. Art and criticism : monographs and studies. aneous prod-uct will be always springing up to confound our paltry vain we shall alter or extend our criterion; the manifesta-tions of beauty will ever be too varied and too numerous to beforced into the narrow pigeon-holes of our presumptuous clas-sification. Rather than submit to the humiliation of incessantapostasy, let us be modest; let us be satisfied to feel; let usseek an asylum in the impeccable naivete of instinct. The joyof art and the activity of the artist are phenomena belongingstill in a large degree to the domain of instin
. Art and criticism : monographs and studies. aneous prod-uct will be always springing up to confound our paltry vain we shall alter or extend our criterion; the manifesta-tions of beauty will ever be too varied and too numerous to beforced into the narrow pigeon-holes of our presumptuous clas-sification. Rather than submit to the humiliation of incessantapostasy, let us be modest; let us be satisfied to feel; let usseek an asylum in the impeccable naivete of instinct. The joyof art and the activity of the artist are phenomena belongingstill in a large degree to the domain of instinct; we cannotultimately explain them; and the moment we quit the histor-ical and archaeological stand-point we can only speak in vaguegeneralities either about the artist or his work. Science hasyet to explain physiologically and psychically the action of formand color on the human organism. Meanwhile perhaps all thatwe can say is that art is nature seen through the temperamentof the artist, and the artist is a man naturally gifted with some. CHARITY.—By M. Paul Dubois. MODERN FRENCH SCULPTURE. 227 special aptitude of eye or of ear, a native capacity to perceivethe germs of beauty that exist in the external world, and then,under the influence of obscure creative faculties, to give a newlife to the materials he sees—the life of thought—ideal by the ideal we mean something ulterior to nature, some-thing less real and yet more true, something more complete inits kind, and more strongly characterized. As Lowell finelysays: The true ideal is not opposed to the real, nor is it anyartificial heightening thereof, but lies in it, and blessed are theeyes that find it. It is the mens divinior which hides withinthe actual, transfiguring matter of fact into matter of meaningfor him who has the gift of second-sight. And this is whythe first quality of the artist is intelligence, and the second issympathy. The most complete knowledge of the technique ofart will not replace the
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