follows another--the greater purity and perfection of art. The control
which the artist exerts over his material enables him to make it
expressive all through; every element conspires toward the artistic
end; there are no irrelevant or recalcitrant parts, such as exist in
every perception of nature. Last, the beauty of the painting, because
created in the beholder through a fixed and permaneat mechanism
constructed by the artist, is communicable and abiding, whereas the
immediate beauty of nature is incommunicable and transient. Since the
sthetic perception of nature has its starting point in variable aspects
that never recur, no other man could see or feel the lily pond as Monet
saw and felt it. And, although in memory we may possess a silent gallery
of beautiful images, into which we may enter privately as long as we
live, in the end the flux has its way and at death shatters this
treasure house irrevocably. Hence, only if the beauty of the lily pond
is transferred to a canvas, can it be preserved and shared.

The work of art is the tool of the aesthetic life. Just as organic
efficiency is tied to the nerve and muscle of the workman and cannot
be transferred to another, but the tool, on the other hand, is
exchangeable and transmissible (I cannot lend or bequeath my arm, but
I can my boat); and just as efficiency is vastly increased by the use
of tools (I can go further with my boat than I can swim); so, through
works of art, aesthetic capacity and experience are enhanced and become
common possessions, a part of the spiritual capital of the race.
Moreover, even as each invention becomes the starting point for new
ones that are better instruments for practical ends; so each work of
art becomes the basis for new experiments through which the aesthetic
expression of life attains to higher levels. Monet's own art, despite
its great originality, was dependent upon all the impressionists, and
they, even when they broke away from, were indebted to, the traditions