a beautiful sunrise or the blush of an unfolding 

 flower be revealed by paint or stone with more 

 fidelity than is found first-hand in the original? 

 I deny, too, that the artist is a creator; and on the 

 same grounds. Nature alone can be said truly to 

 create. Indeed, if creative ability in its absolute 

 sense may be taken as the test of an artist, such a 

 one is non-existent. Even the scientist, the synthe- 

 sizing chemist, the inventor, persons ordinarily 

 considered as coming close under this definition, 

 are not creators; they are, in the last analysis, dis- 

 coverers. My confession of commonness may no 

 doubt pain the sensibilities of the aesthete, who has 

 appropriated appreciation and enjoyment of the 

 beautiful as properties peculiarly his own. Here, he 

 will hold, is a coarse fellow with a certain flair 

 for beauty but who is incapable of understanding 

 the inner meaning of art; bereft of that tempera- 

 ment, possessed by the true disciple of beauty, and 

 which is essential to attain to the higher knowl- 

 edge, he betrays by these blasphemies a hopelessly 

 proletariate mind. 



Be it so. But it is my belief that no affectation 

 of cultured foibles can give to one more exquisite 

 pleasure in the contemplation of a lily than will 



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