of science.
Ceremony, for instance, is compulsory in society and sometimes truly
oppressive, yet its root lies in self-expression and in a certain
ascendency of play which drags all life along into conventional channels
originally dug out in irresponsible bursts of action. This occurs
inevitably and according to physical analogies. Bodily organs grow
automatically and become necessary moulds of life. We must either find a
use for them or bear as best we may the idle burden they impose. Of such
burdens the barbarian carries the greatest possible sum; and while he
paints the heavens with his grotesque mythologies, he encumbers earth
with inventions and prescriptions almost as gratuitous. The fiendish
dances and shouts, the cruel initiations, mutilations, and sacrifices in
which savages indulge, are not planned by them deliberately nor
justified in reflection. Men find themselves falling into these
practices, driven by a tradition hardly distinguishable from instinct.
In its periodic fury the spirit hurries them into wars and orgies, quite
as it kindles sudden flaming visions in their brains, habitually so
torpid. The spontaneous is the worst of tyrants, for it exercises a
needless and fruitless tyranny in the guise of duty and inspiration.
Without mitigating in the least the subjection to external forces under
which man necessarily labours, it adds a new artificial subjection to
his own false steps and childish errors.

[Sidenote: It is tamed by contact with the world.]

This mental vegetation, this fitful nervous groping, is nevertheless a
sign of life, out of which art emerges by discipline and by a gradual
application to real issues. An artist is a dreamer consenting to dream
of the actual world; he is a highly suggestible mind hypnotised by
reality. Even barbaric genius may find points of application in the
world. These points will be more numerous the more open the eyes have
been, the more docile and intelligent the mind is that gathers and
renders back its impressions in a synthetic and ideal form. Intuition
will then represent, at least symbolically, an actual situation. Grimace
and gesture and ceremony will be modified by a sense of their effect;
they will become artful and will transform their automatic
expressiveness into ideal expression. They will become significant of
what it is intended to communicate and important to know; they will have
ceased to be irresponsible exercises and vents for passing feeling,