Now this possibility of storing for later use, of increasing by
combination, the impressions of beautiful things, makes art--and by
art I mean all aesthetic activity, whether in the professed artist who
creates or the unconscious artist who assimilates--the type of such
pleasures as are within our own keeping, and makes the aesthetic life
typical also of that life of the spirit in which alone we can realise
any kind of human freedom. We shall all of us meet with examples
thereof if we seek through our consciousness. That such things
existed was made clear to me during a weary period of illness, for
which I shall always be grateful, since it taught me, in those months
of incapacity for enjoyment, that there is a safe kind of pleasure,
_the pleasure we can defer_. I spent part of that time at Tangier,
surrounded by everything which could delight me, and in none of which
I took any real delight. I did not enjoy Tangier at the time, but I
have enjoyed Tangier ever since, on the principle of the bee eating
its honey months after making it. The reality of Tangier, I mean the
reality of my presence there, and the state of my nerves, were not in
the relation of enjoyment. But how often has not the image of Tangier,
the remembrance of what I saw and did there, returned and haunted me
in the most enjoyable fashion.

After all, is it not often the case with pictures, statues, journeys,
and the reading of books? The weariness entailed, the mere continuity
of looking or attending, quite apart from tiresome accompanying
circumstances, make the apparently real act, what we expect to be the
act of enjoyment, quite illusory; like Coleridge, "we see, not _feel_,
how beautiful things are." Later on, all odious accompanying
circumstances are utterly forgotten, eliminated, and the weariness is
gone: we enjoy not merely unhampered by accidents, but in the very way
our heart desires. For we can choose--our mood unconsciously does it
for us--the right moment and right accessories for consuming some of
our stored delights; moreover, we can add what condiments and make
what mixtures suit us best at that moment. We draw not merely upon one
past reality, making its essentials present, but upon dozens. To
revert to Tangier (whose experience first brought these possibilities
clearly before me), I find I enjoy it in connection with Venice, the
mixture having a special roundness of tone or flavour. Similarly, I
once heard Bach's _Magnificat_, with