in any particular case of the authentic and objective "note"
of true art. This "note" is the presence in a work of art of the
decisive relative victory of love over malice. When, on the
contrary, in any work of art, the original struggle of love with
malice issues in a relative overcoming of love by malice, then such
a work of art belongs, ipso facto, to an inferior order of excellence.

This criterion is one of easy intuitive application, although any
exact analysis of it, in a particular case, may be difficult and
obscure. Roughly and generally expressed it amounts to this. In
the great works of art of the world, wherein the subjective vision
of the artist expresses itself in mysterious reciprocity with the
objective vision of the immortals, there is always found a certain
large "humanity." This humanity, wherein an infinite pity never
for a moment degenerates into weak sentiment, reduces the
co-existence of cruelty and malice to the lowest possible minimum,
consonant with the ebb and flow of life.

Some residuum of such malice and cruelty there must be, even in
the supremest work of art, else the eternal contradictions upon
which life depends would be destroyed. But the emotion of love,
in such works, will always be found to have its fingers, as it were,
firmly upon the throat of its antagonist, so that the resultant
rhythm shall be felt to be the ultimate rhythm of life itself, wherein
the eternal struggle of love with malice issues in the relative
overcoming of the latter by the former.

It would be invidious perhaps to name, in this place, any particular
works of art in which the predominant element is malice rather
than love. But such works of art exist in considerable number, and
the lacerated and distorted beauty of them remains as a perpetual
witness to what they have missed. In speaking of these inferior
works of art the aesthetic psychologist must be on his guard
against the confusion of such moods as the creative instinct of
destruction or the creative instinct of simple sensuality with the
inert malice we are considering.

The instinct of destruction is essentially connected with the
instinct of creation and indeed must be regarded as an indirect
expression of that instinct; for, as one can clearly understand,
almost every creative undertaking implies some kind of destructive
or at least some kind of suppressive or renunciant act which
renders such an undertaking possible.

In the same way it is no