t of an unmoved observer, who seeks in
all that comes to pass before his eyes only some material for his own
artistic reproduction. And in proportion as his powers of imagination
and observation increase, so in equal measure must his sensitiveness and
the exercise of that power of will which is indispensable for all moral
activity diminish. If nature has neither endowed the mind of the artist
with an adamantine stoicism, nor filled his heart with an inexhaustible
spring of love, his aesthetic qualities will little by little devour his
ethical instincts; genius may, in the words of Balzac, "consume" the
heart. In such a case as this, the categories of good and evil which
people have most to do with in real life, _i.e._, the will and the
passions, are confused in the artist's mind with the categories of the
beautiful and the ugly, the characterless and the characteristic, the
artistically interesting and the inane. Wickedness and vice attract the
imagination of the poet, if only they be concealed under forms that are
externally beautiful and attractive; while virtue looks dull and
insignificant unless she can afford some material for a poetical
apotheosis.

But the artist excels not only in the quality of being able to
contemplate objectively and dispassionately the emotions of others, he
is unique also in this, that he can, as an impartial observer, subject
his own heart to the same hard, aesthetic scrutiny that he applies to the
actions of others. Ordinary people can, or at least believe that they
can, entirely recover from the emotions which may have seized upon them,
be they transports of love or hatred, of joy or sorrow. An honourable
man, when he makes his vow of love to a woman, honestly believes in the
truth of that vow--it never enters his head to inquire whether he really
is as much in love as he says he is. One would on the face of things
expect a poet more than other men to be inclined to give way to emotion,
to be credulous, and to let himself be carried away; but in reality
there always remains in his soul, however deeply it may be swayed by
passion, the power to look into its own depths as into those of a
character in a dream or novel; to follow with attention, even in moments
of complete intoxication, the infinite intangible changes of his
emotions, and to focus upon them the force of his merciless analysis.

Human emotions are hardly ever simple or unalloyed: in the majority of
cases they are composed of