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 UNIVERSITY OF 
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 ESSAYS ON ART 
 
 MAX WEBER 
 
 Author of Cubist Poems 
 
 Social Sciences & Humanities Library 
 
 University of Califomia, San Diego 
 Please Note: This item is subject to recall. 
 
 Date Due 
 
 QFD 1 Q 1007 
 
 
 Our 1 \\i\jf 
 
 
 StH 13 199B 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 CI 39 (2/95) UCSDLib.
 
 The University Library 
 
 University of California, San Diego 
 
 La Jolla, California 
 
 From Thfl 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 Of 
 
 PROFESSOR 
 URIEL WEINREICH 
 
 Copyright, 1916, by 
 
 MAX WEBER 
 Published June, 1916 
 
 Printed by 
 
 William Edwin Riidge 
 
 na William Street 
 
 New York
 
 Contents 
 
 Page 
 
 PREFACE - - - . 5 
 
 Essays on Art 
 
 QUALITY - - - - 7 
 
 SPIRITUAL TACTILITY - - - 13 
 
 TRADITION AND NOW - - - 17 
 
 MEANS - - - - 25 
 
 THINGS - - - - 31 
 
 PREPARING TO SEE - . . 37 
 
 THE URGE IN ART - - - 41 
 
 REVELATION ... 47 
 
 ART CONSCIOUSNESS - - - 51 
 
 PURITY IN ART . . . gl 
 
 THE EQUILIBRIUM OF THE INANIMATE - 67 
 
 ART PURPOSE ... 73 
 
 \
 
 HESE essays were written in the autumn 
 of 1914 as part of a series of talks on art 
 apjjreciation. In committing them to 
 writing, my purpose was to help the 
 student to recognize and to live the prin- 
 ciples of art and to apply them in his work according 
 to his own discernment. I am happy to be able now, 
 to give these short essays a wider field in the hope that 
 they may help to foster the love of art and its signifi- 
 cance in life. 
 
 At no better time than this, could I express my 
 appreciation of the encouragement given to me to write, 
 by my friend, Leonard Van Noppen, whose wise counsel 
 I gratefully acknowledge. 
 
 M. W.
 
 Quality 
 
 NE of the most spiritual and significant 
 phases of quaUty is intimacy. It is a 
 state of awareness, of knowledge, of the 
 presence of things outside of ourselves; 
 we mean here, inanimate things. Any- 
 thing that has been shaped or constructed pos- 
 sesses a part of the life of the maker of that thing. 
 It is that of his life which makes the existence 
 of that thing possible. The maker lives in the things 
 he makes. Even his tool becomes warm in his hand 
 and palpitates with his very pulse. Then too, the 
 moment I behold an object, an art work, it becomes more 
 that very moment, for I put part of myself into it along 
 with the life of its maker. For matter is of more 
 worth when it is embodied with the spirit of the maker. 
 A work binds its maker to the universe. Though the 
 maker cease to be, the work he has created keeps on 
 pulsating and rhymes his personality on on into infinity. 
 Often it occurs to me that objects of quality wait 
 for us; and when once we succeed in knowing it 
 intimately, the object is more and we are more because 
 of each other, or because art chooses us. It seems to 
 me one of the most important functions of our 
 daily breathing or living, this spiritual communion with 
 objects — with works of art. We pray in belief, 
 
 [ 7 ]
 
 but this art consciousness or plastic consciousness is 
 belief in proof. The reality of art is its mystery. This 
 brings us back to the principles of taste, mainly the 
 power to discern through knowledge or by instinct. 
 
 (Both are plastically intellectual, i. e. — 
 Using the hand-mind ; 
 I, • \ Using the eye-mind ; 
 
 ^ j Using the feeling mind, or the 
 
 (^ emotion. 
 
 A way to commune with the unknown is to imagine 
 one's self being in the unknown. To find the quality 
 in a work one must invest it with personal quality 
 already acquired by him, the spectator or student. One's 
 own quality will draw forth, will call out, will attract 
 or magnetize the yet unseen quality in a work. This 
 is almost as true of the spiritual as of the physical. To 
 perceive quality is to possess quality. And even when 
 we find quality in works, then the process of assimilation 
 must begin. Food must first be digested. Simply to 
 possess it one might starve. To possess art is to live it. 
 It enhances every human faculty. 
 
 Analysis is more the act of the spectator; synthesis 
 more with the creator. Appreciation is an analytic 
 function — it is placid. Creation is synthetic — is 
 the active participating. There are infinite avenues to 
 the understanding of quality in a work. Its means, 
 what is commonly called technique, may be said to be 
 the mechanical side; its construction, its material 
 side — the concrete. Then there are the qualities 
 abstract. That which, regardless even of means, 
 makes for rarity, for distinction; its intensity to evoke 
 and to empower, or overwhelm, its spirit. Or it is that 
 
 [ 8 1
 
 indescribable something that makes for quahty — that 
 something which is in a work of art independent of its 
 means — we might call it the soul of a work. That 
 quality which is beyond words — it is feeling. Or too 
 we might call it the artist or maker in the work. 
 
 The building is the architect, the picture is the artist, 
 the symphony is the composer, the poem the poet. 
 Not as some would have us believe that it is the 
 dress or the mannerism that makes the artist. Detect- 
 ing or sensing quality in a work of art is like finding 
 an answer to one's seeking self. Such consciousness 
 of growth is the great revelation in life. It is 
 then that we feel our relationship to this great universe. 
 It is this revelation which makes for that inquiry so 
 essential to higher achievement and for better under- 
 standing and which therefore means a fuller and more 
 inclusive life. 
 
 Finding finds and the found always seeks for more. 
 That which makes for individual art is in a whole people, 
 but it is he who can best reveal and voice that which 
 would otherwise lie dormant in a people who is the 
 artist. And the people find themselves in their great 
 artists. The environment, religion, tradition, the very 
 physical features of the country of a people, determine 
 to a large degree the character of their art. Natural 
 adaptability, sequence of time, thought and substance 
 make for quality. Thus time has given us the variety 
 of quality or character — Egyptian, Greek, Roman, 
 Byzantine, Saracenic, Chinese, Indian, Renaissance, 
 French, Spanish, Dutch, etc. 
 
 Quality is a certain purity, or distinction, in a 
 work of art. That which makes for quality is the natural 
 
 [ 9 ]
 
 adaptability, sequence and substance of time. Though 
 these differ, the essence is the same. 
 
 Strangeness or pecuharity or singularity does not 
 make for quality. Strangeness wears off, peculiarity in 
 time even bores, and both perish — but real quality 
 ripens and grows in excellence and becomes a plastic 
 memory, virile with beauty. Real quality makes for 
 age. It forms an integral part of time, sacred to the 
 generations. Genuine quality outlives all fads, and 
 makes for permanency that is ever refreshing. Quality 
 is the highest spiritual embodiment in an art work that 
 we can conceive. The rarest and highest quality comes 
 only from the highest conception. Quality is the life 
 of art, as art is the quality of life. Ethical or spir- 
 itual quality is kindness, charitableness, sympathy, 
 love; strength or power is physical quality, while 
 aesthetic qualities are those I mentioned above. But 
 all these are inseparable in life and art. The qualities 
 of art blend the spiritual, the ethical and the phj^sical. 
 Life and art are not apart. It is the wonder of quality 
 in us, in art, in life, to desire, to crave, for still more 
 quality. Quality qualifies itself only in this wondrous 
 continuity. Using time is an aesthetic means of the 
 art of life. 
 
 Development of taste or of quality, like the develop- 
 ment of creative power, is infinite. As a guide and 
 incentive one holds before him the indisputable ideals 
 in works of art; these ideals are the principles 
 we discussed. The creative mind makes principles 
 flexible and art seems to solicit contributions from 
 the inspired. ^Vliatever form of so-called modern art 
 might yet be invented or evolved, time, as alwaj^s, will 
 
 [ 10 ]
 
 decide whether its modernity or newness shall ever ripen 
 with age and become part of tradition. The ancient 
 was once modern, but will the modern become ancient? 
 
 Science dealing with facts and facts with use make 
 possible endless physical or chemical combination. 
 Material use is the great issue in science. Science 
 experiments and its use or application is its proof. 
 Science may advance as rapidly in the future as it has 
 in the past. But physical science and metaphysics are 
 not art, and cannot do for art. A machine is not a sonnet 
 or a picture, nor is a logical syllogism a prayer; and a 
 mechanical draughtsman's drawing of the intersection of 
 solids or of the development of surfaces is not a thing 
 aesthetic. But some there are who to be modern take it 
 upon themselves to be the prophets and martyrs. They 
 tell us things and do things that contribute as much to 
 art, as calling all things by the same name does to intel- 
 ligence. 
 
 Art is art, call it what you may, by any name. It 
 has a distinct origin and a definite purpose. A prayer 
 is a prayer, love is love, tears are tears, sorrow is sorrow. 
 This does not define these, but before I might begin any 
 sort of metaphysical speculation or rudderless thinking, 
 I do know that a prayer is not a city. 
 
 I confess that such metaphysics make for sham and 
 chaos and any aim at posterity with such effort goes 
 amiss. Many ancient sins are covered with the cloak of 
 modernity. Indeed, convenience is often only another 
 name for freedom, but such freedom is the worst slavery. 
 No art can be built upon a foundation of vagaries, or 
 of fads. Ideals ferment art. Emotion is as the sun- 
 light to the seed of art, and the seed in time is fruit. The 
 
 [ 11 ]
 
 apple-seed craves for the apple, or it would cease to 
 generate. But most of the fruit, if we please to call 
 it fruit, of "modern art" degenerates and decays. 
 
 No more than one can satisfy physical hunger with 
 ideals, can one appease spiritual starvation with man- 
 nerisms and cults. Art is spiritual belief or truth, the 
 symbol of the most tender or virile instincts conceivable. 
 To scorn or to slight the real of the past, the unswayable, 
 makes one conspicuous but not creative. Creation is 
 infinite in time, space and matter. Notority is momen- 
 tary. The plastic spiritual principles or ideals embodied 
 in the Parthenon, in archaic sculpture, in the Assyrian 
 and the Egj'ptian, and in the color and design of Minoan 
 and Persian, Chinese and Indian porcelains, rugs and 
 paintings, are a permanent source of inspiration, and 
 incentive to contributive achievement. 
 
 [ 12 ]
 
 Spiritual Tactility 
 
 HE highest development of perception 
 and of sensitiveness, will spring from the 
 most tender interlacing, blending or 
 correspondence of the several senses. 
 Instinct contributes sensibility which be- 
 gins in the embryonic state of human beings and in 
 the period after birth until the senses begin to discern 
 with the intelligence of childhood, increasing in dis- 
 cernment as life goes on. But even the instinctive or 
 hereditary may be said to be that contribution to one's 
 senses derived from parents in prior contact with the 
 objective world according to their intensity of percep- 
 tion of such contact, as of density and the molecular 
 formations of matter, of heat, cold, light, shape, size, 
 sound, color, motion, time - — all that makes for con- 
 sciousness. 
 
 Thus we see that the senses are developed 
 essentially through two avenues: the physical or the 
 inanimate, and the spiritual or the wonderful, that 
 is a sense of mystery in the being of things. This 
 leads to Avhat I might call intimacy of tactility — 
 largely a plastic quality, which makes for spiritual 
 plasticity, through our attitude or approach. This 
 involves a miraculous action, a marvelous union 
 of the family of the senses — inexplicable. The 
 quality and the character of the act of perception, 
 determine the quality of feeling, of understanding, 
 of appreciating, of embracing. It is this spiritual 
 tactility that brings us into closest touch and great- 
 
 [ 13 ]
 
 est intimacy with the outer world until the one enhances 
 the other. Even appreciation becomes creation through 
 this awareness of the worlds without. There are 
 always two cathedrals, two pictures, two symphonies — 
 the outer and the inner — the one, the expressed ; and 
 the other in the spectator. Also the finite becomes the 
 infinite tlu-ough art. The material vase contains 
 the spiritual essence of the vase of the creator, 
 while the essence of the vase entire is in the spectator. 
 This power of assimilation, of appreciation, of approach, 
 of perception, depends largely upon the intensity of the 
 spiritual tactility, or tactile intimacy, of creator or 
 appreciator. To touch matter through sight, to color 
 the invisible with memory of the visible, to hear through 
 touch, to see through imagination, to prophesy or to 
 evoke through memory; thus to interchange the func- 
 tions of the senses in the process of perception while 
 enlarging the spiritual range of the senses is the most 
 real function of spirit. To thus personify matter with 
 one's senses, embodying the inanimate with spirit is a 
 sacred function — the piety of art. One might almost 
 say that the tree speaks, the winds play, the sun shines 
 and colors through the painter, the poet and the musi- 
 cian. All lies silent and in wait for the creative spirit to 
 liberate it from its nature bounds. All that was born 
 claims all, clamors for a rebirth of itself — for 
 a higher, purer distinction or destiny. Nature 
 creates, art destines. The laws of art gauge and con- 
 trol the destiny of matter or nature. Nature pre- 
 ordains ; art destines — and its destiny is infinity. Be- 
 tween is man with his spiritual tactility. 
 
 Sometimes I feel that even inanimate objects 
 
 [ 11 ]
 
 crave a hearing, and desire to participate in the 
 great motion of time and its indentations. This 
 is the secret of hfe, of gi'owth, of development, 
 of innovation, of the inner sprouting or the budding 
 into being and of wanting to be the outer. The flower 
 is not satisfied to be merely a flower in light and space 
 and temperature. It wants to be a flower in us, in our 
 soul. Things live in us and through us. A shingle 
 is more than itself when it is a shingle on the roof, 
 likewise with a brick in the wall, though its only beauty 
 is its use. Things, objects, mutely cry to us, "Touch 
 us, taste us, feel us, see us, understand us, learn us, 
 make us more than we are through your association, 
 tlirough your tactile and spiritual intimacy." The use 
 then that we make of matter is gauged by our power, 
 our quality or our energy, to wield it, to adopt it, to 
 shape it, to urge it on into the fourth dimension. The 
 same lump of clay or the same pigments will assume 
 different quality, different shape, in the hands of two 
 persons. And clay is more than clay in the 
 hands of a master. And we with our senses are the 
 master works of God — governed by intellect and pos- 
 sessed of a spirituality limitless, of infinite power and 
 quality. The word is more than a word; it becomes 
 significant only through us. 
 
 Intimacy, phantasy, art, are born of the marriage of 
 our senses with matter. New revelation will mean new 
 art — not mere oral mechanics, mathematical philoso- 
 phy, or metaphysics. Only stirring emotions and 
 nuances of wisdom as jeweled or ornate mentality, can 
 give rise to such art. 
 
 Spiritual tactility may be said to begin when 
 
 [ 15 ]
 
 matter inanimate touches space. Animated spiritual 
 tactility may be said to happen and to be, when we feel 
 the reality or when matter, light, sound, temperature, 
 reaches or touches us. It may be said to be the spirit- 
 ual consciousness. It is like the finger touching the 
 organ. 
 
 Spiritual tactility is the wonder moment when 
 genius or creative energy comes in contact with matter 
 and decides and shapes its destiny in the realms of art. 
 Its value is its plastic spiritual worth in art — what- 
 ever form it be. It is the wonder moment when spirit 
 meets matter, when inanimate substance meets the ani- 
 mate and therefore its life — its plastic destiny, is de- 
 cided. There are other Parthenons, other sjTnphonies, 
 other Congo sculpture, other Gobelin tapestry, waiting 
 for the master to breathe reality into them. The impetus 
 to look with wonder into the future, we derive from our 
 plastic spirituality. As space receives time, so space 
 gives time and significance of life. This is infinity, and 
 infinity is hope to live the yet Unknown. 
 
 Infinity is in the potentiality of time, space, matter. 
 Spiritual tactility fires the frozen and moves the im- 
 movable. Through it man breathes his soul into matter. 
 
 16
 
 Tradition and Now 
 
 IME adds more to tradition every 
 new day. To try to be traditional 
 to-day may be as erroneous as some 
 of the modern efforts in art that 
 run away from time itself. They are 
 jeyond the last or the latest moment. They are before 
 being. In science it would be absurd to go back to the 
 remote past. Wliile in art the further we go from the 
 past the more scientific and self-conscious we be- 
 come. Yet we know that we cannot express our 
 "modern" emotions in the terms and means of the 
 ancients. Indeed we must invent new means. But 
 before inventing new means, how much and wherein 
 have our emotions changed from those of the ancients? 
 Scientifically the races have gone indescribably far 
 ahead of the ancients, but spiritually and aesthetically 
 where are we? 
 
 In recent years, art has been made into a science, 
 and if not fully that, it has been dragged into meta- 
 physical arenas. Some serious and inspired spirits have 
 sought and are seeking to express the poetry of modern 
 dynamics so full of marvel, peculiar to our age, but the 
 most only mimic the dynamic and they would make us 
 believe that this is the new art — this tendency toward 
 the basest sort of realism and degeneracy. 
 
 Tradition is a stumbling block unless one knows 
 how to use it. One of the greatest forms of cre- 
 ation is the binding of time and the making of con- 
 tinuity — or harmony of time. Acts of creation on 
 
 [ 17 ]
 
 time are like the hammer beats of the goldsmith on 
 metal, — with each beat there is more refinement. But it 
 must be a material with hidden quality in the hands of an 
 artisan with constructive purpose and a power to 
 mold. Instead of studying or feeling the spirit of the 
 ancients through their art — only their means by some 
 are used. Many have dressed themselves in robes that fit 
 them neither in form nor in color. Expression pre- 
 ordains its own means. It is the emotion, the inspira- 
 tion, that stirs the individual creator, or an entire race, 
 before its expression. Emotion cannot be sustained 
 in the individual, and this is as true of an entire 
 people. In the beginning of emotion, intellectual inten- 
 sity^ is expressed with ardor and devotion — later it 
 cools and whole races or groups are found busy prac- 
 ticing, either through stupidity or through boredom, 
 the means that no more fit the spirit, if spirit it is. 
 This is the history of academism. This is the history 
 of art when it turns into metaphysical dogma or 
 scientific processes or technique. This is the history of 
 art without life. This is the life of "art" when it must 
 turn to science or to the varied vagaries of the 
 brain as an excuse for being. Such is the "fruit" of art 
 when irresponsibility through despair sets in. This is 
 the history of art movements when a grain of inspira- 
 tion — if it is inspiration, is packed in cases, labelled, 
 stamped and shipped. But like bad wine the label 
 outside helps it not. And often enough we have received 
 advance notice of a shipment of the newest art, but there 
 was little to unload. Or we came away after mucli 
 debate and harangue with spirit vexed and mind 
 starved. This is the history of art when it is an art 
 
 [ 18 ]
 
 of means and not of inspiration, or prophecy, or 
 revelation. 
 
 In the history of art we may find whole periods or 
 epochs when spirit was bankrupt, and when leather was 
 distributed for gold. In the history of mankind, the in- 
 tensity of emotion and its expression varied accordingly 
 as religious ardor, or scientific discovery, or economic 
 principles ruled the hour. This is certain, that great art 
 reveals itself without loud verbal manifestoes. I 
 have come to believe that these manifestoes are loud 
 shouts that deafen, instead of being deep and silent and 
 profound. This is new to art, but it is not new art. 
 There is now an academy of manifesters and their 
 manifestoes. It is art labelled with scientific titles. 
 We have had whole ship-loads of Italian, French, 
 Spanish and English flavors of art, hastily manufac- 
 tured. But who can manufacture or ship real inspira- 
 tion? A^Tio can even talk about it? ^Vlio can name it? 
 And if it has been expressed, was it not in too great a 
 haste to warrant its continued pulsation? Or was it 
 not hot-house art? Or is it not the last flicker of a 
 dying light? 
 
 Materialism is now strong. It is become life's 
 protection and gauge. In ages past beaut j^ was use; 
 now use is beauty. In past ages cathedrals were 
 built, whereas now machines for life and death 
 as well are built. And while ages past were not 
 so scientifically eventful, yet I see and I feel, that they 
 shall be better remembered because of their superior 
 spirit and of the embodiment of that spirit in lasting 
 works of art. 
 
 ^Vherein and how shall we find hope for new art in 
 
 [ 19 ]
 
 this tormented age? There are those who cry: "We 
 are tired of emulating. We want the newest new!" 
 But I have noted the rapidity with which the 
 new is arrived at, and how quickly tired of the 
 newest these same ones become. They become tired 
 of being tired of their own newness or novelty — not 
 realizing that their own newness decayed. Means of 
 art outlive themselves and become mediocre and monot- 
 onous, but spirit, hope, conception are ever new — new 
 to every living person, as to whole races or epochs. 
 The whole race of Egypt built the Sphinx and their 
 temples. All Greece shaped the Parthenon. And in 
 modern time, Cezanne did not write manifestoes with 
 the first picture he painted, nor did he threaten to over- 
 throw the universe with his brush and palette. And his 
 influence after a life's work is to-day profoundly felt 
 both by the young and the older generations. 
 
 It takes time for growth of thought and expression 
 to sprout; like the plant, it needs time and heat and 
 light and rain in proportion to its natural requisite. 
 But now we have so many old masters before they are 
 even young. Shall art be in the race with modern 
 electric automatics? A thought is swift, and illumina- 
 tion is even swifter than the swiftest things, but art is 
 not a scientific process. It is the ripeness of thought 
 that produces art. Time is a museum that keeps its 
 doors locked to unripe and hasty work. But art, if art 
 it is, has its own reward in living through whole ages 
 of darkness. This is proven by the contents of great 
 collections of monuments, by temples and their interior 
 decorations, in mosaic, in wrought iron, wood and stone 
 carving and in stained glass. 
 
 [ 20 ]
 
 Shall we ignore these and their creators? Or can 
 we afford to throw all the past aside and make a new 
 art? Where shall we begin and what if we do? 
 Spiritual inner harmony ferments art. If that was the 
 seed for art in the past, can it be the seed of art now? 
 Are we spiritual, are we in harmony with ourselves and 
 with our environment? Do we have the time to con- 
 template, to find out where we are, or who we are? 
 What is the aim to-day? 
 
 These are the questions we must ask of ourselves 
 before we write manifestoes, and illustrate them with 
 our efforts at new forms. Are there new forms? 
 I mean form as form in the domain of plastic art, the 
 expression of human emotion, or spirit, or of a hope 
 to reach a beyondness. Do we know and under- 
 stand the antique. Have we outlived its spiritual 
 use? Is it a foreign language to those who live 
 so differently from the ancients? Is it art, or is it 
 science, that proves to us that the old forms have out- 
 lived themselves? Have our spirits changed that we 
 must change our art? Or do we want art, at all? Are 
 we spiritually himgry? Or are our souls fed with the 
 husks of materialism? If there is glory in war, what is 
 there in art? Or if we need art, do we find that it must 
 be in the sense of a shock? Have our nerves and senses 
 so changed that we need instead of quiet, noise, and in- 
 stead of grandeur, bulk? Have our dimensions, scales 
 and relationships changed? Is our joy become a neurotic 
 frenzy or is it a physical and a spiritual expression? 
 Do we weep no more? And if we do, are our tears of 
 water? Are our children merely our offspring, or are 
 they our spiritual reproduction, the embodiment of our 
 
 [ 21 ]
 
 noblest spirit-selves? Is society merely number in 
 being, or is it quality in living? These things we must 
 find out before we overthrow the old, if the old has be- 
 come finite for us ! 
 
 Inherence and infinity contain forms yet unborn. 
 Do we listen? Do we feel infinity, do we put a part of 
 ourselves in the inherent, to emerge with the conception 
 of new forms? Have we no sorrow, no joy, as people of 
 generations past? Have we so completely changed our 
 humanity that we find we must reconstruct the principles 
 of art? Do we need art? I mean painting, sculpture, 
 poetry. Perhaps it is because of om* feeling no need 
 of the placid, plastic arts, that we try to find new forms 
 and talk of art in terms of metaphysics instead of quietly 
 living and making art as others did in the past, and as 
 creative spirit always will. 
 
 Perhaps plastic art, no matter how revolutionary 
 or realistic it may be, has become insufficient. Perhaps 
 we need new forms of exhilaration and of excitement to 
 make for us a new rest and a pleasure, more suited to our 
 taste and to our leisure and to our economy as modified 
 by the character of the whole system of modern life. 
 Perhaps we do not need painting or sculpture, at all. 
 Perhaps we need a new architecture, a new music, or 
 a period of silence and a long rest. Perhaps we need 
 a spiritual recreation. Then let us live for a while 
 out-of-doors with the arts. Then child-like, return, and 
 make a new beginning that may make for truer mo- 
 dernity in modern art. Art as we know it to be, or as 
 we find it to be built upon the principles embodied in 
 the great antiques. How shall the arts of the past 
 serve us? Shall they at least help us to see how differ- 
 
 [ 22 ]
 
 ent in emotion, in attitude and belief we have become 
 from the races that created them? 
 
 With a great religious revival four centuries ago 
 came the Renaissance. Shall we argue that art needs 
 no urge, no impulse from an outside source, and that 
 "modernity" itself is the excuse for most modern art 
 outbursts. But then what is modernity, from where 
 does it spring, and how? Whether we have changed or 
 not, I believe, in spite of all the manifestoes to the 
 contrary, in whatever tongue they be written or spoken, 
 that the antiques will live as long as the sun shines, as 
 long as there is mother and child, as long as there are 
 seasons and climes, as long as there is life and death, 
 sorrow and joy. 
 
 [ 23 ]
 
 Means 
 
 EANS in whatever form they be speak 
 for us. If we work in color, pigment 
 speaks for us. If we work in clay and 
 bronze, clay and bronze speak for us. 
 Our thoughts, our ideas of things, our 
 words and language, speak for us; and so with every 
 form of creative work or expression. Means are outside 
 of us. Our power of mastering matter makes for means. 
 The purpose of means is expression. Thoughts creative 
 must pass through the doors of means. Means are the 
 gates between the inner and the outer, between the 
 real and the ideal, between the expressed and the un- 
 expressed. The passage is made up of all species of 
 matter that serve the spirit. The spirit as it passes 
 through these gates between the outer and the inner 
 must clothe itself with suitable apparel. At the mar- 
 riage feast of the arts, the spirit comes clothed in a 
 wedding garment. A range of costumes are ready 
 to robe expression from the mediocre to the sublime. 
 Homer's spirit at these gates chooses the Odyssey 
 and the Iliad, David's spirit the Psalms, Greco's 
 spirit the Laocoon, Bach's spirit his wonder fugues, 
 and likewise with whole races, their art, their literature, 
 and their other culture. 
 
 And so we find the great spirits dressed in simple 
 vestments. The great are simple. And it is not the 
 dress, it is the spirit dressed. It is not Dostoyewsky's 
 novels, it is the essence of Dostoj^ewsky's spirit that 
 we are able to read and to inhale through his marvelous 
 
 [ 25 ]
 
 means — his novels. And so with Michael Angelo's 
 Pieta, with the Parthenon of the Greeks, with the 
 Prophets of the Hebrews. Means and spirit go 
 together. 
 
 The spirit is more even though it may not be ex- 
 pressed, than any means if such exist only as means, or 
 as cold technique. A color must be more than a color. 
 A form must be more than a form; it must suggest the 
 sacred more onh'' found in the spiritual. Everything 
 must be more than it is visibly. This seeming invisi- 
 bleness is the realization and the wonder of the infinite. 
 Means of expression and their scientifically derived 
 terms will never answer for expression proper. Means 
 and expression are two different things. Certain means 
 may infer or suggest infinite vagaries, but art never 
 found adequate expression in means alone. 
 
 There is order, number and relationship even 
 in the non-material spheres. Ends justify means 
 and even means justify means for a time, but expres- 
 sion, revelation or illumination flourishes not on means. 
 The means of expression or the realization of perception 
 is but transitional and momentary. Some means are 
 merely intentions or experiments. The hunger of the 
 human spirit cannot be satisfied with the means of "art" 
 only. Means and only means mean nothing. Only ex- 
 pression gives life and significance. Creation or ex- 
 pression always has other forms of creation in its inher- 
 ent purpose, and creation is revelation, never a befogging 
 mystery and doubt. 
 
 Mystery infinite from revelation springs. 
 
 And mystery illumines only when itself it reveals. 
 
 [ 26 ]
 
 Always it is expression before means. The inten- 
 sity of the inner creative urge impels, chooses and in- 
 vents the means. Means alone cannot build up an art. 
 Often we find in the rare achievements of the past the 
 simplest means employed to convey, to bring home to 
 the heart, the greatest expression. Art does not lie in its 
 means; it lies in its mission, in its purpose, in its mes- 
 sage, in its prophecy. The difference of expression, 
 of creative power, necessitates the difference in means. 
 The spirit wields matter. Means are in matter and 
 method, never in spirit. Means are indifferent to the 
 quality of expression, while expression determines its 
 own best suited means. Sometimes the spirit is greater 
 imexpressed than expressed. For means may hamper or 
 even bar expression. Means and methods are only the 
 mechanism of art. In the architectonic process of 
 a work, the spirit of expression creates the means, in 
 the intervals of the process of formation. The spirit 
 seems to call dormant matter out of chaos and to give it 
 new birth, new destiny, new existence, new life in every 
 work of art. It gives it a mission, it makes of dead or 
 indifferent matter the very abode for the spirit. The 
 spirit is born somewhere within, and calls upon its most 
 appropriate means to help it install or realize itself 
 in the outer, the visible, the perceptible. Expression 
 loses much on account of means. In the history of art 
 more has been felt than expressed. On account of 
 means, silence has often been more expressive, more 
 messageful, than even expression. For one to change 
 his palette or his methods is not changing personality 
 and its innate expression. The spirit must first change 
 the inner color, the inner proportions, the inner balance ; 
 
 [ 27 ]
 
 then these will seek new means. One may speak 
 and convey nothing. One may work and accomplish 
 nothing. Occupying one's self with processes is to 
 make of one's self an automatic machine. It is the 
 search for richness of spirit and for grandeur of imag- 
 ination that produces art, never the mannerisms of 
 the cults. But this searching should be a consciousness 
 of possession. 
 
 Technique has to some a devilish fascination that 
 makes their work a machine. But the wonder and 
 blessing of the spirit is that it can manifest itself best 
 tlu'ough the simplest means and that it knows of no 
 technique. And a realization of this comes soon to every 
 creative spirit. Ripeness is struggle, and virtuosity is 
 never ripe. Technique has often frozen the spirit. I 
 mean the technique of the schools with their isms, for 
 such are periodic and local, and are full of vanity and 
 propaganda. The great danger of technique is that 
 often it misfits the spirit with wrong means and pro- 
 cesses. The searching spirit is free from mannerisms, 
 and almost unconsciously creates means suited to its ex- 
 pression, at the time of progress and of conception. Ex- 
 pression — creative energy, knows no bounds, while 
 means are limited. Too often have plastic means been 
 mistaken for expression proper. While it is difficult 
 to say that expression should be conceived independent 
 of means, yet I hold that that which prompts expression 
 is the same for all the arts. Indeed expression 
 and means are firmly linked, but the two must 
 not be confused, nor can the quality of the one 
 redeem the failure or deficiency of the other. Lack of 
 spirituality or of poetry will never be disguised by facile 
 
 [ 28 ]
 
 means. For the craving spirit, if starved, cries out in 
 time: "Wliat have the means expressed? How has the 
 expression served the soul?" 
 
 Expression is expression only beyond its means. 
 It is the essence of the creative spirit conveyed by 
 means, for which the world waits. Freshness of spirit 
 or the desire to reveal will call for new means, but such 
 new means do not mean a new revelation ; and as for the 
 new in art, I feel safe in saying that the oldest old is the 
 newest new. Art lies in spirituality, in nobleness, and in 
 virile placid beauty and always upon such qualities it 
 depends, to evoke its own means. 
 
 The feeling or need for an intense color will choose 
 an intense pigment, the feeling or necessity for the 
 beauty of interlacing of areas will choose its essential 
 geometric warmth or austerity. The imagination 
 or conception of an arrangement of forms or 
 of a particular gamut of color in a given rectangle 
 is not a matter of means, but an inner spiritual vision. 
 The yet unexpressed chooses its own means for the 
 expressed. Means of expression do not find or reveal; 
 it is the craving of the spirit for birth that finds its means 
 in its appearance upon the outer visible spheres. When 
 the expression of the creator reaches out and enters 
 the spectator, the message is supreme, and the means 
 are either forgotten or at most are only secondary. 
 
 It is not the means that explain or declare the 
 vision, it is the essence of the means, which in turn is 
 itself of the spirit. To substitute a mockery of technique 
 for the means that convey a true spiritual expression, is 
 to play the most fallible burlesque of the intellect. 
 But such attempts are never more than the abnormal or 
 
 [ 29 ]
 
 despondent outburst of the vain and deluded, who pre- 
 pare their own destiny — death. To the queer, resort 
 only the impious, the spiritless, the vacant of mind and 
 barren of heart. And it is not difficult to be queerer 
 than the queerest, for the queer is the natural expres- 
 sion of the charlatan, and cynicism is but the maniac 
 laughter of intellectual sacrilege, of impotence, of de- 
 spair. 
 
 [ 30 ]
 
 Things 
 
 Name not things ye see. 
 If ye do, then no more they are. 
 Hurt not intimacy by loud calling, 
 Name not, frighten not, molest, not 
 Things — the holiness of things 
 Wliich intimacy brings. 
 
 E speak about things, but we seldom 
 hear the things speak to us. By things 
 I do not mean events, politics, wars, or 
 even plays. I mean things in the three 
 dimensions, made and shaped by hand 
 and taste. Things useful and spiritual and intellectual. 
 Usefulness, spirituality and intellect in the existing 
 standards of education are classified separately. 
 Things spiritual are usually understood to mean 
 religion. Things intellectual are meant to be in- 
 formation, news of discoveries, wars, international 
 intrigue, all the isms and the ists. By things I mean 
 objects of use, houses, clothing, food, implements, 
 utensils and their functions. Unfortunately art is 
 set apart from everything. Art is in the parlor 
 and in the museums and is seen but several hours 
 in the year. Some never see it. Art is a luxury according 
 to the common understanding. Unless an art work is cen- 
 turies old and is valued in the thousands, it isn't authentic 
 art. Yet some old things are very bad. Culture has 
 been too mental and too verbal. Schools and their 
 
 [ 31 ]
 
 isms and vagaries and social formalities have been detri- 
 mental to real culture. Culture will come only when 
 every man will know how to address himself to 
 the inanimate simple things of life. A pot, a cup, 
 a piece of calico, a chair, a mantel, a frame, the binding 
 of a book, the trimming of a dress . . . these we live 
 with. Culture will come when people touch things with 
 love and see them vdth a penetrating eye. 
 
 As a nail, or a screw or a bolt is essential and is a 
 part of a whole machine, so is every simple thing a part 
 of the whole spiritual, living, moving cosmos. I would 
 much rather be able to shape things on the anvil, 
 or in the kiln or to make a table or a cabinet, or to design 
 a public hall, or theatre, than to be a lecturer on the 
 history of literature or of the arts and crafts. I would 
 much rather make a foot stool than to spend my time 
 fishing for the origin of the root of a Greek or a Chaldean 
 word. I would rather dig up things by the roots in a gar- 
 den I have dug and sowed myself. For words in them- 
 selves are nothing, they are an abstract equivalent of 
 things. Words in the dictionary are indifferent. 
 Weight in itself is nothing, it is the thing that has the 
 weight that is the thing. The measure itself is nothing. 
 It is the thing measured. The compass is a marvelous 
 thing in the hand of the mariner. But it is the direction 
 in space it marks, or its significance, the places it guides 
 to, that are important. It is not the abstractness of 
 the thing, it is the concreteness. 
 
 Light is more when it illumines things. It is the 
 things that are important. Theoretical quality or 
 beauty is absolute nonsense. It is quality and 
 beauty in things that count. Speed, power, is nothing 
 
 [ 32 ]
 
 ... it is all in things. Thinking thoughts is sheer 
 waste, often purposeless. Thinking thoughts about 
 things, fermenting action, is creative. Ideas of ideas are 
 futile. Professional thinking is destruction. It is a 
 mental vandalism of the concrete. To think is to see 
 with the eyes upon the memory of things in time and 
 place and environment. To think is to speak with inner 
 sight upon the concrete. 
 
 Education has heretofore been much too aristocratic 
 
 — it made for idlers and for professional rheto- 
 ricians, from whom has sprung crime and de- 
 generacy and scandal, while the humblest occupation 
 is in reality far nobler than any of the so-called higher 
 vocations. 
 
 Materialism has thrown things out of scale and pro- 
 portion. It has distorted values and blurred the 
 nuances of the worth of things. Labor is regarded as 
 slavery. To be idle is to be outside of things. It is to 
 starve the senses and to narrow the intellect. The 
 necessity of engaging the senses in the perception of 
 color and form in daily life is overlooked. 
 
 We are in things. I need a cup or a garment; so 
 much of my life's need is in them that they are essen- 
 tial to my life. Likewise with my need of objects and 
 things whose beauty is their use and whose use is beauty 
 
 — a picture, a sculpture, a rug, a necklace. A room 
 is empty — a thing is brought in and I am no more 
 alone. With science we exist or perish, with art we 
 live and hope. Through art we can sow the highest 
 form of life. We can embody quality in objects of use. 
 Through knowing things we are better able to discrim- 
 inate, to discern, to compare things of matter with spirit. 
 
 [ 33 ]
 
 Things arouse the senses of perception. Through 
 things I feel tied to earth. Everything lives — 
 I live with things. Things have individuality, distinct 
 characteristics, color, form, size, substance and texture. 
 To know things is to live with more subtlety, refinement 
 and purpose. It is to make of things the environment. 
 What we call bad taste would lessen, so that material 
 would not be wasted on the non-useful and ugly. Good 
 taste is not in accord with the covetous spirit ; it discards 
 the ugly, it chooses quality not quantity. To be covet- 
 ous is to remain spiritually or aesthetically in poverty. 
 To possess good taste is to own the sun and moon and 
 stars. The whole world is had in spiritual possession. 
 Richness in spirit and ripeness of taste make for highest 
 culture. Intellect develops through a spiritual 
 tactility, through love and understanding of the princi- 
 ples that when embodied in things make for quality and 
 for distinction. To cherish things, to reverence things 
 is to cherish one's own self. Life would be barren 
 without matter formed into beautiful proportion, aside 
 from its use. 
 
 We often hear of the "practical turn of mind." 
 Yes, and they are practical whose minds are filled with 
 contracts, measures, weights, prices, profits, war maps. 
 To live with merely a useful table is to live with so much 
 useful lumber made to serve the purpose of a table. 
 And why have a table? Savages used the ground. But 
 to have a table that is of fine proportion and at the same 
 time useful, is to live with the spirit of the maker of 
 the table. A table or house that is merely useful serves 
 only the animal in us, but things of proportion, rhythm, 
 color, evoke the God in us. Things of money value 
 
 [ 3t ]
 
 are obvious, even though they be diamonds and rubies. 
 To pass indifferently or blindly an object of good pro- 
 portion, color or design, is like passing and stumbling 
 over physical things. It is spiritual blindness. There 
 is a spiritual death of the senses while physically they 
 may be normal and alive. Yet if the senses are numb 
 the intellect grows dull and colorless. 
 
 Things of quality, providing we are sensitive to 
 them, draw us out of ourselves. Through things we ever 
 establish new relationshijis between ourselves and the 
 principles that underlie things. The simplest object 
 may have embodied in it the finest degree of excellence. 
 Instinctively man is an industrious animal. Neglecting 
 the making of things, of living and of loving things, the 
 student of mental sciences or theories falls back 
 upon himself instead of upon things, hence the 
 mind grows morbid, even abnormal. Mental depression 
 and sophistry set in; the spirit of joy, play and fruition 
 decays. Things help us find an equilibrium always, while 
 ideas and suppositions often drop us into a sea of mud. 
 And there is nothing more sad than a helpless philoso- 
 pher with locked hands and a stagnant mind. 
 
 I sometimes think the factories or shops are the real 
 universities and that the universities are the factories. 
 Better a brawny sensitive hand, a keen eye, a tender 
 touch, a creative mind and a vivid spirit, than to be a 
 hazy, helpless and useless theorist. Better things of 
 beauty and use from the hands of man, than the wander- 
 ing theories that wearv the flesh and starve the soul. 
 He who appreciates the principles of proportion, 
 harmony, balance, symmetry, in simple objects and 
 in works of art, finds that those qualities are in him, 
 
 [ 35 ]
 
 and it is only through things that one discerns himself. 
 These principles tell the spectator that these are princi- 
 ples of life, and man has expressed them in form, in 
 things as a part of himself. Through the understanding 
 of ideals we cement the real to us. And while these are 
 but plastic principles in objects, yet, when felt by the 
 spectator, these principles become spiritual in him. 
 Thus art and life are not apart. Art foundations life. 
 
 [ 36 ]
 
 Preparing to See 
 
 What a dome silence makes! 
 
 Wliat music, what words are in it ! 
 
 For what it echoes is not all of now. 
 
 All music and all words are there. 
 
 For when I speak or when I sing, 
 
 Mine own with other echoes blended I hear. 
 
 With the sound and the color of my voice 
 
 Time to time I bind. 
 
 Strange is the echo, but real is the echo 
 
 Then why fear one's own echo-self? 
 
 Though I call not and the space-dome silent be, 
 
 My echo, my tone-self is there — 
 
 In space with infinite echoes it hovers. 
 
 With whatever word or vision silence I imprint, 
 
 That my echo-self sends back to me. 
 
 My echo here 
 
 Is myself everywhere — 
 
 My echo everywhere. 
 
 UST I not stand under a dome of silence 
 to see? And this stillness ferments a 
 mood of peace, of contemplation. Yes- 
 terday I saw something. I took the 
 memory of that thing with me. I knew 
 more. I felt more. I wanted more. No one could tell 
 me better what I saw, and no one knows how much 
 more, and what more, I must yet see of that thing for 
 my satisfaction. Some one tells me what he saw in 
 
 [ 37 ]
 
 the same thing, but I am certain from his description 
 that that person saw quite a different thing. He saw 
 himself therein, and I saw myself. But I did not see 
 my whole self and therefore I had to go back to look 
 at least once again. No one can use another's senses, 
 nor can it satisfy us to depend upon others to see for us. 
 The best gauge is one's own experience. Knowing this, 
 I depend upon my own sight to believe and to see. 
 
 Sight is the all embracing sense of the other senses. 
 Without sight we are less than if we were without any 
 other sense. Seeing, like hearing, demands tranquillity 
 and peace, dignity — spiritual focus. One of the de- 
 ficiencies of general culture in modern times is the lack 
 of the power of observation. Real seeing is not a lens 
 process. It is mind sight, mind operating, evoking 
 comprehension, grasp, tactility through seeing. Sight 
 or seeing must not be limited to merely the earthly or 
 the existent. To see a measurable height is also to see the 
 immeasurable dimension. It is then a vision. It is 
 to penetrate with the light of the mind all that the eye 
 beholds or all that the eye touches. To see a thing 
 is to see its inlierent spirit, as the X-ray sees the physi- 
 cal internal structure of matter. To see is to 
 throw the light of one's soul upon objects, illum- 
 ining them with a spiritual transcendence or radiance. 
 To see many things by momentarily casting one's eyes 
 upon many things is to see but a blur, which like a 
 storm befogs the mind. To see is to think. To see is 
 to awaken the inner, the potential, with the reality of 
 the outer. Sight when infused with spirit makes the 
 outer world address itself to the inner, and when 
 
 38 
 
 I
 
 thought takes cognizance of this correspondence, it is 
 hke the spark of two currents. 
 
 To see an art work casually is a pleasant experience, 
 but to come in touch with the vision, the spirit of the 
 maker of it, is seeing in participation and it is then not 
 only a gratification but an exaltation. For I feel that 
 through art fresh sight is still in its living process, 
 penetrating the infinite unknown. A superior art 
 work finds a destiny of great distinction; an inferior 
 work unmakes itself through this time-filtering process 
 by not being looked upon again and again. Spirit 
 cements matter forms; without spirit no significant 
 forms can be built. To become intimate with an art 
 work one must unmake and make it again with his eye- 
 hands and mind-eyes. Thus one not only sees the en- 
 semble but the units, and one can more easily enter and 
 feel the intervals of time and of space and the moods 
 composite in the work of art in its plastic formation. To 
 see is to ask, to discover, to discern. To look is to listen to 
 the silent. Through one's eyes the outer worlds make 
 their impression or imprint upon the inner visual screen, 
 and this the mind sees and gives over to feeling. The 
 result is the proof of the quality of sensitiveness and 
 refinement and of the alertness of the receptive con- 
 sciousness. Seeing is a gift — a blessing from God. 
 
 The great silent mountain, the vastness of the ocean, 
 the great worlds of colored matter in light must be 
 heard through the eye. I feel that the inner feeling of 
 awe and grandeur is a spiritual breathing and hearing. 
 "Wlien the heart upheaves it is quite different from the 
 mere act of respiration. This silent inner breathing of 
 the atmosphere of the fourth dimension is audible, lum- 
 
 [ 39 1
 
 inous music to the soul. It is the spirit symphony heard 
 by the senses in attendance. 
 
 Memory colors the gone and apprehends the coming. 
 One cannot remember the symphony as aerially 
 organized colored sound volumes or forms with their 
 string and brass and wind atoms floating through un- 
 bounded space. One includes in his memory of such 
 music the very mass of the musicians, their individual 
 position and their geometric arrangement; also 
 chandeliers, aisles, balconies, faces and dress. All 
 things enter into the color of the memory of the 
 music. Sight or observation of tilings result in a 
 more emphatic, a more impressionable memory. 
 The memory sees the play of life after the fall 
 of the curtain. It binds scene with scene, act with act, 
 epoch with epoch. Memory of sight fills emptiness of 
 space, as memory of music fills silence. Memory of 
 sight pre-arranges and even ordains. With memory of 
 sight I lift and transport whole spheres. Then I live 
 and possess all that my eyes ever beheld, and my imag- 
 ination projects that memory into still more infinite 
 spheres. Memory can relive the gone. Memory of 
 sight is the great spiritual vision windowed into the 
 infinite. Through memory of sight the whole universe 
 enriches us. The eye is the ever-grasping sense. To 
 see, to remember, is to prepare as for prayer. To see, 
 to penetrate the yet unseen, the yet unborn, spiritually, 
 is to keep clear the vision. 
 
 [ 40
 
 The Urge in Art 
 
 [IIPE EXPRESSION is an answer 
 to a spiritual call. A voice, a power, a 
 god of art hidden somewhere in our 
 spirit-self, calls us, selects us, urges us 
 to tell, to give proof — plastic proof of 
 our consciousness. To one thus chosen, expression is 
 inevitable. It becomes a necessity, a hope. One must 
 express himself if he hears this inner call, or else his 
 spirit stifles and his hope smothers. Once one hears this 
 inner call, his sole purpose becomes expression. It is 
 through us that time passes, and it demands of us proof 
 of having been in us, and of our having been in it. 
 Without proof time fills whole ages with darkness. 
 Times asks for souvenirs from us to bring to the yet un- 
 born, whether it be a Totem Pole, a Hopi Katzina, a 
 Buddha, a Chichen-Itza, a Wingless Victory, or a Venus 
 de Milo; whether it be a crude drawing on the handle 
 of a tool; whether it be in tattooing, or in a Banipense 
 head of Kassai. Once we treasure time, the urge in us 
 to fill time with light is beyond earthly measure. As 
 creative beings we are like stars in time. 
 
 Physical well-being, or existence, requires food and 
 shelter, but life in its highest cannot live without art. 
 The soul craves for nourishment and if the spirit be 
 starved, animalism and materialism set open the doors 
 that lead to the dark chambers of horror and waste. 
 By spirit I mean the aroma, the significance, the 
 exaltation, the flower, the wonder of our several 
 active living senses. Physically, the senses are for use. 
 
 [ « .1
 
 Spiritually, the senses are for beauty, but in higher life 
 the physical is subservient to the spiritual, as use is to 
 beauty. It is this strife between the ideal and the ma- 
 terial that proves the spiritual worth of whole races 
 or nations as well as of individuals. This struggle in us 
 for a high human excellence gives birth to that inner 
 urge for creation. Art is the symbol of proof of the 
 better in us. Every art work signifies the victory 
 of the ideal over the material. And we have blackest 
 proof of the reverse in our day. War is waste and 
 destruction, while the function and mission of art is 
 creation and harmony. 
 
 Expression is born in stillness and in solitude. 
 It is as if one wei'e listening to time and telling what 
 he hears. That telling might be art, literature, science, 
 or philosophy. If it is plastic, it cannot be in words 
 or in theories. It is this pressure from within that 
 demands of us the firmest grip upon matter in order 
 to make it tangible. Hence the more real the means, 
 the more real is the ideal. As there are infinite numbers 
 of molcules and even atoms in the parts (however 
 infinitesimal) of various materials, so much are there 
 molecules, if I may term them so, or atoms of thought, 
 of phantasy, of emotion, that urge on their shape, their 
 character, as the inherent dynamic powers that shape 
 matter. It is this union or contact of thought and 
 matter, this psychic oscillation, that causes the inner 
 urge for expression. The intensity of the gifts 
 we cultivate, or possess by birth, determines the excel- 
 lence of our creation. Principles become only vague the- 
 ories and finally perish unless their cementing forms, 
 molecules or atoms, are organized into art forms 
 
 [ 42 ]
 
 which satisfy the spirit of man. Principles live only 
 in the works they govern. They must be embodied 
 in clay and sound, etc. Then a pause — and then on 
 rhythmically to more expression. Thus from person 
 to person, from age to age, from clime to clime, time 
 bejewels itself with the necklace of these jewels. 
 
 Art is the real history of nations. Their politics, 
 their wars, their commerce, are but records, as the calen- 
 dar or the clock is not time itself. They are the material 
 necessities and means of counting up time. The de- 
 struction of Gothic cathedrals and monuments is like 
 cutting an artery in the veins of time. For 
 art bleeds with even a thicker and hotter blood 
 than the blood of animal or human life. Nature takes 
 care of itself and easily duplicates or reproduces itself, 
 while art can not do this. Often it lets whole 
 ages go by without asking for a contribution. Nature 
 becomes art only through us. Indeed art is nature. 
 Life is precious, but the purpose of life, the urge, the 
 significance of life are the flowers: art, literature and 
 philosophy. It is this inner urge in us that cries 
 "Create, Create, Create." Creation is the highest form 
 of life. Destruction is the lowest form of death. Some- 
 times destruction may be necessary, but destroying 
 something before we have anything to replace it, is 
 sheer malice and vandalism. It is answer- 
 ing or satisfying the devil's urge — the material 
 urge. Some may even lose the distinctions between 
 evil and good, between beauty and mediocrity 
 and justify each without discrimination, but then, why 
 not call the sun the moon; and iron, water? Such 
 argument is futile and even blasphemous. Creation 
 
 [ 43 1
 
 makes for consistency, for truth and for belief and we 
 draw these quahties only from our spiritual gifts. 
 
 Those who create and feel the urge for creation 
 doubt not; and they seek not for excuses not to create. 
 They seek not satisfaction in corrupt argument or 
 in warped theory or logic, as are those who listen 
 not or are deaf to the inner call. Such poison 
 the flowers of life, the color and the aroma. Creation 
 is realization. Metaphysical argument is never more 
 than verbal supposition. Even physical science proves 
 the blasphemous folly of words without deeds. And even 
 words are nothing if their material equivalent is incon- 
 sistent with the idea intended to be conveyed. Quality 
 of plastic art or of music may be spoken of, and de- 
 scribed in words — the common medium — but the 
 quality and even the purpose of the music, of the poem, 
 of the sculpture, of the carving, of the picture, is regard- 
 less of the words or the terms that may be used in nam- 
 ing or describing them. 
 
 Participation that is personal experience, or creative 
 work, is the sole and most real conviction. Words are 
 nothing without the power of evoking ideas. Looking 
 into emptiness or space and calling: "Ship, lion, John 
 grass," does not mean that these things are there. And 
 I ask those who would say "I imagine them there," how 
 and where they got the first idea of such things as ship, 
 grass, John, if not from previous visible, touchable, 
 weighable, movable, existing, living things, like grass, 
 ship, lion, etc. Even a dream, however phantastic, is the 
 child of a real experience. Things wth their peculiarities 
 and attributes of character begin to impress themselves 
 upon our memory through experience — that is, through 
 
 [ 41 ]
 
 our senses, and if the ship had been called lion and 
 the grass John, it would make no difference. But 
 in reality the ship is not John, and though some in- 
 sist, for the sake of modern art or literature, that the 
 ship may be John, yet we can easily infer the signifi- 
 cance of this "modern" language, or of such creative lib- 
 erty. I should rather say destructive liberty. Such 
 "art" makes dark gaps in time. To urge on expression is 
 to reach out for matter in all of its phases. Thus only 
 is art born. 
 
 [ 45 ]
 
 Revelation 
 
 ATURE in all of its phases, moods and 
 seasons waits for man to speak for her. 
 For man to tell of his spiritual com- 
 munion with nature is art. Nature is 
 art through man. When art builds on 
 art, art dies. When, however minute, art comes 
 through nature, it plants its own seed for its blooming 
 in seasonable time and place. Man is born and finds 
 nature waiting for him. Nature waits for man and 
 his inspiration for hope of realization. In the womb 
 of nature there are as many art forms for the future 
 as there were for the past. It is only when one addresses 
 himself to nature in deep reverence, in silence and isola- 
 tion, that he hears response. In this absorption one 
 hears voices from the mother inherent. It is a gift 
 as well as a blessing to commune and to express 
 in the language of art this communion. Art then tells 
 not of the obvious. It is the essence of nature, its form 
 and mood being made concrete through man's phantasy, 
 to furnish the appropriate plastic means that make 
 for art. 
 
 Wlien nature is reborn in us, it calls itself art. 
 Creation, or revelation, is getting things out of the womb 
 of the inherent. It is an act of appearance, of illumina- 
 tion, and of growth as marvelous and as tragic as is birth. 
 It is like birth, with greatest joy in its greatest pain. 
 Creation makes more infinite the source of its origin, 
 as it makes more infinite the child of its inherence. 
 The inherent and the visible or audible become more 
 
 [ 47 ]
 
 resonant and vibrant through inspired creation. In- 
 finity expands, and revelation itself broadens its 
 bounds. Revelation marvels at itself and its own 
 wonder makes for more. It is good to imagine more 
 yet unrevealed, that we may in imagination live with 
 the creations of the future. To apprehend this is 
 to put time into time. Inherence is pregnant with the 
 future. Revelation lifts the pall that shrouds infinity 
 and in this is discovery or contribution. To reveal is to 
 focus the sun of our senses upon lifeless inherence and 
 to make it sprout into life and light. To reveal is to 
 plough and to plant. 
 
 Real poetry is not mere sing-song pleasantry or de- 
 scription. It is and should be prophecy. Art is not 
 mere representation, it is and should be interpretation 
 — revelation. One picture, one poem, one symphony, 
 should be so potential as to cause to vibrate and to urge 
 on out of inherence, still another symphony, poem or ex- 
 pression, and infinitely thus. What in nature is hidden, 
 art must reveal and make significant. Revelation is 
 art inducing other art again. Art must always surpass 
 itself, with promise of more than itself. 
 
 Nature's secret or prophecy is in stillness, in a wait- 
 ing to be heard by art. Its pulse is its mood, its music its 
 time, its essence the seed of fruitful ages not yet born. 
 I crave to know and I listen and I feel and I see. Na- 
 ture inspires me by its living rhythm. Its waves of 
 stillness that vibrate over its prairies, in its forests, over 
 its mountains and valleys, and its oceans, in the solidity 
 and strength of its mountain strata, in its minerals 
 and in its hidden rocks, stir in me the feeling of visible 
 cathedrals and towers, and of orchestras and poems. 
 
 [ '18 ]
 
 Nature impels me to personify the inanimate. Art is 
 its tongue. Poetry speaks the dialogue between the 
 seas and the continents, between the seasons, between the 
 sun and the moon, and between ebb and tide. Art like 
 an orchestra plays nature's winds and storms cyclonic, 
 and makes audible its breath, till we live its joy of crea- 
 tion and its tragedy of waste and long for still more crea- 
 tion and revelation. We are the poetry and music and 
 philosophy of nature. Our life is its flower. We, with 
 our human power to reveal, are nature's art, and our 
 revelation of nature's inherence is our art. The Par- / 
 thenon or the Rheims Cathedral or a Buddha Temple 
 or an electric dynamo once slept in the quarries and 
 dreamt in geometry. 
 
 Works of art are man's revelation of nature's con- 
 tents. He who reveals prophecies. We know nature 
 better through art. Science proves to the mind; art re- 
 veals the heart. To infer from the visible the invisible, to 
 penetrate the opaque, to soar high into space, and to dive 
 deep into the seas, to walk through fissures to the 
 centre of the earth, to imagine one's self being a fish 
 or a bird, is to penetrate more into the spheres of the un- 
 known. To imagine one's self discharging the functions 
 of inanimate bodies is to ally one's self to the inanimate 
 for the time and to penetrate the world of matter, that 
 asserts itself to us through the forms of art. To invest 
 all darknesses and emptinesses, and all inanimate objects 
 with human energy and feeling, is to reveal the mystery 
 which art alone can reveal. To transplant mentally whole 
 continents, whole cities; to shift the immovable, to bring 
 the past into the present, to bring the distant near, is 
 revelation. The psychic or spiritual energy made 
 
 [ 49 ]
 
 plastic is the purpose of a work of art. Its 
 process of formation lies in its spreading out 
 into infinity upon the waves of time and of light. For 
 the creator to cause this vibration, is one phase of rev- 
 elation, and for the spectator to receive these vibrations 
 is still another phase. Inlierence on its way to infinity 
 passes through the creator, doing this of its own accord, 
 in measure and in scale with the capacity of the creator, 
 becoming of form and color, and of dynamic force, 
 through the human sense. Inlierence is the all- 
 ness of all we can imagine. It ranges from a chaos of 
 matter and space, from nebulous light and gases and 
 hidden dynamics to the highest form of composition or 
 organization achieved by man in art and in science. To 
 become aware of this innerness is revelation; to bring 
 light into the outer worlds is revelation. And 
 the making more endless the endlessness of outer forms 
 by incessant endeavor to find new relationship and a new 
 interlacing, is still more revelation. Revelation is not 
 merely surprise. It is a spiritual awakening. It is 
 the blessing of life. Revelation makes for love of life. 
 It relieves one of doubt in his share of infinity. It 
 brings the breathlessness of joy. Our spirits clap their 
 hands and the sound is music to the soul. In the mo- 
 ment of revelation we live whole ages and we join the 
 generations on their way into timelessness. 
 
 [ 50
 
 ^ 
 
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 y 
 
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 1 
 
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 Am^-j^rS}^ 
 
 Art Consciousness 
 
 jARTHLY possession is material wealth. 
 The consciousness of art, or emotional 
 perception, is the great gift of life. 
 Creative power is rarest, and an art con- 
 sciousness or an art love is even more 
 rare than earthly possession. Believing or having 
 faith in a supreme love or power or virtue is 
 the life privilege of every human being. I often believe 
 religion to have been made too useful while art, seem- 
 ingly a luxury, is in reality most useful and practical. 
 Material wealth is satisfied to possess; art livingly en- 
 joys in being. 
 
 An art consciousness changes the significance of all 
 in time and space and matter. It modifies hope, it 
 changes proportion, it makes for new number. It flav- 
 ors the entire reason for being. The consciousness of 
 art, which ranges in intensity from creation to 
 appreciation, develops a richer and riper humanity. 
 This art consciousness is the possessing of the 
 spirit of things, rather than the matter of things. 
 The possession of things is one's legal right to things — 
 but an art consciousness means the possession of human 
 right — the spirit of things. Material possession is an 
 outsideness. Spiritual or art consciousness is an inside- 
 ness. Material possession is finite; spiritual con- 
 sciousness is infinite. Nor is there a monopoly of the 
 art spirit. There is no apothecary weight or avoirdu- 
 pois measure of art. There is no art text book, there is 
 no school of the science of art. Nor is there a lecture 
 
 [ 51 ]
 
 wherewith one can explain away this art consciousness. 
 To try it is to drain it of its spirit as the essence of a fruit 
 or of a flower is drained, while its form is destroyed. This 
 art consciousness is an individual possession of a univer- 
 sality — of a grandeur that is imbedded in the heart and 
 that hovers over all in light and dark and in space and in 
 matter, in all the elements. It is our soul-echo and 
 even a part of our soul that reigns in spheres 
 outside of us. An art consciousness thus awak- 
 ens us to more than ourselves. It helps us to grow from 
 within toward the outer and the more personal and inti- 
 mate. It finds for us parts of our self outside of our con- 
 scious body self here. It is our spirit self we recognize 
 in forms and colors and sounds and light and motion 
 in the wonderful being of the all. This art consciousness 
 is the earthly heaven that ties us, of this visible sphere, 
 to spheres never to be metaphysically accounted for, 
 but only spiritually felt. It binds us to Godliness 
 in the spheres most real. We are realizing more than 
 ever that art is created only through an art conscious 
 of the inherent pregnant with seed for the real. Con- 
 ception which art consciousness makes concrete out- 
 wardly, makes concrete also the inner hovering infinity of 
 the sjjiritual. Art awakens us to a farness, to a beyond- 
 ness. The materialist believes and accepts the obvious, 
 the immediate. He is satisfied with the immature, the 
 uncouth and the vulgar. That which is wi-apped in 
 layers of time and which ripens to tenderness, is out 
 of his reach. To live on without this spiritual conscious- 
 ness is to live in time without light — it is to 
 go about like the hands of the clock that know not 
 even the wonder that they count time away, that know 
 
 [ 52 ]
 
 not that they move from the sun to the moon. To be 
 without this spiritual consciousness is like living in a 
 house without light, and spiritual atmosphere. 
 
 In earthly loneliness many gods of joy may dance. 
 An art consciousness brings happiness such as love 
 brings, and faith brings. Art avoids the immediate and 
 will suffer itself through materialism on to the beyond. 
 Art consciousness is not like a religious fervor or fanati- 
 cism. It is a cool placid harmony with an understanding 
 of the spiritual significance of form, of the visible Godly 
 fabric. It is engendered of a great range of taste and of 
 emotion and is normal and healthy. It is not a sickly or 
 morbid aestheticism. Nor is it a science of art. It is, I 
 might say, a clear logical spirituality which weighs and 
 discerns; and engages us always in the most valid and 
 vital. It brings out the intrinsic values and establishes 
 relationship. It quickens the inanimate. It causes still- 
 ness into music, matter into form and makes darkness 
 light. It makes for a life spiritually intellectual. 
 
 It is not so much the lack of religion as the death 
 of art that has caused much of the present strife. The 
 spirit and glory, the colored atmosphere that lives when 
 art flourishes is gone. We must awaken it, arouse it, 
 coerce it, but we cannot hope to do this with distorted 
 values, with false motives and nem-otic aesthetics. We 
 must realize that we cannot urge on the spirit with scien- 
 tific speed or with dynamos. Creation is rare and always 
 will be, but art is nothing if it does not stir or kindle the 
 art consciousness in a people. 
 
 Art consciousness will come through a greater 
 art conscience in the creative artist or artisan. When one 
 listens to the rhythmic tapping of the rain, or the roar 
 
 [ 53 ]
 
 of the winds, the clash of thunder, or the sighs of the 
 ocean ; when one discerns the color differences, the form, 
 and song fugues in matter-form, and out of all this per- 
 ceives the voice and the touch of inherence in the several 
 kingdoms of natm-e; when one is susceptible to the si- 
 lences that speak, to emptinesses that are full, to 
 the seeming vague or vacuous that teem with life — that 
 is the art consciousness. In the creative spirit the emo- 
 tion is so intense that he frees himself only by giving 
 birth to his emotion through chosen art means, making 
 room thereby for intenser emotion — and this, the 
 aesthetic rhythm and the music of time, is the art con- 
 sciousness. 
 
 The art consciousness is the human conscious- 
 ness of the God in man. He becomes conscious 
 of art or inherent art whose senses become highly spirit- 
 ually susceptible. Through art consciousness a great 
 tenderness and subtlety is born. It takes enormously 
 but its recompense is heavenly. In involves a keen and 
 lively appreciation of principles. It goes further when 
 the person, alert to the innerness of art, of the unborn in 
 art, becomes either creator or appreciator. This needs no 
 metaphysical treatise. It is as clear as crystal. The big 
 thick books on aesthetics are merely books on aesthetics 
 — but not art, living art itself, nor art in the inner 
 vision, in the throbbing emotion. 
 
 The art consciousness is the great life consciousness. 
 Its product and the appreciation of its product are the 
 very flower of life. Its presence in man is Godliness 
 on earth. It humanizes mankind. Were it spread 
 broadcast it would do away with that dry, cold intel- 
 lectualism, which, dead and unfired, always seeks refuge 
 
 [ 54 ]
 
 in pretending to be more than it is. Art or art conscious- 
 ness is the real proof of intense genuine human sympa- 
 thy. It oozes spiritual expression. Were it fostered it 
 would sooner solve the great modern economic problem 
 than any labor propaganda. A lack of this art conscious- 
 ness, on the part of both capital and labor, is one 
 cause of this great modern struggle. Were this art 
 consciousness more general, material possession would 
 be less valued; the covetous spirit would soon die 
 out. Art socializes more than socialism with its 
 platform and its platitudes. Economists go not 
 deep enough into the modern monetary disease. They 
 deal only with materialism. They concentrate only 
 upon what is obvious, the physical starvation of the 
 toiling class, but never do they see or seem to realize the 
 spiritual starvation or the lack of an art consciousness in 
 both capital and labor. They would argue that the 
 material relief must come first. I reply, now as 
 always, we must begin with the spiritual. I do not 
 see, however, how the spiritual or aesthetic can 
 be separated from the material. The common solu- 
 tion of this great problem is too dry, too matter of fact, 
 too calculated, too technical, too scientifically intellectual 
 and not enough intellectually imaginative. Art con- 
 sciousness is not merely a form of etiquette, nor a phase 
 of culture — it is life — the quality of sensitive breath- 
 ing, seeing, hearing, developed to a high true normal 
 spirituality. Man would value man more. The wonder 
 of and the faith in other human beings would kindle a 
 new social and spiritual life. 
 
 To prove that there is anything new is very difficult. 
 It is rather a replacing of things and of epochs, and a 
 
 [ 55 ]
 
 new juxtaposition thereof that make for the newness of 
 the old. Inherence, the now beginning and now ending 
 of the allness of all, contains in its endlessness the new 
 of the old. Emotional truth or sjnritual logic is most 
 severe and stern, and infinitely more embracing, than 
 any intellection. That which has alwaj^s been quality 
 in art — the essence of the expression of emo- 
 tion, of spirituality brought to earth, brought to the 
 senses by means of art forms, that we and also genera- 
 tions after us, will find to nourish the spirit, and the emo- 
 tions and it will be as always the essence of emotion. The 
 soul will not be satisfied with substitutes for its own 
 godly nutrition ; it will demand the highest expression of 
 revelation. This cannot be calculated emotion, it cannot 
 be the means of conscious, frozen sophistication — or 
 metaphysics — however well meant. The plant will not 
 grow in showers of sand, when by nature it requires dew 
 and rain. It will not bloom or color or form in the light 
 of a lamp when it needs the sun. The sun com- 
 ing in contact with its flower part in the flower, will 
 make the flower that delights the human spirit with 
 its beauty and its aroma, until the flower is itself a 
 little sun to warm the soul. 
 
 To calculate is to bar out infinity. To intellectual- 
 ize is to smother the breath of fancy, yea, of hope. 
 The art consciousness in us is the mild whisper of 
 the Gods that awaken to voice in us. With such emotion 
 Giotto painted and built his tower; with such emotion, 
 Greco painted, Beethoven composed and Paganini 
 played. With such emotion the creative spirit builds 
 form out of chaos. 
 
 To intellectualize emotion, is like holding the mirror 
 
 [ 56 ]
 
 in front of itself. I walk on the lonely prairie, the 
 sun shines upon me and the earth. The winds blow 
 by me and about me, carrying to me the aroma 
 and the song of the prairie and of the trees; 
 and when the light is my guide, the color my joy, and 
 the wind my orchestra, and I am companioned by lone- 
 hness — I addressing, hoping, wanting, for the more 
 of mj'self — I have the art consciousness. Conception 
 feels entirety, it figures not mincingly. Forms in 
 inherence are felt out, not thought out. Feeling 
 mothers thought. Thinking makes definite — feeling 
 makes infinite. Intellection does to emotion what 
 water does to fire. Whatever its means for record 
 it is at best only a scientific process. Concep- 
 tion is the flame from infinite to infinite; calculation is 
 the brief measured space or pause in which the intensity 
 of conception cools. Conception is inexplicable won- 
 der — it is heavenly. Calculation is cold and material. 
 It frightens the spirit away. Conception sees the living 
 beyond; calculation only stares at the immediate and 
 blows out the flames of wonder. Calculation often 
 arrives at its own nothingness. It is no more than 
 mere mental wandering. But art consciousness binds 
 infinity afore to infinity after. It feeds the soul. It is 
 the life spell between breath and breath, between pulse 
 and pulse. 
 
 I would ask those who argue that modern art 
 can eliminate emotion to look straight at the modern 
 sun, and give a modern art account of what they see. 
 Or will they yet invent an "artiscope" to examine the 
 intellectual germs in one art germ, and record their 
 calculation in paint and canvas. Will they be able to 
 
 [ 57 ]
 
 register what color in moonlight an art germ has in 
 a flying machine, or in a submarine, or on the Brook- 
 lyn Bridge at twilight? Will they be able to record 
 its weight, its density, its temperature? All this in- 
 tellect may yet do for modern art. But what the spirit, 
 the art consciousness, did for art and for life, as we find 
 it in the great museums, in temples and churches, is a 
 blessing to know, a privilege to see. 
 
 I can imagine a cultured Greek of the time of 
 Pericles standing before a representative group 
 of the much discussed modern pictures and sculp- 
 tures. Also a cultured Chinaman of a great art 
 dynasty or an ancient Persian. And were they each to 
 tell us what they see and feel, what a revela- 
 tion it would be. And though this is impossible, it 
 would be far better to imagine what they would say 
 than to listen to modern art criticism. It would be 
 far better to see what these ancients did, and to 
 imagine what such people might say. But for us to 
 hear them speak is impossible. If so we must infer — 
 and in such inference we create each for ourselves our 
 own criticism, guided by our own instinctive tastes and 
 by the enduring qualities of the never dying past. 
 
 But we must study the antiques. And the more we 
 do so the better are we able to discern the new of to-day, 
 even if the intent differ greatly from the art of the past. 
 There are three great faults in the modern art move- 
 ments. They move too much and too fast. Too fast 
 in that they throw time off the track of infinity. Mod- 
 ern art is so modern that it runs away from art and leaves 
 art behind. Modernity is the art of the future of 
 yesterday. The old art is of the coming past. 
 
 [ 68 ]
 
 The other day I stood and looked at an Etruscan 
 statue. It smiled its good old peaceful smile, 
 and I asked it at what it smiles forever. And it whis- 
 pered gently: "At the speed and the noise of 
 modernity." 
 
 [ 59 ]
 
 Purity in Art 
 
 MOTION fails when out of something 
 done no spirit oozes. When the 
 maker of a thing invests not his work 
 with that which in master works 
 penetrates the heart and kindles the 
 soul ; when matter, plastically reformed, is void of spirit ; 
 when it carries no message from the visible imiversal 
 to the invisible personal, then the intellect calls science 
 and theory to its aid to help make up for the spiritual. 
 But spiritual poverty is even sadder than physical 
 weakness. 
 
 How grand and how all is the unknown! 
 The unknown of the unborn is I feel infinitely more 
 than the known of the born. In so imagining the seem- 
 ing-being, how much more real do we make what we 
 know. How much more significant becomes the finite 1 
 How much more intimate we become with the known 
 when we crave to know the unknown. How neigh- 
 borly are our senses to the potential forms and 
 their significance. I am rich, I am exuberant, I am 
 spirited when I infer the beyond, the inherent unlaiown 
 — infinite, spaceless, timeless, matterless. In such 
 overwhelming breathless moments, I embrace the 
 entirety of the unknown. I am then a self-more, more 
 with more of the measureless dimensions. I feel self 
 growing in self. Is this not life? To invest art, what- 
 ever be the means, with one's spirit self, though yet 
 unlived and unborn, tends to pure expression. This 
 purity is omnipotent, all inclusive. Every birth, every 
 
 [ 61 ]
 
 growth, comes to speak and to prove itself with its com- 
 ing an infinitesimal portion of the infinite. That which 
 we live and infer is its counterpart. Birth is the mark 
 between infinity afore and after. It is that mark or event 
 in time where and when infinity speaks. With birth 
 comes the finite. Through birth infinity emerges 
 into the visible finite. The finite, if perceived, 
 creates a new momentum towards a new entry 
 into the infinite. It inhales as it were of the 
 infinite and exhales its relief in sighs spiritual or ectasy 
 placid. It needs no proof, no science to come to its 
 aid. Science or theory but mars it. For it cuts its 
 identity, ruins its unity and mis-traces the intent of 
 its origin. 
 
 Ah, what color is there 
 
 And what light. 
 
 Wliat other space 
 
 And what other time 
 
 Or what other ALL is there? 
 
 This, to infer more and more, as we live, and this 
 to reveal, as we ripen, is expression pure. The pur- 
 pose of such expression fails not in creating the most 
 fitting means. Means that deaden not the sensibilities 
 and quench not the flame. Means that Iiinder not, 
 repress not the inner urge, the inner voice. Pure ex- 
 pression kneads its means; it caresses, it disseminates 
 matter. It humanizes the inanimate till the clay, or 
 the color, the wood or the fabric speak for us. Expres- 
 sion pure compels through intimate tactile power and 
 spiritual motion of time. Expression pure is prophecy, 
 is power and warmth that reaches out of a work of art 
 
 [ 62 1
 
 and needs no outside aid to call forth perceptive 
 participation. It conveys itself into the heart 
 of the spectator and stirs in him emotion, hoped 
 for and conceived by the creator. Expression 
 pure goes never amiss, even if its journey be ever so 
 long. Purity is a quality that on its way into infinity 
 will not mix and will repel forces unlike herself. Purity 
 loses not its identity. Purity is of a spiritual velocity 
 that makes even infinity expand. Purity is the heavenly 
 light that makes brighter the light of the earthly. It 
 lights the way toward perfection, and perfection is but 
 a pause in the infinite. This pause in realization, this 
 perfection, comes only of purity, which opens the 
 doors to the beyond. The time between a thing of 
 quality or of purity and the one that follows is this 
 pause — pure urges action pure and again a pause. 
 The ideal is the pause and the real is the child of the 
 ideal. If this be the relationship, the genealogy, the 
 birth, the expression is pure. Thus purity of expression 
 is like the longevity of races. Although time and clime 
 and the unexpected and unaccounted for modify 
 or evolve however much or little, the origin is the 
 same — the magnet of like to like keeps and binds 
 them together. The magnet between beginning and 
 ending, the spirit-magnet that draws the essence of 
 matter to spirit. 
 
 The moment purity begins to die or wane — purity 
 the call of perfection — perfection the call of the in- 
 finite, this call, or call and its echo, growing fainter — 
 then birth or expression dies and suffers the agony of 
 mediocrity, or of aboriginality, until intellectual de- 
 spondence and infamous impurities arise. 
 
 [ 63 ]
 
 Purity may be achieved out of a variety of same- 
 nesses or likenesses. To avoid monotony in this respect 
 is a work of rare power. For in ehmination one 
 knows the discarded as well as the chosen. Purity 
 makes its demand. Realization gives it over to 
 matter and time. To keep the one large out of the 
 many large, to keep the one small out of a million small, 
 the one blue out of the million blues; to put together 
 the like with the like and to obtain variety, is an 
 achievement toward simplicity and rarity, and therefore 
 of purity. The ancients prove this as also do the great 
 modern artists. The great strength underlying the 
 principles of art, call out of the infinite to be em- 
 bodied and demand realization. With simplest means 
 one is safe on the way to purity of expression. The 
 fundamental principles of art are the guide posts that 
 mark the way ; and not this alone — the very matter in 
 the means of expression seems to want in its inanimate 
 way to help make for this purity. Matter suffers when 
 treated uninspiringly. I feel that the violin enjoys being 
 in the hands of a master musician — she communes 
 with him; for tones love to be so disintegrated that 
 they speak or joy or weep for the inner, locked in the 
 heart, and they love to make figures of color-sound. 
 I feel that pigments love to be so juxtaposed by a gifted 
 colorist as to pour forth a veritable garden of aroma 
 to the eye; that forms or volumes love to be so con- 
 structed that they thunder with visual volumes of 
 silence in their own domains; that words are pleased 
 to come from the lips of wisdom and to clothe fittingly 
 inspired thought ; and that the wood or clay or iron knows 
 when it is being used or shaped by creative loving hands. 
 
 [ fi* ]
 
 When form and color speak their own language and 
 serve expression, instantly fired or spontaneously con- 
 ceived — then expression in its distinct abode is on 
 the way to purity, its means being the natural vehicle. 
 When with form and color, words or tone, the inner 
 dormant range of tints and of moods is expressed, 
 expression is on the way to purity. I say on the 
 way, for infinity is the road to Eternity, and to fill 
 eternity with the ripest and sanest expression of our 
 consciousness is the essence as well as the purpose of life. 
 
 Purity in art, like creative thought, opens infinity 
 with the key of pure living. It penetrates, it pierces 
 matter. 
 
 In expression pure, thought thinks ideas not words; 
 color thinks not chromatics or the science of pigments, 
 form thinks not geometry nor physics nor chem- 
 istry. Expression pure feels the physical laws govern- 
 ing matter. It never turns art into a science 
 or a process. When thought wanders, when ex- 
 pression is not pure or constructive, it searches for 
 means, but when thought or expression flows by pres- 
 sure of the inner urge or message, then means 
 happen and are secondary. "When art calculates, 
 it creates a chasm between expression and means, 
 and the more it calculates the more do the means 
 predominate, until the intent of expi'ession goes amiss. 
 The inner m*ge or expression pure cools through calcu- 
 lation, and science bars its birth — its emergence. 
 
 Expression pure flows like the mountain stream, 
 flowing from infinity into infinity, making its bed, 
 finding its way as it flows, flows, flows. And as the 
 stream fills the sea, so expression fills the soul. The 
 
 [ 65 ]
 
 flow of the stream dances and ripples in the dazzling 
 sun, bounds over rocks, over hills, and then joys 
 and rhymes its way into infinity. In calm and in pas- 
 sion, in the strife to reach, flows the stream, flows ex- 
 pression — from the soul again the soul to fill. 
 
 [ 66
 
 The Equilibrium of the Inanimate 
 
 O whatever extent form might be carried 
 in sculpture, architecture, or decoration, 
 the principles of organization — the 
 wonder and gratification of equilibrium, 
 of nature's infinite formations of its own 
 master creations form the basis of all art. Consistent- 
 ly directed energy, impulsed by emotion, derived and 
 conceived from contact, actual experience and intent 
 observation, as well as the urge of the spiritual, and 
 an inner individual correspondence of soul and mat- 
 ter, come of the breathlessness and poetry inspired 
 in man by the grandeur of the outer visible calling 
 forth the hidden invisible and so transplant nature 
 into art. Matter as dealt with in art expression 
 has its earthly physical properties, and also its spir- 
 itual destiny and significance. Matter lying still and 
 invisible in its waiting performs a function. Matter 
 always waits for spirit — spirit as guided by nature's 
 own laws jDoints out its way. 
 
 The artist soon recognizes that the laws of art are 
 like the physical properties of matter, which hold atoms 
 together. 
 
 The feeling of art-form in us should correspond 
 to the very laws of energy, of consistency, of equilib- 
 rium, of adhesion and cohesion, of gravity in nature. 
 Questful living constantly seeks for means of corre- 
 spondence with matter elements, seeks for means 
 peculiar to the instincts and gifts of the one in 
 quest for the ever more. The physical laws, being 
 
 [ 67 ]
 
 of matter, when spiritualized, are transformed to art 
 or poetry. The physical laws of matter must be felt 
 into becoming the spiritual laws of art. 
 
 One outer touch or stroke upon matter, if only em- 
 bodied with physical energy — and with high spiritual 
 desire or purpose, extracts outwardljs visibly, its inner 
 hidden essence. To impregnate emptiness with form, to 
 charge hovering spirit with visible sound and with the 
 acoustics of vision, yea, of optics, stirring light and dark 
 and color ; to fill waiting weighless space with weight of 
 shape — to fill space with form ; and to possess the 
 spirit breath of all this, in the flame of exaltation, is art. 
 The very fluid of energy — the flame made con- 
 crete, the emotion, the craving given birth to, breathed 
 as it were into matter, becomes art. Space thus en- 
 livened and matter form thus illumined by light, aug- 
 ment each other into still greater particular excellence. 
 
 The energy or inner life of matter, and its des- 
 tiny of equilibrium, compelled what is known as 
 geometry into existence. The sphere, the cube, the 
 cylinder and the various single and intersected solids are 
 forms that grew out of the necessity for form existence. 
 The difference of form in material objects is the 
 race difference of matter species. The intersection of 
 solids is like a marriage for a new form to come. Every 
 unconscious bit of matter is still conscious enough to 
 want to be the form of some geometric identity. Hence it 
 finds a place for itself in the abstract wandering on- 
 wardness of space and time. Matter remains 
 not dust-like or hovers not in chaotic atoms. 
 Magnetism, energj% cohesion make form. Such 
 forms destine matter and determine its plastic 
 
 [ 68 ]
 
 poetic character and its quality of duration in the 
 spiritual domain as perceived by the artist. The 
 correspondence of varied forms, simple or intricate, 
 minute or colossal, achieves the great universal unity, 
 rhythm or that greatest of energies — gravity in Being. 
 
 The inanimate has its own nature of resistance ; it has 
 consistency and a correspondence through an inner en- 
 ergy, as humans correspond through actions and words 
 expressive of thought. The artist must commune with 
 matter to caress it, to compel it into a desired re-organ- 
 ized form — or a unit of forms — the essence of his con- 
 tact with nature. Matter has its own particular form 
 of volition. It apprehends the relationships of weight, 
 measure, scale and direction and of the combination of 
 planes, or of resistance when colored and exposed to 
 light. As weight, dimension or energy or durability are 
 elements irrespective of their specific embodiment, place 
 or position, so ought these to be dealt with purely as only 
 abstract elements or potential qualities in matter-form. 
 This affords an opening into the very eternity of form. 
 These infinite variations offer the greatest possible 
 means for arriving at a realization of the infinity of form. 
 
 To express moods that stir the emotion from within 
 as does music, the plastic artist when he conceives of 
 energetic rhythmic interlaced forms or units should 
 be much more moved than even by music. It is 
 like cementing a thought, or arresting a perfect moment 
 of time, or like giving body to space, or solidity to air, 
 or colored light to darkness. An artist should hope 
 to evoke with grains of matter the very atoms of color 
 and time. He should feel as though he empowered the 
 silent with speech and the static with motion ; and should 
 
 [ 69 ]
 
 seem to angle the light and to impregnate the three 
 dimensions with a spiritual fourth dimension. If not 
 spiritually conceived or transfigured by great inspiration, 
 matter is dead. This is proved by many monuments 
 and buildings, ancient and modern, wliich are only so 
 many lifeless lumps. 
 
 Ai'chitecture, while abstract, is less abstract or 
 subjective than the form the subjective sculptor de- 
 sires. Architecture is one of the great applied arts. 
 Utility, even in its grandest efforts or achieve- 
 ments, subjects the subjective to the concrete objective. 
 Utility or application often introduces that dangerous 
 difference between worth and value, between the spir- 
 itual and the material, or between poetry and fact. 
 Utility makes spirit subservient to matter, while art 
 makes matter yield to its own use. 
 
 Each abstract form is at once in itself an expression 
 of a living idea, the spirit rhytlim and unity of form. 
 
 Objects in vertical, horizontal or oblique, or of 
 whatever form or quantity evoking our senses of per- 
 ception, are proof of a living force even in the inanimate. 
 It is this very energy of matter that one should hope to 
 make spiritually dynamic. The fact that even the most in- 
 significant objects attract our attention is proof of a form 
 of life in the inanimate. The oblique has for me a won- 
 derful fascination. In it one finds action of infinite sur- 
 prise, wonder and expectanc}^ It is the more stirring, the 
 most significant action of the several directions including 
 the curve. It is the physical or material so charged with 
 the poetry of form that it awaken the spiritual senses. 
 It is this state or position or volume of the objects of 
 the three dimensions whether static or in motion, that 
 
 [ 70 ]
 
 gives nucleus to scale, to weight and to other properties. 
 
 It is through an intermarriage of forms, enlivened 
 each with its own destiny of position — horizontal, ver- 
 tical or oblique — that one is to awaken emotions of awe, 
 grandeur and wonder, even to exaltation. And 
 thus I am brought nearer to the realization of a 
 spiritual rhythm, an inner energy, urging the unknown 
 to become known; manifesting itself at its best, at its 
 highest, when fired with human life. 
 
 Art is the very fluid of energy made concrete — 
 the rhytlunic spiritual energy revealing more and 
 more, opening infinity. Or it is like the ripples on 
 the surface of water caused by the touch of the fingers, 
 or like the vibrations of sound, never, never to end, 
 only to blend with other vibrations, pulsing onward, 
 charging as it were infinity with infinity, echo waking 
 echo, and so on, forever on. 
 
 It should be the aim to charge matter, to invest it 
 with emotion, with spirit, with mood, with reflection, 
 even with a hope of the beyond gained from experi- 
 ence through perception of the worlds of form without. 
 In these abstract forms of the purely plastic domain, 
 the mental and spiritual embodiment are constantly 
 one. The sculpturesque means must yield to the poetic 
 desire to reveal. It should not be the purpose to dupli- 
 cate nature or to represent it. Art dies when the nat- 
 ural dominates. I believe that the expression of an 
 experience must go further than the experience that 
 gave rise to the expression thereof. The expression 
 of an experience whatever the art or the means should 
 give rise to still another, a newer and a still more in- 
 spiring experience. 
 
 [ 71 ]
 
 Art Purpose 
 
 N conscious being there is purpose. Pur- 
 pose is a state of motion, of motion col- 
 ored by hope, the hope of quality, such 
 as makes for infinity. Purpose is an 
 inner urge to know one's self in living 
 activity. Living-being is an ambitious spiritual pur- 
 pose to transcend, to rise, to mount, not merely to shift 
 position or to change view. Living-being has a deep 
 docile intensity that puts us on the journey toward 
 perfection — a state of quality that waits in the onward- 
 ness of time. It ennobles or ripens character and comes 
 through rare and high personal achievement only. 
 Of the cloth achievement, the threads are drawn 
 from time. For there is no perfection — no end to 
 time, no end to achievement. Perfection or achieve- 
 ment moves with time which never ends. The striving 
 after perfection, the very journey, is the reward of per- 
 fection in the beyond. Perfection is richer that cannot 
 be possessed. The desire is its reward. Perfection will 
 not allow itself to be possessed. And like time — the 
 end is the beginning. Perfection from a spiritual point 
 of view is the magnet of time. 
 
 As living-being only marks time, creative living- 
 being colors time. Achievements of spiritual worth 
 mark the way into infinity. Amassing material wealth 
 or power is merely a state of being in busyness. It is 
 even a state of stand-stillness. It may shift matter 
 or property from point to point in a chaotic direction- 
 less, purposeless way. It is merely a personal definitely 
 
 [ '3 ]
 
 limited time-having of things. Possession or covet- 
 ousness keeps things from the way to infinity. 
 It retards motion of time. There is no such thing as 
 personal material possession. If so, it is against the 
 law of spiritual harmony, for it causes strife. Spirit is 
 that personal possession, having in its nature that which 
 gives to all and which being in time on the way to infin- 
 ity, moves to intellectual peace, or adjustment. It binds 
 the scattered into one and so ever intensifies unity. 
 Wisdom is the right of everybody in whatever state of 
 material plane. Having-being finites matter, stops 
 time, loses direction and proportion, shuts out light; 
 but living-being infinites matter. Having-being 
 starves and shrinks; living-being flourishes and en- 
 riches time with hope of the infinite. 
 
 True liberation and the democratization of the races 
 will come only when mankind will realize that sheer 
 "possessing" arrests himian radiation and causes 
 animal selfishness and fear, while art ferments human 
 radiation and results in spiritual universality and 
 brotherhood. Matter is merely matter; it lies and knows 
 not. Matter inbreathed with spirit, moves and tran- 
 scends ; it illumines darkness, and fills emptiness, and en- 
 livens even the vacuous. Only through art do we appre- 
 hend what would otherwise be arid and spiritless, 
 invisible and unheard. By taking cognizance of matter 
 through art principles — we learn to know life better. 
 The best of life goes into art. Through form we learn 
 what is formless and colorless. Through art we learn 
 grace and grandeur. It urges us therefore to create and 
 to invest the inanimate with the life of our life, with our 
 own energy. Art forms carry us from sphere to sphere. 
 
 [ 74 ]
 
 A vase is that embodiment of hmnan emotional energy 
 and spirit in matter, which would otherwise wander in 
 chaotic atoms in the lostness and the unknownness of 
 space and time. So are other forms of expression. 
 Great shafts like those of the historic Karnak are eternal 
 living plants through which flow heavenward the very 
 juices of earth and the spiritual essences of man. The 
 great temples are like gardens and vineyards ; the great 
 mosaics and tapestries are veritable flower-beds with 
 lasting aroma and color. The great symphonies are the 
 voices of invisible and angelic spheres. 
 
 Art cannot be, will not be possessed or monopolized. 
 Art is the one great universal possession and gift. Art 
 will give herself to him who wants her and needs her. 
 It is the great democratizing force. It is peace giving. 
 It is made of worth only, and recognizes worth from 
 whatever sources it comes. Art is transitional — it adds 
 worth to worthiness and is ever onward. Ownership 
 — material possession, is fixed and if it turns not into 
 a spiritual having-being and giving, it stifles and decays. 
 
 I pass the flower bed. I live the flowers, their 
 colors and fragrance. This is pure individual having- 
 being. Leaving the flowers for others to live them in 
 the sense that I did, is the truest kind of democracy. 
 Things of beauty, things of love, things of worth, and 
 the emotions they evoke, are universal-belonging, and 
 therefore the greatest means for democracy. Humanity 
 has yet fully to learn how to be conscious of the living 
 spirit in the inanimate worlds. This they will learn 
 through an appreciation and an awareness of the funda- 
 mental art forms. This they will learn when they 
 know how to discriminate between matter value and 
 
 L 75 ]
 
 spiritual worth. Once aware of this, the individual 
 is possessor of the spirit of the inanimate and the 
 animated and this is the living-possessing and the univer- 
 sal sharing. Art forms make the spirit bridge between 
 matter and soul. This is the gift of living — the right 
 of every human being. This possessing is the very life 
 process. Robbing humans of this life-right is crim- 
 inal for it foreruns tyranny and slavery. But 
 the human spirit, whether imprisoned or denied, in the 
 course of time, bursts the imposed matter-bounds and 
 the soul flames into art, and liberates and endows all. 
 It is a proof of the invincible power of spirit- 
 uality, of expression, of living-possession, when art 
 survives and re-appears after tyranny. And from this 
 we can infer how much more pure humanity might 
 have been, had matter been more embodied with 
 spirit. Has not the best of human energy and of 
 life been wasted on war, and on theft? Art affords us 
 this contrast. Only after a terrible calamity and a reali- 
 zation of the futility of possession do we know this 
 better. Greed and war change the geographical boun- 
 daries of countries, but spirit is measureless, boundless, 
 universal. Spirit or art form induce quality, but war 
 or greed results in a materialism that retards the onward- 
 ness and ripeness of time, and wounds and destroys the 
 fruit of the soul. Greed and possession are the enemies of 
 art. War is the symbol of the materially weak; art is 
 the symbol of the spiritually strong. Art removes 
 boundaries; for it is universal. War or materialism 
 narrows and works in secrecy; art opens and universal- 
 izes. Materialism and greed poison and destroy all 
 human tenderness. Art comes from the very heavens, 
 
 [ 76 ]
 
 soothes the heart, clears and elevates the mind and 
 purifies. Art grooves hard into materialism and makes 
 a path for the soul. It neutralizes and personifies. It 
 is the very antithesis of greed. 
 
 The materialist asks of what use are art forms, and 
 the infidel asks of what use is prayer. Both ask the 
 question to which the dumb beasts find answer in the 
 satisfaction of their hunger. Art like faith cannot be 
 explained away. It is the faith found in feeling, the feel- 
 ing that comes of an art consciousness, the consciousness 
 of spirit inherent in matter. 
 
 Again, the art purpose is the great human purpose, 
 the great spiritual agency. The fundamental principles 
 of art are the very beams of life. Art is spirit person- 
 ified — the crystallization of universality. See how in 
 the history of civilization it crowned great religious 
 fervor, how it embodied deep human emotion in death- 
 less forms. Through art, time filters, as it were. 
 
 f 77 ]
 
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