ave a vision
quite mediocre and blunt--as the possession of a certain demonic
driving-force, which pushes them on to be themselves, in all the
fatal narrowness and obstinacy, it may be, of their personal
temperament.

The art of discrimination is precisely what such characters are born
with; hence the almost savage manner in which they resent the
beckonings of alien appeals; appeals which would draw them out of
their pre-ordained track.

One can see in the passionate preference displayed by men of real
power for the society of simple and even truculent persons over that
of those who are urbanely plastic and versatile, how true this is.

Between their own creative wilfulness and the more static obstinacy
of these former, there is an instinctive bond; whereas the tolerant
and colourless cleverness of the latter disconcerts and puzzles them.

This is why--led by a profound instinct--the wisest men of genius
select for their female companions the most surprising types, and
submit to the most wretched tyranny. Their craving for the sure
ground of unequivocal naturalness helps them to put up with what
else were quite intolerable.

For it is the typical modern person, of normal culture and playful
expansiveness, who is the mortal enemy of the art of discrimination.

Such a person's shallow cleverness and conventional good-temper is
more withering to the soul of the artist than the blindest bigotry
which has the recklessness of genuine passion behind it.

Not to like or to dislike people and things, but to tolerate and
patronise a thousand passionate universes, is to put yourself out of
the pale of all discrimination. To discriminate is to refine upon one's
passions by the process of bringing them into intelligent
consciousness. The head alone cannot discriminate; no! not with all
the technical knowledge in the world; for the head cannot love nor
hate, it can only observe and register.

Nor can the nerves alone discriminate; for they can only cry aloud
with a blind cry. In the management of this art, what we need is the
nerves and the head together, playing up to one another; and,
between them, carrying further--always a little further--the silent
advance, along the road of experience, of the insatiable soul.

It is indeed only in this way that one comes to recognise what is,
surely, of the essence of all criticism; the fact, namely, that the
artists we care most for are doing just the thing we are doing
ourselves--