"There are some things which we do because we must; these are our
necessities. There are other things which we do because we ought; these
are our duties. There are other things which we do because we like; these
are our play. Among the various kinds of things done by men only because
they like, the fine arts are those of which the results afford to many
permanent and disinterested delight, and of which the performance, calling
for premeditated skill, is capable of regulation up to a certain point,
but that point passed, has secrets beyond the reach and a freedom beyond
the restraint of rules."


_3. "Form" and "Significance" in the Arts_

If the fine arts, then, deal with the ordered or harmonious expression of
feeling, it is clear that any specific work of art may be regarded, at
least theoretically, from two points of view. We may look at its "outside"
or its "inside"; that is to say at its ordering of parts, its pattern, its
"form," or else at the feeling or idea which it conveys. This distinction
between form and content, between expression and that which is expressed,
is temptingly convenient. It is a useful tool of analysis, but it is
dangerous to try to make it anything more than that. If we were looking at
a water-pipe and the water which flows through it, it would be easy to
keep a clear distinction between the form of the iron pipe, and its
content of water. But in certain of the fine arts very noticeably, such as
music, and in a diminished degree, poetry, and more or less in all of
them, the form is the expression or content. A clear-cut dissection of the
component elements of outside and inside, of water-pipe and water within
it, becomes impossible. Listening to music is like looking at a brook;
there is no inside and outside, it is all one intricately blended complex
of sensation. Music is a perfect example of "embodied feeling," as