Thus it seems that the stumbling blocks in the way of our
theory are not insurmountable after all. From every point
of view, it is seen to be possible to transmute the idea into
a helpmeet to the form. Visual beauty is first beauty to the
eye and to the frame, and the mind cherishes and enriches
this beauty with all its own stored treasures. The stimulation
and repose of the psychophysical organism alone can make one
thrill to visual form; but the thrill is deeper and more
satisfying if it engage the whole man, and be reinforced from
all sources.


VII

But we ought to note a borderland in which the concern is
professedly not with beauty, but with ideas of life. Aristotle's
lover of knowledge, who rejoiced to say of a picture "This is
that man," is the inspirer of drawing as opposed to the art of
visual form.

It is not beauty we seek from the Rembrandt and Durer of the
etchings and woodcuts, from Hogarth, Goya, Klinger, down to
Leech and Keene and Du Maurier; it is not beauty, but ideas,--
information, irony, satire, life-philosophy. Where there is
a conflict, beauty, as we have defined it, goes to the wall.
We may trace, perhaps, the ground of this in the highly increased
amount of symbolic, associative power given, and required, in
the black and white. Even to understand such a picture demands
such an enormous amount of unconscious mental supplementation