men with beautiful objects and to remember that any inquiry into the
nature and laws of poetry will surely lead him into a deeper curiosity as
to the nature and manifestations of aesthetic feeling in general.


_2. The Impulse to Artistic Production_

Furthermore, no one can ask himself how it is that a poem comes into being
unless he also raises the wider question as to the origin and working of
the creative impulse in the other arts. It is clear that there is a gulf
between the mere sense of beauty--such as is possessed by primitive man,
or, in later stages of civilization, by the connoisseur in the fine
arts--and the concrete work of art. Thousands enjoy the statue, the
symphony, the ode; not one in a thousand can produce these objects.
Mere connoisseurship is sterile. "The ability to produce one fine line,"
said Edward FitzGerald, "transcends all the Able-Editor ability in this
ably-edited universe." What is the impulse which urges certain persons to
create beautiful objects? How is it that they cross the gulf which
separates the enjoyer from the producer?

It is easier to ask this question than to find a wholly satisfactory
answer to it. Plato's explanation, in the case of the poet, is simple
enough: it is the direct inspiration of the divinity,--the "god" takes
possession of the poet. Perhaps this may be true, in a sense, and we shall
revert to it later, but first let us look at some of the conditions for
the exercise of the creative impulse, as contemporary theorists have
endeavored to explain them.

Social relations, surely, afford one of the obvious conditions for the
impulse to art. The hand-clapping and thigh-smiting of primitive savages