e Universe;
something which would admit, for example, Calverley; which would take
some heed of the simplest of songs, and account for Lewis Carroll in
the same way that we can account for Sophocles or Milton?

There is surely something more essential to a man even than his
codification of himself in the final terms of philosophy. It is that
kernel of personality which inclines him in this direction or that. It
is this kernel of personality which turns him in the first place to
philosophy, if he be a philosopher; or which makes him detest abstract
speculation, if he is another kind of man. It is prior to philosophy.
It is a condition of its being. It determines, surely, even the
character of a man's metaphysic, setting him, not to range like an
aimless ghost of thought across the Universe, but to express himself
accurately; to express himself, with the help of his intellect,
consistently. Now the artist, or imaginative person, is not seeking to
express himself, like the philosopher, in terms of logical notions;
and he is under no obligation to express himself, to himself,
logically, before he proceeds to express himself imaginatively. All
that is essential is that the kernel of his personality, that which
determines philosophies as it determines every other achievement,
should be directly, immediately, expressed in the figurative language
of his art. This is the central, the all-important thing, that final,
_essential_, and therefore indefinable entity which has thrust itself
upon us when we say of a man that he has an "interesting personality."
The more powerful and energetic a man is, the more distinctive become
his ways of looking at things, his ways of thinking, observing,
appreciating; we discover a kind of centre of gravity in him, or a
kernel which has been developed by active experience and reflection.
This kernel of his character is to the rest of him, the accidental or
inessential, what in the language of modern philosophy the "real will"
of an individual is to the variety of his particular desires. The less
he concentrates, the less is his real personality expressed; the
weaker the will, the more evident the inessential and slovenly parts
of his nature; the weaker the intelligence, the less adequate is his
attempt to express himself.

The artist has not necessarily that "strong personality" which
attempts to assert itself by influencing the action of others. His is
the personality which wishes to express ima