n hot meal
mash. That is a question for the farmer. For us what matters is the
quality of the eggs, since it is them and not hot meal mash that we
propose to eat for breakfast. Few, however, can take quite so lordly
an attitude towards art. We contemplate the object, we experience
the appropriate emotion, and then we begin asking "Why?" and "How?"
Personally, I am so conscious of these insistent questions that, at the
risk of some misunderstanding, I habitually describe works of art as
"significant" rather than "beautiful" forms. For works of art, unlike
roses, are the creations and expressions of conscious minds. I beg that
no theological red herring may here be drawn across the scent.

A work of art is an object beautiful, or significant, in itself, nowise
dependent for its value on the outside world, capable by itself of
provoking in us that emotion which we call aesthetic. Agreed. But men do
not create such things unconsciously and without effort, as they breathe
in their sleep. On the contrary, for their production are required
special energies and a peculiar state of mind. A work of art, like a
rose, is the result of a string of causes: and some of us are so vain
as to take more interest in the operations of the human mind than in
fertilizers and watering-pots.

In the pre-natal history of a work of art I seem to detect at any rate
three factors--a state of peculiar and intense sensibility, the creative
impulse, and the artistic problem. An artist, I imagine, is one who
often and easily is thrown into that state of acute and sympathetic
agitation which most of us, once or twice in our lives, have had the
happiness of experiencing. And have you noticed that many men and most
boys, when genuinely in love, find themselves, the moment the object of
their emotion is withdrawn, driven by their feelings into scribbling
verses? An artist, I imagine, is always falling in love with everything.
Always he is being thrown into a "state of mind." The sight of a tree
or an omnibus, the screaming of whistles or the whistling of birds, the
smell of roast pig, a gesture, a look, any trivial event may provoke a
crisis, filling him with an intolerable desire to express himself. The
artist cannot embrace the object of his emotion. He does not even wish
to. Once, perhaps, that was his desire; if so, like the pointer and
the setter, he has converted the barbarous pouncing instinct into the
civilized pleasure of tremulous contemplation.