THE MIND OF WOMAN 289 



the present is tending more and more to find its 

 expression in literature and similar mediums through 

 which the world is being powerfully moved by the 

 creation of opinion. 



Now the clue to development in art, as in ail 

 other forms of human activity, is the underlying 

 relationship to Power. The beginning and end of 

 the meaning inherent in art is capable of being 

 expressed in a single word Emotion. All art is 

 nothing else than the capacity of rendering emotion 

 contagious and so of becoming an instrument of 

 Power by influencing human action. The history 

 of development in art is, therefore, the history of 

 the development in the artist of the power of render- 

 ing emotion contagious at various levels, as mind 

 in evolution gradually rises from the standpoint 

 of the individual in the self-regarding emotions to 

 the standpoint of the universal in the other-regarding 

 emotions. This is the fundamental law of progress 

 in art and it is identical in meaning with the 

 fundamental law of progress in ethics. 



What, then, is the significance of the transition 

 in current Western art described by Sir Martin 

 Conway, for in it we are called to witness the 

 products of the formative arts like sculpture and 

 painting declining from the function of living art 

 and coming to be regarded merely as decorative 



