essions rather than another, they are sure to be deluded by the
mere arbitrary classification, the mere _names_ of things. They will
think that smooth cheeks, wavy hair, straight noses, limbs of such or
such measure, attitude, and expression, set so, constitute the
Antique; that clustered pillars, cross vaulting, spandrils, and Tudor
roses make Gothic. But the Antique quality is the particular and all
permeating relation between all its items; and Gothic the particular
and all permeating relation between those other ones; and unless you
aim at the _specific emotion_ of Antique or Gothic, unless you feel
the imperious call for the special harmony of either, all the
measurements and all the formulas will not avail. While, on the
contrary, people without any formula or any attempt at imitation, like
the Byzantine architects and those of the fifteenth century, merely
because they are obeying their own passionate desire for congruity of
impressions, for harmony of structure and function, will succeed in
creating brand-new, harmonious, organic art out of the actual details,
sometimes the material ruins, of an art which has passed away.

If we become intimate with any great work of art, and intimate in so
far with the thoughts and emotions it awakens in ourselves, we shall
find that it possesses, besides this congruity within itself which
assimilates it to all really living things, a further congruity, not
necessarily found in real objects, but which forms the peculiarity of
the work of art, a congruity with ourselves; for the great work of art
is vitally connected with the habits and wants, the whole causality
and rhythm of mankind; it has been fitted thereto as the boat to the
sea.

IV.

In this manner can we learn from art the chief secret of life: the
secret of action and reaction, of causal connection, of suitability of
part to part, of organism, interchange, and growth.

And when I say _learn_, I mean learn in the least official and the
most efficacious way. I do not mean merely that, looking at a statue
like the Hermes, a certain fact is borne in upon our intelligence, the
fact of all vitality being dependent on harmony. I mean that perhaps,
nay probably, without any such formula, our whole nature becomes
accustomed to a certain repeated experience, our whole nature becomes
adapted thereunto, and acts and reacts in consequence, by what we call
intuition, instinct. It is not with our intellect alone that we
posses