book or writings by eye-witnesses with or without intelligence, but on
whether they were true in experience. He quoted Goethe's test for every
idea about life, "But is it true, is it true for me, now?" "Taste and
see," as the prophets put it; or as Jesus said, "Follow me." For an
ideal must be followed, as a man woos a woman; the pursuit may have to
be dropped, in order to be more surely recovered; an ideal must be
humoured, not seized at once as a man seizes command over a machine.
This _secret of success was_ was only to be won by the development of a
temper, a spirit of docility. To love it in an example was the best,
perhaps the only way of gaining possession of it.


IV

As we are placed, what hope can we have but to learn? and what is there
from which we might not learn? An artist is taught by the materials he
uses more essentially than by the objects he contemplates; for these
teach him "how," and perfect him in creating, those only teach him
"what," and suggest forms to be created. But for men in general the
"what" is more important than the "how"; and only very powerful art can
exhilarate and refine them by means of subjects which they dislike
or avoid.

Every seer of beauty is not a creator of beautiful things; and in art
the "how" is so much more essential than the "what," that artists create
unworthy or degrading objects beautifully, so that we admire their art
as much as we loathe its employment; in nature, too, such objects are
met with, created by the god of this world. A good man, too, may create
in a repulsive manner objects whose every association is ennobling or
elevating.