everything, to his vision, is run together in hopeless jumble: all is
discord, confusion--inextricable confusion worse confounded.

But the artist who is also a scientist (whether he knows it or not)
discovers that in the seeming confusion, order, method and law yet reign
supreme. And to prove his point he lifts from the tangle of things one
simple, single scene and shows this, and this alone, in all its full and
rounded completeness--beautiful as a snow-crystal on the slide of a
microscope.

All art consists in this: to show the harmony of a part. And having seen
the harmony of a part we pass on to a point where we can guess the
harmony of the whole. Whether you be painter, sculptor, musician or
writer, all your endeavors are toward lifting from the mass of things a
scene, a form, a harmony, a truth, and, relieving it from all that
distracts, catch it in immortal amber.

The writer merely unearths truth: truth has always existed: he lifts it
out of the mass, and holding it up where others can see it, the
discerning cry, "Yes, yes--we recognize it!" The musician takes the sound
he needs from the winds blowing through the forest branches, constructs a
harp strung with Apollo's golden hair, and behold, we have a symphony!
The wrongs of a race in bondage never touched the hearts of men until a
woman lifted out a single, solitary black man and showed us the stripes
upon the quivering back of Uncle Tom. One human being nailed to a cross
reveals the concentrated woes of earth; and as we gaze upon the picture,
into our hard hearts there comes creeping a desire to lessen the sorrows
of the world by an increased love; and a gentleness and sympathy are ours
such as we have never before known.