whatever. No one ever doubted
that a Sung pot or a Romanesque church was as much an expression of
emotion as any picture that ever was painted. What was the object of the
potter's emotion? What of the builder's? Was it some imagined form, the
synthesis of a hundred different visions of natural things; or was it
some conception of reality, unrelated to sensual experience, remote
altogether from the physical universe? These are questions beyond all
conjecture. In any case, the form in which he expresses his emotion
bears no memorial of any external form that may have provoked it.
Expression is no wise bound by the forms or emotions or ideas of life.
We cannot know exactly what the artist feels. We only know what he
creates. If reality be the goal of his emotion, the roads to reality
are several. Some artists come at it through the appearance of things,
some by a recollection of appearance, and some by sheer force of
imagination.

To the question--"Why are we so profoundly moved by certain combinations
of forms?" I am unwilling to return a positive answer. I am not obliged
to, for it is not an aesthetic question. I do suggest, however, that it
is because they express an emotion that the artist has felt, though I
hesitate to make any pronouncement about the nature or object of that
emotion. If my suggestion be accepted, criticism will be armed with a
new weapon; and the nature of this weapon is worth a moment's
consideration. Going behind his emotion and its object, the critic will
be able to surprise that which gives form its significance. He will be
able to explain why some forms are significant and some are not; and
thus he will be able to push all his judgments a step further back. Let
me give one example. Of copies of pictures there are two classes; one
class contains some works of art, the other none. A literal copy is
seldom reckoned even by its owner a work of art. It leaves us cold; its
forms are not significant. Yet if it were an absolutely exact copy,
clearly it would be as moving as the original, and a photographic
reproduction of a drawing often is--almost. Evidently, it is impossible
to imitate a work of art exactly; and the differences between the copy
and the original, minute though they may be, exist and are felt
immediately. So far the critic is on sure and by this time familiar
ground. The copy does not move him, because its forms are not identical
with those of the original; and just what made the origi