330 THE AUTHOR'S CREDENTIALS 



interest is in the whole of life, and who have succeeded 

 in preserving perfect independence of mind in a herd 

 where those who have captured the first places 

 dominate the others, and impose their perverted 

 judgments on them. 1 



And now I cannot go back to the hind and 

 its senses: I must therefore continue with music 

 and subjects which rise by the suggestion of con- 

 tiguity, such as what art is, what it means to us, 

 what it does for us, what place it occupies in life. 

 But what are my credentials ? What can I say in 

 justification of what I write ? I confess, at starting, 

 that I am as ignorant of art in general as I have con- 

 fessed to be of music; nevertheless I am not just an 

 unqualified critic. My credentials are those of a field 

 naturalist who has observed men: all their actions 

 and their mentality. But chiefly himself, for to know 

 others a man must first know himself. The psycho- 

 logist has nothing but his own mental powers to build 

 on. He is not a field naturalist; his field is not in 

 the whole wide world, but in his brain and all that 

 goes on in it ; his wishes, instincts, emotions, thoughts. 



I take it that the only persons capable of seeing 

 things as they are in their right relations and pro- 

 portions are those who have no profession and no 

 vocation or calling, which, when followed with 

 enthusiasm, absorbs their attention. One, let us say, 



1 What follows was left unarranged by the author. (See Prefatory 

 Note, p. vii.) 



