entrates and intensifies the harmony of it and so
heightens its emotional value. The meaning of the scene for the
spirit is conveyed in terms of color and mass.

Color and mass are the painter's medium, his language. The final
import of art is the _idea,_ the emotional content of the work. On his
way to the expression of his idea the artist avails himself of material
to give his feeling concrete actuality and visible or audible
realization. He paints a picture, glorious in color and compelling in
the concentration of its massing; he carves a statue, noble in form or
subtly rhythmic; he weaves a pattern of harmonious sounds. He
values objects not for their own sake but for the energies they
possess,--their power to rouse his whole being into heightened
activity. And they have this power by virtue of their material
qualities, as color and form or sound. A landscape is gay in
springtime or sad in autumn. The difference in its effect upon us is
not due to our knowledge that it is spring or autumn and our
consciousness of the associations appropriate to each season. The
emotional quality of the scene is largely a matter of its color. Let the
spring landscape be shrouded in gray mist sifting down out of gray
skies, and we are sad. Let the autumn fields and woodland sparkle
and dance in the crisp golden sunlight, and our blood dances with
them and we want to shout from full lungs. In music the major key
wakens a different emotion from the minor. The note of a violin is
virgin in quality; the voice of the 'cello is the voice of experience.
The distinctive emotional value of each instrument inheres in the
character of its sound. These qualities of objects art uses as its
language.

Though all art is one in essence, yet each art employs a medium of
its own. In order to understand a work in its scope and true
significance we must recognize that an artist thinks and feels in
terms of his special medium. His impulse to create comes with his
vision, actual or imaginative, of color or form, and his thought is
transmitted to his hand, which shapes the work, without the
intervention of words. The nature of his vehicle and the conditions
in which he works determine in large measure the details of the form
which his idea ultimately assumes. Thus a potter designs his vessel
first with reference to its use and then with regard to his material, its
character and possibilities. As he models his plastic clay upon a
wheel, he naturally makes