the special power of each; art is proportion, and proportion is
restriction. Last of all, but most important, these isolated, no longer
vital materials, neutralised by each other, are further reduced to
insignificance by becoming parts of a whole conception; their separate
meaning is effaced by the general meaning of the work of art; art
bottles lightning to use it as white colour, and measures out thunder by
the beat of the chapel-master's roll of notes. But art does not merely
restrict impressions and fancies within the limits of form; in its days
of maturity and independence it restricts yet closer within the limits
of beauty. Partially developed art, still unconscious of its powers
and aims, still in childish submission to religion, sets to work
conscientiously, with no other object than to embody the supernatural;
if the supernatural suffers in the act of embodiment, if the fluctuating
fancies which are Zeus or Pallas are limited and curtailed, rendered
logical and prosaic even in the wooden pre-historic idol or the roughly
kneaded clay owlet, it is by no choice of the artist--his attempt is
abortive, because it is thwarted by the very nature of his art. But
when art is mature, things are different; the artist, conscious of
his powers, instinctively recognising the futility of aiming at the
embodiment of the supernatural, dragged by an irresistible longing to
the display of his skill, to the imitation of the existing and to the
creation of beauty, ceases to strain after the impossible and refuses
to attempt anything beyond the possible. The art, which was before a
mere insufficient means, is now an all-engrossing aim; unconsciously,
perhaps, to himself, the artist regards the subject merely as a pretext
for the treatment; and where the subject is opposed to such treatment
as he desires, he sacrifices it. He may be quite as conscientious as
his earliest predecessor, but his conscience has become an artistic
conscience, he sees only as much as is within art's limits; the gods, or
the saints, which were cloudy and supernatural to the artist of immature
art, are definite and artistic to the artist of mature art; he can
think, imagine, feel only in a given manner; his religious conceptions
have taken the shape of his artistic creations; art has destroyed the
supernatural, and the artist has swallowed up the believer. The attempts
at supernatural effects are almost always limited to a sort of symbolical
abbreviation, whic