Do not taste it once and throw it away. To get at the root of this matter
we must go farther back than literature and inquire what it has in common
with all other forms of art to compel our love and admiration. Now, a work
of art differs from any other result of human endeavor in this--that its
effect depends chiefly on the way in which it is made and only secondarily
upon what it is or what it represents. Were this not true, all statues of
Apollo or Venus would have the same art-value; and you or I, if we could
find a tree and a hill that Corot had painted, would be able to produce a
picture as charming to the beholder as his.

The way in which a thing is done is, of course, always important, but its
importance outside of the sphere of art differs from that within. The way
in which a machine is constructed makes it good or bad, but the thing that
is aimed at here is the useful working of the machine, toward which all
the skill of the maker is directed. What the artist aims at is not so much
to produce a likeness of a god or a picture of a tree, as to produce
certain effects in the person who looks at his complete work; and this he
does by the way in which he performs it. The fact that a painting
represents certain trees and hills is here only secondary; the primary
fact is what the artist has succeeded in making the on-looker feel.

While Sorolla is painting a group of children on the beach, I may take a
kodak picture of the same group. My photograph may be a better likeness
than Sorolla's picture, but it has no art-value. Why? Because it was made
mechanically, whereas Sorolla put into his picture something of himself,
making it a unique thing, incapable of imitation or of reproduction.

The man who has a message, one of those pervasive, compelling messages
that are worth while, naturally turns to art. He chooses his subject not
as an end, but as a vehicle, and he makes it speak his message by his