the misrepresentation of the primitives must be attributed to what the
critics call, "wilful distortion." Be that as it may, the point is that,
either from want of skill or want of will, primitives neither create
illusions, nor make display of extravagant accomplishment, but
concentrate their energies on the one thing needful--the creation of
form. Thus have they created the finest works of art that we possess.

Let no one imagine that representation is bad in itself; a realistic
form may be as significant, in its place as part of the design, as an
abstract. But if a representative form has value, it is as form, not as
representation. The representative element in a work of art may or may
not be harmful; always it is irrelevant. For, to appreciate a work of
art we need bring with us nothing from life, no knowledge of its ideas
and affairs, no familiarity with its emotions. Art transports us from
the world of man's activity to a world of aesthetic exaltation. For a
moment we are shut off from human interests; our anticipations and
memories are arrested; we are lifted above the stream of life. The pure
mathematician rapt in his studies knows a state of mind which I take to
be similar, if not identical. He feels an emotion for his speculations
which arises from no perceived relation between them and the lives of
men, but springs, inhuman or super-human, from the heart of an abstract
science. I wonder, sometimes, whether the appreciators of art and of
mathematical solutions are not even more closely allied. Before we feel
an aesthetic emotion for a combination of forms, do we not perceive
intellectually the rightness and necessity of the combination? If we do,
it would explain the fact that passing rapidly through a room we
recognise a picture to be good, although we cannot say that it has
provoked much emotion. We seem to have recognised intellectually the
rightness of its forms without staying to fix our attention, and
collect, as it were, their emotional significance. If this were so, it