mean by that? Surely I
mean: That is not Art, which, while I, am contemplating it, inspires me
with any active or directive impulse; that is Art, when, for however
brief a moment, it replaces within me interest in myself by interest in
itself. For, let me suppose myself in the presence of a carved marble
bath. If my thoughts be "What could I buy that for?" Impulse of
acquisition; or: "From what quarry did it come?" Impulse of inquiry; or:
"Which would be the right end for my head?" Mixed impulse of inquiry and
acquisition--I am at that moment insensible to it as a work of Art. But,
if I stand before it vibrating at sight of its colour and forms, if ever
so little and for ever so short a time, unhaunted by any definite
practical thought or impulse--to that extent and for that moment it has
stolen me away out of myself and put itself there instead; has linked me
to the universal by making me forget the individual in me. And for that
moment, and only while that moment lasts, it is to me a work of Art. The
word "impersonal," then, is but used in this my definition to signify
momentary forgetfulness of one's own personality and its active wants.

So Art--I thought--is that which, heard, read, or looked on, while
producing no directive impulse, warms one with unconscious vibration. Nor
can I imagine any means of defining what is the greatest Art, without
hypothecating a perfect human being. But since we shall never see, or
know if we do see, that desirable creature--dogmatism is banished,
"Academy" is dead to the discussion, deader than even Tolstoy left it
after his famous treatise "What is Art?" For, having destroyed all the
old Judges and Academies, Tolstoy, by saying that the greatest Art was
that which appealed to the greatest number of living human beings, raised
up the masses of mankind to be a definite new Judge or Academy, as
tyrannical and narrow as ever were those whom he had destroyed.

This, at all events--I thought is as far as I dare go in defining what
Art is. But let me try to make plain to myself what is the essential
quality that gives to Art the power of exciting this unconscious
vibration, this impersonal emotion. It has been called Beauty! An
awkward word--a perpetual begging of the question; too current in use,
too ambiguous altogether; now too narrow, now too wide--a word, in fact,
too glib to know at all what it means. And how dangerous a word--often
misleading us into slabbing with extr