but emotion art ignores--that is to say, it ignores their practical
utility. Artists are often concerned with things, but never with the
labels on things. These useful labels were invented by practical people
for practical purposes. The misfortune is that, having acquired the
habit of recognising labels, practical people tend to lose the power of
feeling emotion; and, as the only way of getting at the thing in itself
is by feeling its emotional significance, they soon begin to lose their
sense of reality. Mr. Roger Fry has pointed out that few can hope ever
to see a charging bull as an end in itself and yield themselves to the
emotional significance of its forms, because no sooner is the label
"Charging Bull" recognised than we begin to dispose ourselves for flight
rather than contemplation.[5] This is where the habit of recognising
labels serves us well. It serves us ill, however, when, although there
is no call for action or hurry, it comes between things and our
emotional reaction to them. The label is nothing but a symbol that
epitomises for busy humanity the significance of things regarded as
"means." A practical person goes into a room where there are chairs,
tables, sofas, a hearth-rug and a mantel-piece. Of each he takes note
intellectually, and if he wants to set himself down or set down a cup,
he will know all he needs to know for his purpose. The label tells him
just those facts that serve his practical ends; of the thing itself that
lurks behind the label nothing is said. Artists, _qua_ artists, are not
concerned with labels. They are concerned with things only as means to
a particular kind of emotion, which is the same as saying that they are
only concerned with things perceived as ends in themselves; for it is
only when things are _perceived_ as ends that they _become_ means to
this emotion. It is only when we cease to regard the objects in a
landscape as means to anything that we can feel the landscape
artistically. But when we do succeed in regarding the parts of a
landscape as ends in themselves--as pure forms, that is to say--the