To The Modern Spirit Nothing Is, Or

One Of The Most Beautiful Passages Of Rousseau Is That In The Sixth Book Of Confessions, Where He Describes The Awakening In Him Of The Literary Sense. Of Such Wisdom, The Poetic Passion, The Desire Of Beauty, The Love Of Art For Its Own Sake, Has Most.

A Counted Number Of Pulses Only Is Given To Us Of A Variegated, Dramatic Life. How May We See In Them All That Is To To Be Seen In Them By The Finest Senses?

It Is Always Hazardous To Express What One Has To Say Indirectly And Allusively.

The Base Of All Artistic Genius Is The Power Of Conceiving Humanity In A New, Striking, Rejoicing Way, Of Putting A Happy World Ofits Own Creation In Place Of The Meaner World Of Common Days, Of Generating Around Itself An Atmosphere With A Novel Power Of Refraction, Selecting, Transforming, Recombining The Images It Transmits, According To The Choice Of The Imaginative Intellect. In Exercising This Power, Painting And Poetry Have A Choice Of Subject Almost Unlimited.

Many Attempts Have Been Made By Writers On Art And Poetry To Define Beauty In The Abstract, To Express It In The Most General Terms, To Find Some Universal Formula For It.