sham Vautrins, just as Nature gives us, on one day a doubtful Cuyp,
and on another a more than questionable Rousseau. Still, Nature
irritates one more when she does things of that kind. It seems so
stupid, so obvious, so unnecessary. A false Vautrin might be
delightful. A doubtful Cuyp is unbearable. However, I don't want
to be too hard on Nature. I wish the Channel, especially at
Hastings, did not look quite so often like a Henry Moore, grey
pearl with yellow lights, but then, when Art is more varied, Nature
will, no doubt, be more varied also. That she imitates Art, I
don't think even her worst enemy would deny now. It is the one
thing that keeps her in touch with civilised man. But have I
proved my theory to your satisfaction?

CYRIL. You have proved it to my dissatisfaction, which is better.
But even admitting this strange imitative instinct in Life and
Nature, surely you would acknowledge that Art expresses the temper
of its age, the spirit of its time, the moral and social conditions
that surround it, and under whose influence it is produced.

VIVIAN. Certainly not! Art never expresses anything but itself.
This is the principle of my new aesthetics; and it is this, more
than that vital connection between form and substance, on which Mr.
Pater dwells, that makes music the type of all the arts. Of
course, nations and individuals, with that healthy natural vanity
which is the secret of existence, are always under the impression
that it is of them that the Muses are talking, always trying to
find in the calm dignity of imaginative art some mirror of their
own turbid passions, always forgetting that the singer of life is
not Apollo but Marsyas. Remote from reality, and with her eyes
turned away from the shadows of the cave, Art reveals her own