spectator feel, it seems that the creator must feel too. What is this
that imitated forms lack and created forms possess? What is this
mysterious thing that dominates the artist in the creation of forms?
What is it that lurks behind forms and seems to be conveyed by them to
us? What is it that distinguishes the creator from the copyist? What can
it be but emotion? Is it not because the artist's forms express a
particular kind of emotion that they are significant?--because they fit
and envelop it, that they are coherent?--because they communicate it,
that they exalt us to ecstasy?

One word of warning is necessary. Let no one imagine that the expression
of emotion is the outward and visible sign of a work of art. The
characteristic of a work of art is its power of provoking aesthetic
emotion; the expression of emotion is possibly what gives it that power.
It is useless to go to a picture gallery in search of expression; you
must go in search of significant form. When you have been moved by form,
you may begin to consider what makes it moving. If my theory be correct,
rightness of form is invariably a consequence of rightness of emotion.
Right form, I suggest, is ordered and conditioned by a particular kind
of emotion; but whether my theory be true or false, the form remains
right. If the forms are satisfactory, the state of mind that ordained
them must have been aesthetically right. If the forms are wrong, it does
not follow that the state of mind was wrong; between the moment of
inspiration and the finished work of art there is room for many a slip.
Feeble or defective emotion is at best only one explanation of
unsatisfactory form. Therefore, when the critic comes across
satisfactory form he need not bother about the feelings of the artist;
for him to feel the aesthetic significance of the artist's forms
suffices. If the artist's state of mind be important, he may be sure
that it was right because the forms are right. But when the critic