Then we may turn round one day to discover Beauty at our elbow-if she exists at all. If she doesn't, we shall at least have learnt horticulture.

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I can descend, then, with a clear conscience to occupy myself with the single plots of ground called Drama and Tragedy. But first I must deal with two other ways of approaching the question of the arts-for the arts, as human activities, can be classed together, even though there be no such obvious similarity discernible in the states of mind they produce, no æsthetic emotion." There are some who would view it all from the point of view of the artist. Art," they say, is primarily a creative function of the artist; other people may profit, afterwards, if it so happens. Cricket is a game played by twenty-two men, under certain rules: which may or may not be watched by a crowd. This is true, even though the game would not have been played but for the crowd. Art is no more to be explained in terms of the chance result on the spectators than cricket is to be explained in terms of the feelings of the crowd. Art is an amazing creative experience of the artist : what happens to the result of his travail is neither here nor there. A good picture is

one in the creating of which the artist had a good state of mind. And the utmost a spectator can hope for is to approximate, in beholding a work of art, to the state of mind the artist had in creating it."

The last sentence, perhaps, expresses a view that need not logically go with the foregoing belief. For the whole position, I do not think it can, ultimately, be refuted. It becomes a question of words, or of the point of view. From where I stand, I seem to see certain activities, and I consider them according to the aspect that seems to me most important. If another man views and describes them from behind, I can only lament it. There are things to be said against him. Certainly, if importance is to weigh in the matter, the effects on the audience are more important than the state of the artist. He could, cogently, answer that corn is corn, though the most important thing about it is that it goes to make bread. A greater difficulty is the extraordinary variety of experience of the creative artist. Blake thought he was taking down his writings from the dictation of an angel. Some writers solemnly think their things out. Others are "inspired "; or proceed almost by automatic writing.

Some are highly excited and irresponsible; others detached, cynical, and calculating. Many artists, it would seem, are never aware of their work of art as a whole, but build it up, patching and revising in little pieces. A play by Beaumont and Fletcher, with the scenes apportioned out, would be difficult to judge by this creative theory. Certainly, if you take the case of a dancer, who can never quite see herself dancing, it seems clear that the important whole connected with this activity is in the state of mind of the spectator.

Another common tendency, a fatal and ridiculous one, is that of the historical school. Both the psychology of the artist and the history of the arts are interesting, and may be valuable, topics of investigation. But it should be clearly recognised that the history 1 of the forms of the arts has no direct connection with the arts as they are. Football originated in a religious ritual; but it is not, necessarily, religious. The cooking of roast pork arose from the burning of a house; but he would be a foolish gastronomist who, in considering cooking, laid great emphasis on the fundamental element of arson in that art. So there are some who say that the arts originated in a need to let off the superfluous

energies of man, not needed to further or secure his livelihood; and therefore are essentially of the nature of play. Others declare that the sexual instinct was at the bottom of the beginnings of the arts, and that all Art is, fundamentally, sexuality. Others again would, for similar reasons, find it a religious activity. To all such we can only reply, "If your historical analysis is true, it is indeed a wonderful world in which we live; but now, in 1912, poetry and football are not sex or religion; they are poetry and football."

There are theatres; places where you see things. The things you see there generally try to represent or imitate reality, and are frequently accompanied by words, in which cases they are called "plays." One of the first and most important distinctions between plays, music, and poetry on the one hand, and pictures and sculpture on the other, is that the element of duration enters into the first group. There is no especial point in a picture at which you begin or end looking at it; no fixed order of sensations. There is just the picture. But the order of sensations which a play should arouse in you is fixed beforehand, and essential. This fact of

duration gives theatrical art two features. It can arouse all the emotions that can be got through the consecution of events; and it can employ the succession of emotions in the mind. Both these are important. Take the latter first. It is obvious that, though he may demand certain knowledge in the spectator before the beginning of the play, the artist cannot demand any definite state of mind. He can only claim to be presented with an expectant and fairly blank normal mind. After that he is responsible. And at any moment during the play, his choice of the emotions to arouse is conditioned by the emotions already aroused. Each situation must be planned, each line written, with regard to the effect of what has gone before, not only logically, but psychologically, on the audience. The continuity of the play must be an emotional continuity, even more than a rational one: not necessarily, of course, the same emotion continuously, but necessarily harmonious ones. I do not mean to suggest that the spectator of a play experiences a number of definite emotions, one at a time, each lasting three seconds, consecutive. His state of mind is complex; and while some perceptions or emotions flash