e effort which was primarily
ideal now turns its fervor into the quality of its means.

CHAPTER XIX - THE LIVING PRINCIPLE

If there be a basis of reliance for continuous life and consequent value,
a search for the living principle must be made in those works which the
world will not let die. And this labor will be aided by the exclusion of
such as have had their day and passed. Although the verdict suggested in
the fostering care of the people or in its lack, may be wrong, as future
ages may show, yet for us in our inquiry in the twentieth century this
jury is our only court of appeal and its dictum must be final.

We command a view of the long line of art unfolding as a river flows, in
winding course from meagre sources, and through untoward obstructions into
a natural bed which awaits it, now deep and swollen, now slender, now
graceful, now turbid, here breaking into smaller threads stretching into
opposed directions, here again uniting and deepening, and we mark in all
of its variety of course and depth, the narrow line of the channel. A
slender line there is touching hands through all generations from the
painters of the twilight of Art to the painters of the present who have
seen all of its light and for whom too much of its brilliancy has proved
bewildering. The history of art is perforce full of the chronicles of
unfruitful effort and the galleries as replete with unprofitable pictures.
Our ardent though rapid quest will, unaided by the catalogue, discover for
us the real, and sift it free of the spurious if we have settled with
ourselves what art _is_ and what its purpose. If we hold to the present
popular notion that art is imitation, the results will come out at
variance with the popular opinion of five centuries. If, on the other
hand, we delegate to its proper place fidelity to the surface of nature,
we must of necessity seek still further for its essence. This is
subjective and not objective.

To make apparent a statement the edge of which strikes dull from much use
in purely philosophical lingo, let us take the case of a picture
representing a laborer with his horse. The idea for the expression of
which the few elements of field, man and beast, are employed is _Toil._
Whether then the man and beast be in actual labor or not, the dominant
idea in the artist's mind is that they are or have been laboring; that
that is what they stand for, _that idea_ to be presented in the strongest
possi