thus he will be able to push all his judgments a step further back. Let
me give one example. Of copies of pictures there are two classes; one
class contains some works of art, the other none. A literal copy is
seldom reckoned even by its owner a work of art. It leaves us cold; its
forms are not significant. Yet if it were an absolutely exact copy,
clearly it would be as moving as the original, and a photographic
reproduction of a drawing often is--almost. Evidently, it is impossible
to imitate a work of art exactly; and the differences between the copy
and the original, minute though they may be, exist and are felt
immediately. So far the critic is on sure and by this time familiar
ground. The copy does not move him, because its forms are not identical
with those of the original; and just what made the original moving is
what does not appear in the copy. But why is it impossible to make an
absolutely exact copy? The explanation seems to be that the actual lines
and colours and spaces in a work of art are caused by something in the
mind of the artist which is not present in the mind of the imitator. The
hand not only obeys the mind, it is impotent to make lines and colours
in a particular way without the direction of a particular state of mind.
The two visible objects, the original and the copy, differ because that
which ordered the work of art does not preside at the manufacture of the
copy. That which orders the work of art is, I suggest, the emotion which
empowers artists to create significant form. The good copy, the copy
that moves us, is always the work of one who is possessed by this
mysterious emotion. Good copies are never attempts at exact imitation;
on examination we find always enormous differences between them and
their originals: they are the work of men or women who do not copy but
can translate the art of others into their own language. The power of
creating significant form depends, not on hawklike vision, but on some
curious mental and emotional power. Even to copy a picture one needs,
not to see as a trained observer, but to feel as an artist. To make the