JUDGMENT AND PREJUDICE 69 



iightning-like judgments by the use of our eyes, rejecting 

 the improbable, and (as we consider) preposterous, and 

 accepting and therefore " seeing " what our judgment 

 approves even when it is not there ! We accept as " a 

 thing seen " a wheel buzzing round with something like 

 fifty spokes — but we cannot accept a horse with eight or 

 sixteen legs 1 The four-leggedness of a horse is too 

 dominant a prejudice for us to accept a horse with several 

 indistinct blurred legs as representing what we see when 

 the horse gallops. The mind revolts at such a presenta- 

 tion, though it is true, and the whole scheme and composi- 

 tion of the artist is perverted or fails to gain attention and 

 to exercise its charm — by the unwelcome presence in his 

 picture of the revolting truth. It is the consideration of 

 facts of this kind which enables us to understand the origin 

 and importance of what are called " conventions " in 

 pictorial or glyptic art. The artist is, in fact, operating 

 by means of his painted canvas or moulded clay upon a 

 queer, prejudiced, ill-seeing, dull, living creature — his 

 brother-man. In order to give if possible to that brother, 

 by means of a painted sheet, some or all of the delights, 

 emotions, suggestions, perceptions of beauty, and so on, 

 which he himself has experienced in contemplating a real 

 scene, the artist has to present that scene, not as it really 

 is, nor even as he thinks it really is, but in such a way 

 that his canvas shall appeal to his brother's attention and 

 judgment with the same emotional and intellectual result 

 as the scene itself produced in him. Therefore he must 

 not aim at accuracy of reproduction of natural fact nor 

 even of visual fact, but at the transference to another mind 

 of his own mental condition — his inner judgment as to 

 " things seen " — by means of necessarily imperfect pictorial 

 mimicry. He must therefore avoid startling or abnormal 

 truthfulness of observation of the unessential, and even 

 more strictly must he refuse to make his picture a scientific 



