l in distinct halves, till he becomes like unto
that hero of Gautier's witch story, who was a pious priest one-half of
the twenty-four hours and a wicked libertine the other: all power of
selection, of reaction gone in this passive endurance of conflicting
tendencies; all identity gone, save a mere feeble outsider looking on
at the alternations of intentions and lapses, of good and bad. And the
soul of such a person--if, indeed, we can speak of one soul or one
person where there exists no unity--becomes like a jangle of notes
belonging to different tonalities, alternating and mingling in hideous
confusion for lack of a clear thread of melody, a consistent system of
harmony, to select, reject, and keep all things in place.

Melody, harmony: the two great halves of the most purely aesthetic of
all arts, symbolise, as we might expect, the two great forces of life:
consecutiveness and congruity, under their different names of
intention, fitness, selection, adaptation. These are what make the
human soul like a conquering army, a fleet freighted with riches, a
band of priests celebrating a rite. And this is what art, by no paltry
formula, but by the indelible teaching of habit, of requirement, and
expectation become part of our very fibre--this is what art can teach
to those who will receive its highest lesson.

VI.

Those who can receive that lesson, that is to say, those in whom it
can expand and ramify to the fulness and complexity which is its very
essence. For it happens frequently enough that we learn only a portion
of this truth, which by this means is distorted into error. We accept
the aesthetic instinct as a great force of Nature; but, instead of
acknowledging it as our master, as one of the great lords of life, of
whom Emerson spoke, we try to make it our servant. We attempt to get
congruity between the details of our everyday existence, and refuse to
seek for congruity between ourselves and the life which is greater
than ours.

A friend of mine, who had many better ways of spending her money, was
unable one day to resist the temptation of buying a beautiful old
majolica inkstand, which, not without a slight qualm of conscience,
she put into a very delightful old room of her house. The room had an
inkstand already, but it was of glass, and modern. "This one is in
harmony with the rest of the room," she said, and felt fully justified
in her extravagance. It is this form, or rather this degree, of
aestheticism