hat the "truth"
of the ordinary person's reason is a sorry compound of logical
rigidity and practical opportunism; with but small space left in it
for the vision of imagination.

It is because of their primary importance in the sphere of practical
action that the conscience and the reason have been developed out
of all proportion to the aesthetic sense. And it is because the
deplorable environment of our present commercial system has
emphasized action and conduct, out of all proportion to
contemplation and insight, that it is so difficult to restore the
balance. The tyranny of machinery has done untold evil in
increasing this lack of proportion; because machinery, by placing
an unmalleable and inflexible material--a material that refuses to
be humanized--between man's fingers and the actual element he
works in, has interrupted that instinctive aesthetic movement of
the human hands, which, even in the midst of the most utter
clumsiness and grossness, can never fail to introduce some touch
of beauty into what it creates.

We have thus arrived at a definite point of view from which we
are able to observe the actual play of man's aesthetic sense as, in
its mysterious fusion with the energy of reason and conscience, it
interprets the pervading beauty of the system of things, according
to the temperament of the individual. It remains to note how in the
supreme works of art this human temperamental vision is caught
up and transcended in the high objectivity of a greater and more
universal vision; a vision which is still personal, because
everything true and beautiful in the universe is personal, but
which, by the rhythm of the apex-thought, has attained a sort of
impersonal personality or, in other words, has been brought into
harmony with the vision of the immortals.

The material upon which the artist works is that original "objective
mystery," confronting every individual soul, out of which every
individual soul creates its universe. The medium by means of
which the artist works is that outflowing of the very substance of
the soul itself which we name by the name of emotion. This actual
passing of the substantial substance of the soul into whatever form
or shape of objective mystery the soul's vision has half-discovered
and half-created is the true secret of what happens both in the case
of the original creation of the artist and in case of the reciprocal
re-creation of the person enjoying the work of art.

For Bened