works of art. Art, therefore, has to do with the
spiritual life, to which it gives and from which, I feel sure, it takes.
Indirectly, art has something to do with practical life, too; for those
emotional experiences must be very faint and contemptible that leave
quite untouched our characters. Through its influence on character and
point of view art may affect practical life. But practical life and
human sentiment can affect art only in so far as they can affect the
conditions in which artists work. Thus they may affect the production of
works of art to some extent; to how great an extent I shall consider in
another place.

Also a great many works of visual art are concerned with life, or rather
with the physical universe of which life is a part, in that the men who
created them were thrown into the creative mood by their surroundings.
We have observed, as we could hardly fail to do, that, whatever the
emotion that artists express may be, it comes to many of them through
the contemplation of the familiar objects of life. The object of an
artist's emotion seems to be more often than not either some particular
scene or object, or a synthesis of his whole visual experience. Art may
be concerned with the physical universe, or with any part or parts of
it, as a means to emotion--a means to that peculiar spiritual state that
we call inspiration. But the value of these parts as means to anything
but emotion art ignores--that is to say, it ignores their practical
utility. Artists are often concerned with things, but never with the
labels on things. These useful labels were invented by practical people
for practical purposes. The misfortune is that, having acquired the
habit of recognising labels, practical people tend to lose the power of
feeling emotion; and, as the only way of getting at the thing in itself
is by feeling its emotional significance, they soon begin to lose their
sense of reality. Mr. Roger Fry has pointed out that few can hope ever
to see a charging bull as an end in itself and yield themselves to the
emotional significance of its forms, because no sooner is the label
"Charging Bull" recognised than we begin to dispose ourselves for flight
rather than contemplation.[5] This is where the habit of recognising
labels serves us well. It serves us ill, however, when, although there
is no call for action or hurry, it comes between things and our
emotional reaction to them. The label is nothing but a symbol that
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