326 A COMMON EXPERIENCE 



the statue and picture and all other great works of 

 art would I have (and have all men to have) a simpler, 

 more natural, more spontaneous means of conveying 

 to others that which is in me." 



It is not merely by thinking, or speculating, that 

 I myself have come to this conclusion, which my 

 artistic readers will laugh at. It is purely a result of 

 experience, of my private personal feelings about 

 art and the changes which time has brought about 

 in the feeling. 



The artist, after having had his laugh, will explain 

 to me that my case is not singular. " You are not an 

 artist," he will say; " your interests, your activities, 

 your pleasures, are in other things — material and 

 mental; the artistic side of your mind has been too 

 long neglected, with the inevitable result that you 

 no longer see or desire to see or even believe in the 

 existence of all that once attracted and charmed you." 



This undoubtedly describes a quite common experi- 

 ence — the stockbroker, the racing man and the 

 physiologist afford us three awful examples — only 

 it does not happen to be mine, as I shall endeavour 

 to show presently. 



Art, as I regard it (to repeat again what has already 

 been said), is an outcome of that universal sense of 

 beauty — to put it in one word — and the accompany- 

 ing impulse to impart the emotion experienced to 

 others. This impulse itself, it may be said in passing, 

 has an old history, and begins in animals and man 

 in a cry that calls attention to something seen, which 

 eventually, when the human animal becomes arti- 



