enwrapping tree and pool. In gratitude and worship he revealed to men the tender, ineffable poetry of gray dawns in all places and for all time. Millet's peasants were called John and Peter and Charles, and they tilled the soil of France; but on their bowed shoulders rests the universal burden; these dumb figures are eloquent of the uncomplaining, hopeless "peasanthood" of the world. In the actual to discern the ideal, in the appearance to penetrate to the reality, without taking leave of the material to reveal the spiritual,—this is the mystery and vocation of the artist, and his achievement is art.

III

THE WORK OF ART AS BEAUTIFUL

Just as nature and life are significant as the material manifestation of spiritual forces and relations, so a work of art is in its turn the symbol by which the artist communicates himself; it is his revelation to men of the beauty he has perceived and felt.

Beauty is not easy to define. That conception which regards beauty as the power to awaken merely agreeable emotions is limited and in so far false. Another source of misunderstanding is the confusion of beauty with moralistic values. It is said that beauty is the Ideal; and by many the "Ideal" is taken to mean ideal goodness. With righteousness and sin as such beauty has no concern. Much that is evil in life, much that offends against the moral law, must be regarded as beautiful in so far as it plays its necessary part in the universal whole. Clearing away these misconceptions, then, an approximate definition would be that the essence of beauty is harmony. So soon as a detail is shown in its relation to a whole, then it becomes beautiful because it is expressive of the supreme unity. A discord in music is felt to be a discord only as it is isolated; when it takes its fitting and inevitable place in the large unity of the symphony, it becomes full of meaning. The hippopotamus, dozing in his tank at the Zoo, is wildly grotesque and ugly. But who shall say that, seen in the fastnesses of his native rivers, he is not the beautiful perfect fulfilling of nature's harmony? To a race of blacks, the fair-skinned Apollo appearing among them could not but be monstrous. The smoking factory, sordid and hideous, is beautiful to him who sees that it accomplishes a necessary function in the great scheme of life. Beauty is adaptation. Whatever is truly useful is in so far truly beautiful. The steam engine and the battleship are beautiful just as truly as Titian's Madonna, glorified and sweeping upward into the presence of God the Father. Only what is vital and serviceable, and whatever is that, is beautiful.

When the spirit of man perceives a unity in things, a working together of parts, there beauty exists. It resides in the synthesis of details to the end of shaping a complete whole. This perception, this synthesis, is a function of the human mind. Beauty is not in the landscape, but in the intelligence which apprehends it. Evidence of this fundamental truth is the fact that the same landscape is more "beautiful" to one man than to another, or to a third, perhaps, is not beautiful at all. It is only as the individual perceives a relation among the parts resulting in a total unity that the object becomes beautiful for him.

This abstract exposition may be made clearer by a graphic illustration. Here are four figures composed of the same elements:—

           * ***   **      *  ***
      *   ***** *  ******
                *   **  * * * *
                         *
            *************  *
          *  *  *  *
                           **
                     Fig. I.

*  *  *  *  *      *  *  * 
*  *  *  *  *        *  *                                *
*  *  *  *  *          *                *                *
*  *  *  *  *        *  *                                *
*  *  *  *  *      *  *  *                             
Fig. II.             Fig. III.              Fig. IV.

Figure I., far from being pleasing, is positively disquieting. With the other three figures, the perception of their form is attended with a kind of pleasure. Whereas the first figure is without form and is meaningless, each of the second group exhibits harmony, balance, proportion, interrelation of parts: each is perceived to be a whole. Although experience itself comes to men in fragments and seemingly without order, yet the human mind is so constituted as to require that an idea or a truth be shown to be a whole before the mind can comprehend it In considering the element of balance, it should be noted, as illustrated by Figure IV., that balance is not necessarily perfect symmetry. A Gothic cathedral is beautiful no less than a Greek temple. In a painting of a landscape, for example, it is necessary simply that the masses and the tones stand in balancing relation; the perfect symmetry of geometric exactness, characteristic of Hellenic and Renaissance art, is not required. In the work which embodies the artist's perception of the universal harmony, there must be rhythm, order, unity in variety; so framed it becomes expressive and significant

As the symbol of beauty, the work of art is itself beautiful in that it manifests in itself that wholeness and integrity which is beauty. Every work of art is informed by a controlling design; it subordinates manifold details to a definite whole; it reduces and adjusts its parts to an all-inclusive, perceptible unity. The Nuremberg key must have some sort of rhythm; the rug or vestment must exhibit a pattern which can be seen to be a whole; the canvas must show balance in the composition, and the color must be "in tone." In any work of art there must be design and purpose.

In nature there is much which to the limited perception of men does not appear to be beautiful, for there is much that does not manifest superficially the necessary harmony. The landscape at noonday under the blaze of the relentless sun discloses many things which are seemingly incongruous with one another. The dull vision of men cannot penetrate to the unity underlying it all. At twilight, as the shadows of evening wrap it round, the same landscape is invested with mysterious beauty. Conflicting details are lost, harsh outlines are softened and merged, discordant colors are mellowed and attuned. Nature has brought her field and hill and clustered dwellings into "tone." So the artist, who has perceived a harmony where the common eye saw it not, selects; he suppresses here, strengthens there, fuses, and brings all into unity.

Harmony wherever perceived is beauty. Beauty made manifest by the agency of the human spirit is art. Art, in order to reveal this harmony to men, must work through selection, through rejection and emphasis, through interpretation. It is not difficult to understand, then, that the exact reproduction of the facts of the external world is not in a true sense art.

The photograph, which is the most exact method of reproducing outward aspect, is denied the title of a work of art; that is, the photograph direct, which has not been retouched. To be sure, the photograph is the product of a mechanical process, and is not, except incidentally, the result of human skill. Another kind of reproduction of outward aspect, however, virtually exact, which does show the evidence of human skill, is yet not entitled to rank as art,—the imitative or deceptive picture. Photograph and picture are ruled out equally on the one count. Neither selects.

In an exhibition of paintings were once displayed two panels precisely similar in appearance, presenting an army coat and cap, a sabre and a canteen. At a distance there was no point of difference in the two. A nearer view