is the product of strange activities in the human mind. In so far as we
are mere spectators and connoisseurs we need not bother about these;
all we are concerned with is the finished product, the work of art. To
produce the best eggs it may be that hens should be fed on hot meal
mash. That is a question for the farmer. For us what matters is the
quality of the eggs, since it is them and not hot meal mash that we
propose to eat for breakfast. Few, however, can take quite so lordly
an attitude towards art. We contemplate the object, we experience
the appropriate emotion, and then we begin asking "Why?" and "How?"
Personally, I am so conscious of these insistent questions that, at the
risk of some misunderstanding, I habitually describe works of art as
"significant" rather than "beautiful" forms. For works of art, unlike
roses, are the creations and expressions of conscious minds. I beg that
no theological red herring may here be drawn across the scent.

A work of art is an object beautiful, or significant, in itself, nowise
dependent for its value on the outside world, capable by itself of
provoking in us that emotion which we call æsthetic. Agreed. But men do
not create such things unconsciously and without effort, as they breathe
in their sleep. On the contrary, for their production are required
special energies and a peculiar state of mind. A work of art, like a
rose, is the result of a string of causes: and some of us are so vain
as to take more interest in the operations of the human mind than in
fertilizers and watering-pots.

In the pre-natal history of a work of art I seem to detect at any rate
three factors--a state of peculiar and intense sensibility, the creative
impulse, and the artistic problem. An artist, I imagine, is one who
often and easily is thrown into that state of acute and sympathetic
agitation which most of us, once or twice in our lives, have had the