,_ has had the task of creating the taste by which he is to be
enjoyed." Wordsworth in his own generation was ridiculed;