VII

ART





I often wish that we had a more beautiful word than "art" for so
beautiful a thing; it is in itself a snappish explosive word, like
the cry of an angry animal; and it has, too, to bear the sad burden
of its own misuse by affected people. Moreover, it stands for so
many things, that one is never quite sure what the people who use
it intend it to mean; some people use it in an abstract, some in a
concrete sense; and it is unfortunate, too, in bearing, in certain
usages, a nuance of unreality and scheming.

What I mean by art, in its deepest and truest sense, is a certain
perceptiveness, a power of seeing what is characteristic, coupled
as a rule, in the artistic temperament, with a certain power of
expression, an imaginative gift which can raise a large fabric out
of slender resources, building a palace, like the Genie in the
story of Aladdin, in a single night.

The artistic temperament is commoner, I think, than is supposed.
Most people find it difficult to believe in the existence of it,