material as we find it. The best we find is seldom or never what we
would prefer. If I, for instance, could have my choice, my students
would never be allowed to work from a model who repelled the student or
left the student indifferent. No students of mine, if I could have my
way, should ever paint from a model that failed to call forth the finest
feelings. Otherwise, how can your best emotions have full play in your
work; and unless your best emotions enter into your work, what will your
work be worth? For if you have never before understood the truth, try to
realize it now: that you will succeed in painting only through the best
that is in you; just as only the best in you will ever carry you
triumphantly to the end of any practical human road that is worth the
travel; just as you will reach all life's best goals only through your
best. And in painting remember that the best is never in the eye, for
the eye can only perceive, the eye can only direct; and the best is
never in the hand, for the hand can only measure, the hand can only
move. In painting the best comes from emotion. A human being may lack
eyes and be none the poorer in character; a human being may lack hands
and be none the poorer in character; but whenever in life a person lacks
any great emotion, that person is the poorer in everything. And so in
painting you can fail after the eye has gained all necessary knowledge,
you can fail after your hand has received all necessary training, either
because nature has denied you the foundations of great feeling, or
because, having these foundations, you have failed to make them the
foundations of your work.

"But among a hundred models there might not be one to arouse such
emotion. Actually in the world, among the thousands of people we know,
how few stir in us our best, force us to our best! It is the rarest
experience of our lifetimes that we meet a man or a woman who literally
drives us to the realization of what we really are and can really do