of the artist the habit of withdrawing himself from life, of regarding it from one side, from without, from the point of view no longer of a living human being, but from that of an unmoved observer, who seeks in all that comes to pass before his eyes only some material for his own artistic reproduction. And in proportion as his powers of imagination and observation increase, so in equal measure must his sensitiveness and the exercise of that power of will which is indispensable for all moral activity diminish. If nature has neither endowed the mind of the artist with an adamantine stoicism, nor filled his heart with an inexhaustible spring of love, his æsthetic qualities will little by little devour his ethical instincts; genius may, in the words of Balzac, "consume" the heart. In such a case as this, the categories of good and evil which people have most to do with in real life, i.e., the will and the passions, are confused in the artist's mind with the categories of the beautiful and the ugly, the characterless and the characteristic, the artistically interesting and the inane. Wickedness and vice attract the imagination of the poet, if only they be concealed under forms that are externally beautiful and attractive; while virtue looks dull and insignificant unless she can afford some material for a poetical apotheosis.

But the artist excels not only in the quality of being able to contemplate objectively and dispassionately the emotions of others, he is unique also in this, that he can, as an impartial observer, subject his own heart to the same hard, æsthetic scrutiny that he applies to the actions of others. Ordinary people can, or at least believe that they can, entirely recover from the emotions which may have seized upon them, be they transports of love or hatred, of joy or sorrow. An honourable man, when he makes his vow of love to a woman, honestly believes in the truth of that vow—it never enters his head to inquire whether he really is as much in love as he says he is. One would on the face of things expect a poet more than other men to be inclined to give way to emotion, to be credulous, and to let himself be carried away; but in reality there always remains in his soul, however deeply it may be swayed by passion, the power to look into its own depths as into those of a character in a dream or novel; to follow with attention, even in moments of complete intoxication, the infinite intangible changes of his emotions, and to focus upon them the force of his merciless analysis.

Human emotions are hardly ever simple or unalloyed: in the majority of cases they are composed of a mixture of parts differing immensely in the values of their components. And a psychological artist involuntarily discovers so many contradictions in himself and in others, even in moments of genuine exaltation, that by degrees he comes to lose all faith in his own rectitude, as well as in the rectitude of others.

II

The letters of Flaubert, published in two volumes, offer rich material for the study, from a living example, of the question of the antagonism which exists between the artistic and moral personality.

"Art is higher than life"; such is the formula which stands as the corner-stone of the whole, not only of Flaubert's æsthetic view, but also of his philosophical view of life. As a young man of thirty he writes to one of his school friends: "If I did not introduce into the plot of my poems a French queen of the fifteenth century, I should feel an utter disgust of life, and long ere this a bullet would have freed me from this humiliating folly." Within a year's time he is, with half serious rhetoric and youthful enthusiasm, encouraging the same young friend to proceed with his own work. "Let us ever devote ourselves to our art, which, being more powerful than all nations, crowns, or rulers, holds, in virtue of its glorious diadem, eternal sway over the whole universe." When over forty years of age, and on the verge of the tomb, Flaubert repeats with even