what they get from art is bad or nugatory; I say that they do not get
the best that art can give. I do not say that they cannot understand
art; rather I say that they cannot understand the state of mind of those
who understand it best. I do not say that art means nothing or little to
them; I say they miss its full significance. I do not suggest for one
moment that their appreciation of art is a thing to be ashamed of; the
majority of the charming and intelligent people with whom I am
acquainted appreciate visual art impurely; and, by the way, the
appreciation of almost all great writers has been impure. But provided
that there be some fraction of pure aesthetic emotion, even a mixed and
minor appreciation of art is, I am sure, one of the most valuable things
in the world--so valuable, indeed, that in my giddier moments I have
been tempted to believe that art might prove the world's salvation.

Yet, though the echoes and shadows of art enrich the life of the plains,
her spirit dwells on the mountains. To him who woos, but woos impurely,
she returns enriched what is brought. Like the sun, she warms the good
seed in good soil and causes it to bring forth good fruit. But only to
the perfect lover does she give a new strange gift--a gift beyond all
price. Imperfect lovers bring to art and take away the ideas and
emotions of their own age and civilisation. In twelfth-century Europe a
man might have been greatly moved by a Romanesque church and found
nothing in a T'ang picture. To a man of a later age, Greek sculpture
meant much and Mexican nothing, for only to the former could he bring a
crowd of associated ideas to be the objects of familiar emotions. But
the perfect lover, he who can feel the profound significance of form, is
raised above the accidents of time and place. To him the problems of
archaeology, history, and hagiography are impertinent. If the forms of a
work are significant its provenance is irrelevant. Before the grandeur
of those Sumerian figures in the Louvre he is carried on the same flood