BEAUTY, COMPOSITION, EXPRESSION, 

 CHARACTERISATION 



IN the two previous essays I drew attention to what may be 

 called the spontaneous or involuntary elements of ideality 

 existing in all products of the figurative arts. These 

 elements, culminating in style, denote the necessary interven- 

 tion of human intelligence and feeling in every imitative 

 effort. It is due to them that imitations made by the artist's 

 brain and hand differ in essential respects from imitations 

 made by a machine, and also that no two persons can produce 

 exactly similar transcripts from the same object. 



The question, however, may be asked whether imitation 

 is the real aim pursued by art. It obviously constitutes the 

 most prominent condition under which the plastic arts fulfil 

 their function. To imitate something can be termed the 

 radical, initial impulse which leads in course of time to 

 independent artistic activity. Figures of men and reindeer 

 scratched on bone implements of the Stone epoch indicate 

 this primal impulse in its earliest stage. Yet even here we 

 may doubt whether the mimetic effort was not subordinate 

 to some free imaginative exercise of mind. Children teach 

 us on this point. It is clear that when they rudely sketch 

 a man or dog, they are thinking of something of which the 

 scrawled man or dog is but a symbol. Their delight in the 

 symbol is quite out of proportion to its value as a representa- 

 tion of the object. The imitative act and the symbolic shape 

 which results therefrom, are therefore the index of another 

 and ulterior working of their mind. 



