he student can pursue the subject for
himself.

The word rhythm is here used to signify the power possessed by lines,
tones, and colours, by their ordering and arrangement, to affect us,
somewhat as different notes and combinations of sound do in music. And
just as in music, where sounds affect us without having any direct
relation with nature, but appeal directly to our own inner life; so in
painting, sculpture, and architecture #there is a music that appeals
directly to us apart from any significance that may be associated with
the representation of natural phenomena#. There is, as it were, an
abstract music of line, tone, and colour.

The danger of the naturalistic movement in painting in the nineteenth
century has been that it has turned our attention away from this
fundamental fact of art to the contemplation of interesting
realisations of appearances--realisations often full of poetic
suggestiveness due to associations connected with the objects painted as
concrete things, but not always made directly significant as artistic
expression; whereas #it is the business of the artist to relate the
form, colour, and tone of natural appearances to this abstract musical
quality, with which he should never lose touch even in the most highly
realised detail of his work#. For only thus, when related to rhythm, do
the form, tone, and colour of appearances obtain their full expressive
power and become a means of vitally conveying the feeling of the artist.

Inquiry as to the origin of this power and of rhythm generally is a
profoundly interesting subject; and now that recent advances in science
tend to show that sound, heat, light, and possibly electricity and even
nerve force are but different rhythmic forms of energy, and that matter
itself may possibly be resolved eventually into different rhythmic
motions, it does look as if rhythm may yet be found to contain even the
secret of life itself. At any rate it is very intimately associated with
life; and primitive man early began to give expression in some form of
architecture, sculpture, or painting to the deeper feelings that were
moving him; found some correspondence between the lines and colours of
architecture, sculpture, and painting and the emotional life that was
awakening within him. Thus, looking back at the remains of their work
that have come down to us, we are enabled to judge of the nature of the
people from the expression we find in hewn stone and on painted wal