throw
himself from a trapeze swinging high in air, and after executing a
double somersault varied by complex lateral gyrations, catch the
extended arms of his partner, who is hanging by his knees on
another flying bar. Or a man leaning backwards over a chair shoots
at a distance of fifty paces a lump of sugar from between the
foreheads of two devoted assistants. Such skill presupposes
intelligence. Of the years of training and practice, of the sacrifice
and the power of will, that have gone to the accomplishment of this
result, the looker-on can form but little conception. These men are
not considered artists. Yet a painter who uses his picture to exhibit a
skill no more wonderful than theirs would be grieved to be
accounted an acrobat or a juggler. Only such skill as is employed in
the service of expression is to be reckoned with as an element in art;
and in art it is of value not for its own sake but as it serves its
purpose. The true artist subordinates his technique to expression,
justly making it a means and not the end. He cares for the
significance of his idea more than for his sleight of hand; he effaces
his skill for his art.

A recognition of the skill exhibited in the fashioning of a work of art,
however, if seen in its right relation to the total scope of the work, is
a legitimate source of pleasure. Knowledge of any subject brings its
satisfactions. To understand with discerning insight the workings of
any process, whether it be the operation of natural laws, as in
astronomy or chemistry, whether it be the construction of a
locomotive, the playing of a game of foot-ball, or the painting of a
picture, to see the "wheels go round" and know the how and the
wherefore,--undeniably this is a source of pleasure. In the
understanding of technical processes, too, there is a further occasion
of enjoyment, differing somewhat from the satisfaction which
follows in the train of knowledge.

"There is a pleasure in poetic pains
Which only poets know,"

says the poet Cowper. There is a pleasure in the sense of difficulties
overcome known only to those who have tried to overcome them.
But such enjoyment--the pleasure which comes with enlightened
recognition and the pleasure of mastery and triumph--derives from
an intellectual exercise and is not to be confounded with the full
appreciation of art. Art, finally, is not the "how" but the "what" in
terms of its emotional significance. Our pleasure in the result,