bsent in all
bad art, and without whose presence those impressions summed up as
beauty, dignity, grandeur, are never to be had. This peculiarity,
which most people perceive and few people define--explaining it away
sometimes as _truth_, or taking it for granted under the name of
_quality_--this peculiarity I shall call for convenience' sake
harmony; for I think you will all of you admit that the absence or
presence of harmony is what distinguishes bad art from good. Harmony,
in this sense--and remember that it is this which connoisseurs most
usually allude to as _quality_--harmony may be roughly defined as the
organic correspondence between the various parts of a work of art, the
functional interchange and interdependence thereof. In this sense there
is harmony in every really living thing, for otherwise it could not live.
If the muscles and limbs, nay, the viscera and tissues, did not adjust
themselves to work together, if they did not in this combination
establish a rhythm, a backward-forward, contraction-relaxation,
taking-in-giving-out, diastole-systole in all their movements, there
would be, instead of a living organism, only an inert mass. In all
living things, and just in proportion as they are really alive (for in
most real things there is presumably some defect of rhythm tending to
stoppage of life), there is bound to be this organic interdependence
and interchange. Natural selection, the survival of such individuals
and species as best work in with, are most rhythmical to, their
surroundings--natural selection sees to that.

III.

In art the place of natural selection is taken by man's selection; and
all forms of art which man keeps and does not send into limbo, all art
which man finds suitable to his wants, rhythmical with his habits,
must have that same quality of interdependence of parts, of
interchange of function. Only in the case of art, the organic
necessity refers not to outer surroundings, but to man's feeling; in
fact, man's emotion constitutes necessity towards art, as surrounding
nature constitutes necessity for natural objects. Now man requires
organic harmony, that is, congruity and co-ordination of processes,
because his existence, the existence of every cell of him, depends
upon it, is one complete microcosm of interchange, of give-and-take,
diastole-systole, of rhythm and harmony; and therefore all such things
as give him impressions of the reverse thereof, go against him, and in
a greate