of history. Perhaps, to understand thoroughly any kind of history we
must understand every kind of history. Perhaps the history of an age or
of a life is an indivisible whole. Another intolerable idea! What
becomes of the specialist? What of those formidable compendiums in which
the multitudinous activities of man are kept so jealously apart? The
mind boggles at the monstrous vision of its own conclusions.

But, after all, does it matter to me? I am not an historian of art or of
anything else. I care very little when things were made, or why they
were made; I care about their emotional significance to us. To the
historian everything is a means to some other means; to me everything
that matters is a direct means to emotion. I am writing about art, not
about history. With history I am concerned only in so far as history
serves to illustrate my hypothesis: and whether history be true or false
matters very little, since my hypothesis is not based on history but on
personal experience, not on facts but on feelings. Historical fact and
falsehood are of no consequence to people who try to deal with
realities. They need not ask, "Did this happen?"; they need ask only,
"Do I feel this?" Lucky for us that it is so: for if our judgments about
real things had to wait upon historical certitude they might have to
wait for ever. Nevertheless it is amusing to see how far that of which
we are sure agrees with that which we should expect. My aesthetic
hypothesis--that the essential quality in a work of art is significant
form--was based on my aesthetic experience. Of my aesthetic experiences
I am sure. About my second hypothesis, that significant form is the
expression of a peculiar emotion felt for reality--I am far from
confident. However, I assume it to be true, and go on to suggest that
this sense of reality leads men to attach greater importance to the
spiritual than to the material significance of the universe, that it
disposes men to feel things as ends instead of merely recognising them