er and harmony he may have
brought out of that chaos. The chaos in itself will offend, and it is no
part of rational art to produce it. As well might a physician poison in
order to give an antidote, or maim in order to amputate. The subject
matter of art is life, life as it actually is; but the function of art
is to make life better. The depth to which an artist may find current
experience to be sunk in discord and confusion is not his special
concern; his concern is, in some measure, to lift experience out. The
more barbarous his age, the more drastic and violent must be his
operation. He will have to shout in a storm. His strength must needs, in
such a case, be very largely physical and his methods sensational. In a
gentler age he may grow nobler, and blood and thunder will no longer
seem impressive. Only the weak are obliged to be violent; the strong,
having all means at command, need not resort to the worst. Refined art
is not wanting in power if the public is refined also. And as
refinement comes only by experience, by comparison, by subordinating
means to ends and rejecting what hinders, it follows that a refined mind
will really possess the greater volume, as well as the subtler
discrimination. Its ecstasy without grimace, and its submission without
tears, will hold heaven and earth better together--and hold them better
apart--than could a mad imagination.

CHAPTER V

SPEECH AND SIGNIFICATION

[Sidenote: Sounds well fitted to be symbols.]

Music rationalises sound, but a more momentous rationalising of sound is
seen in language. Language is one of the most useful of things, yet the
greater part of it still remains (what it must all have been in the
beginning) useless and without ulterior significance. The musical side
of language is its primary and elementary side. Man is endowed with
vocal organs so plastic as to emit a great variety of delicately varied
sounds; and by good fortune his ear has a parallel sensibility, so that
much vocal expression can be registered and confronted by auditory
feeling. It has been said that man's pre-eminence in nature is due to
his possessing hands; his modest participation in the ideal world may
similarly be due to his possessing tongue and ear. For when he finds
shouting and vague moaning after a while fatiguing, he can draw a new
pleasure from uttering all sorts of labial, dental, and gutteral sounds.
Their rhythms and oppositions can entertain him, and he can begin