[Sidenote] _Unity and indivisibility of the work of art._

Another corollary of the conception of expression as activity is the
_indivisibility_ of the work of art. Every expression is a unique
expression. Activity is a fusion of the impressions in an organic whole.
A desire to express this has always prompted the affirmation that the
world of art should have _unity_, or, what amounts to the same thing,
_unity in variety_. Expression is a synthesis of the various, the
multiple, in the one.

The fact that we divide a work of art into parts, as a poem into scenes,
episodes, similes, sentences, or a picture into single figures and
objects, background, foreground, etc., may seem to be an objection to
this affirmation. But such division annihilates the work, as dividing
the organism into heart, brain, nerves, muscles and so on, turns the
living being into a corpse. It is true that there exist organisms in
which the division gives place to more living things, but in such a
case, and if we transfer the analogy to the aesthetic fact, we must
conclude for a multiplicity of germs of life, that is to say, for a
speedy re-elaboration of the single parts into new single expressions.

It will be observed that expression is sometimes based on other
expressions. There are simple and there are _compound_ expressions. One
must admit some difference between the _eureka_, with which Archimedes
expressed all his joy after his discovery, and the expressive act
(indeed all the five acts) of a regular tragedy. Not in the least:
expression is always directly based on impressions. He who conceives a
tragedy puts into a crucible a great quantity, so to say, of
impressions: the expressions themselves, conceived on other occasions,