to that state in which
they reacted swiftly and generously to the pictures themselves. This, as
I shall explain in another essay, is, to my mind, the proper function
of criticism. I shall never forget my first visits to the Caillebotte
collection; and in the unforgettable thrill of those first visits M.
Mauclair's bad science and erratic judgement counted for something--much
perhaps. They put me into a mood of sympathetic expectation; and such
a mood is, even for highly sensitive people, often an indispensable
preliminary to aesthetic appreciation. There are those who have got to
be made to feel something before they can begin to feel for
themselves--believe me, they are not the least sensitive or genuine of
amateurs: they are only the most honest. I should like very much to do
for even one of them what M. Mauclair did for me. It would be delightful
to believe that by putting him in the way of the best modern painting
and the theories concerning or connected with it--theories which, it
seems, for some make it more intelligible--I was giving his sensibility
a serviceable jog. Everyone, I know, must see with his own eyes and
feel through his own nerves; none can lend another eyes or emotions:
nevertheless, one can point and gesticulate and in so doing excite. If I
have done that I am content. Twenty years hence, it is to be presumed,
those who now read my writings will be saying of them what I was saying
of M. Mauclair's. The prospect does not distress me. I am not author
enough to be pained by the certainty that in ten years' time this book
will be obsolete. Like M. Mauclair's, it will have served its turn; and
I make no doubt there will be someone at hand to write another, the same
in purpose, and in execution let us hope rather neater.

We all agree now--by "we" I mean intelligent people under sixty--that a
work of art is like a rose. A rose is not beautiful because it is like
something else. Neither is a work of art. Roses and works of art are
beautiful in themselves. Unluckily, the matter does not end there: a
rose is the visible result of an infinitude of complicated goings on in
the bosom of the earth and in the air above, and similarly a work of art
is the product of strange activities in the human mind. In so far as we
are mere spectators and connoisseurs we need not bother about these;
all we are concerned with is the finished product, the work of art. To
produce the best eggs it may be that hens should be fed o