varies also with the suggestibility and discrimination of the observer.
Here no a priori principles can be laid down for what only the
experimental practice of the artist can determine.

Moreover, the negative suggestions of a work of art, although they are
effective in preventing entire belief in the reality of the idea
expressed, do not hinder the communication and appreciation of the
attached feelings. Just so long as the belief attitude is not wholly
extinguished, this is the case; and the skillful artist takes care of
that. Of course, an attitude of self-surrender, of willingness to
accept suggestions, has to be present and we cooperate with the artist
in creating it. Aesthetic belief implies sufficient abandon that we
may react emotionally to a suggestion, but not enough that we may react
practically. We let the idea tell upon our feelings; we do not let it
incite us to action. The aesthetic plausibility of an idea depends
largely upon its initial plausibility with the artist. There is nothing
more contagious than belief. To utter things with an accent of
conviction is half the battle in getting oneself believed. If the
artist pretends to believe something and expresses himself with an air
of assurance, we accept it, no matter how preposterous it may be from
the practical or scientific point of view. Think of Rabelais!

A work of art is a logical system. It presupposes certain assumptions,
postulates, conventions, which we must accept if we are to live in its
world. Now, in order that we may accept them, the artist must first
have vividly accepted them himself. Only if they have become a very
part of him, can they become at all valid for us. The failure of
classicistic art in a non-classical age, of "Pre-Raphaelitism" after
Raphael, is a failure in this--the artist has never lived even
imaginatively in the world he depicts. His belief is an artifice and