differences between them, there has never been a time when the
arts approached each other more nearly than they do today, in
this later phase of spiritual development.

In each manifestation is the seed of a striving towards the
abstract, the non-material. Consciously or unconsciously they are
obeying Socrates' command--Know thyself. Consciously or
unconsciously artists are studying and proving their material,
setting in the balance the spiritual value of those elements,
with which it is their several privilege to work.

And the natural result of this striving is that the various arts
are drawing together. They are finding in Music the best teacher.
With few exceptions music has been for some centuries the art
which has devoted itself not to the reproduction of natural
phenomena, but rather to the expression of the artist's soul, in
musical sound.

A painter, who finds no satisfaction in mere representation,
however artistic, in his longing to express his inner life,
cannot but envy the ease with which music, the most non-material
of the arts today, achieves this end. He naturally seeks to apply
the methods of music to his own art. And from this results that
modern desire for rhythm in painting, for mathematical, abstract
construction, for repeated notes of colour, for setting colour in
motion.

This borrowing of method by one art from another, can only be
truly successful when the application of the borrowed methods is
not superficial but fundamental. One art must learn first how