man's mental attitude, as it appeals to his own mind or is expressed to others, is characterised by faith; and it often, by way of contrast, appears to be characterised by this the more, in the degree in which his methods of speech or of action are not subordinate but, on the contrary, antagonistic to outward, or to what we ordinarily term practical, requirements, -in the degree in which, for all that he can see or hear in the world about him, his course may lead to disparagement, persecution, and, in ages of martyrdom, to death. In art the conditions are different. It involves no necessary subordination of the conscious to the subconscious. There is always a co-operation between the two, in which sometimes the one seems the more prominent and sometimes the other, but in no case does the mind fail to be conscious of external and material surroundings, or to aim at conformity to these. It is the essential condition of art that it should manifest this conformity; that it should produce a dramatic imitation, a melody, a metaphor, a picture, a statue, a building, whatever it may be, which in some way emphasises the influence of these surroundings. To religion, emphasis placed on these would often prove fatal. Religious effects are seldom produced by what are recognised clearly to be copies of mere forms. A Christian man through his conduct, and a church through its services, may represent the Christian life, but the moment that the representative element in either is emphasised, the moment that it is brought to our attention that the man's actions, attitudes, or facial and vocal expressions are assumed for the purpose of representing, he suggests to us a Pharisee, if not a hypocrite. With art it is the opposite. Its object is to represent; and the actor upon the stage, or any imitator of real life as

delineated in the drama or the novel, or depicted in the picture or the statue, awakens our approval in the exact degree of the unmistakably representative character of his performance.

It would be a mistake to suppose, however, that art, because different from religion, is antagonistic to it. The truth is just the contrary. It can be said, almost without qualification, that in all times of extreme traditionalism and unenlightenment art has proved the only agency that, without offending ignorance and superstition, has been able to counterbalance their influence. It has done this by using the forms of nature, and contenting itself with the truth as represented in them. Guised in familiar aspects, appealing to the mind by way of sug. gestion which leaves the imagination free to surmise or to deduce whatever inference may appeal to it, the thoughts expressed in art do not, as a rule, repel even the most prejudiced, or excite their opposition. A man in Italy, in the thirteenth century, would have been sent to the stake if he had made a plain statement to the effect that a pope could be kept in hell, or a pagan admitted to paradise. Yet when Dante pictured both conditions in his great poem, how few questioned his orthodoxy! So with the themes of painting and of sculpture. What a rebuke to the bigotry and the cruelty of the Middle Ages were the countless products of the arts of those periods, pleading constantly to the eye against the savage customs of the times for the sweet but little-practised virtues of justice and charity! Within our own century, too, notwithstanding the traditions of society, the State and the Church, which have often exerted all their powers to uphold and perpetuate slavery, aristocracy, and sectarianism, recall how the modern novel chiefly, but assisted largely

by the modern picture, has not only changed the whole trend of the world's thought with reference to these systems, but has contributed, more, perhaps, than any other single cause, to the practical reorganization of them, in accordance with the dictates of enlightened intelligence. Notice, too, that this influence of art extends to the whole region covered by religion, whether pertaining to this world or to the next. In ages like our own, when men rely chiefly upon the guidance of the conscious mind, it is extremely difficult for them to be brought to realise that there is any trustworthy guidance attributable to the action of the subconscious mind. Art does not discuss

Through the results

this guidance, but presupposes it. of the subconscious mind coalescing with those of the conscious mind it everywhere surrounds the material with the halo of the spiritual, causing those who will not even acknowledge the existence of the latter, to enter upon a practical experience of it in ideas, and to accept, when appearing in the guise of imagination, what they would reject if presented in its own lineaments. So the artist, though not a seer, always has within him the possibility of being the seer's assistant.

Now let us notice the difference between science and art. Science has to do with investigation tending to knowledge, both which we associate almost entirely with the action of the conscious mind. Art has to do with imagination tending to ideality, both which necessitate more or less action of the subconscious mind. It must not be supposed, however, that science has absolutely no connection with these latter. "Students of science," says Herbert Spencer, "are liable to forget that information, however extensive it may become, can never satisfy inquiry. Positive knowledge does not and never can fill

the whole region of possible thought. At the uttermost limit of discovery, there arises, and must ever arise, the question: What lies beyond?" When this question is asked, no mind can even begin to answer it, save one that is able to carry forward subconsciously the same mental process which, up to this time, it has carried on consciously. How do we know this fact? From the results. According to an old story, which may or may not be true, a Newton sees an apple fall to the ground, and, by a subconscious, but, as indicated on page 47, a strictly logical process, a conception with reference to the law of gravitation emerges, which conception we refer to imagination or inspiration.

At the same time the most important part of the work of science must be done in the conscious region, otherwise the subconscious mind will not argue from correct premises nor reach correct results. Before exercising imagination, science must analyse, if possible, every part of every effect that it observes, and every condition in time or space that has preceded it. In art these processes are not necessary. The effect can be accepted as a whole, and just as it appears at the time of observation. "There are in all considerable objects," says Sir Joshua Reynolds, when discussing this subject in the eleventh of his "Discourses on the Art of Painting," "great characteristic distinctions which press strongly on the senses and therefore fix the imagination. These are by no means, as some persons think, an aggregate of all the small discriminating particulars; nor will such an accumulation of particulars ever express them." The reason why art makes and uses what might be termed these "snap judgments" is obvious. It is a development of the earliest effects of nature upon the mind, especially

upon the mind's methods of expression. In other words, art is a development of the earliest endeavour of men to give form to thought for which they have no form at their command. It is not at the command of the savage or of the child, simply because no form appropriate has come, as yet, within the very limited range of his experience or information. It is not always at the command of the cultivated man, because, often, all forms with which he is acquainted seem to be inadequate. Accordingly the uncultivated and the cultivated alike are impelled to originate expressions for themselves. In doing this, they are obliged to interpret nature in a certain way. They must think about that which they have observed, and before they have had time to examine it critically, through the exercise of their conscious powers, they must judge of it instinctively through the exercise of their unconscious promptings. This principle applies, not only to their use, for purposes of expression, of imaginative words and imitative drawings, but to their whole methods of conceiving of the material world. boy hears of a sailor or of a general, and for the very reason that he has had no experience of the life led by either, he imagines it, and the man in the same condition. surmises what might be the experience of a fairy or of a saint. As Shakespeare says:

The poet's eye in a fine frenzy rolling

Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven,

And, as imagination bodies forth

The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen

Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing

A local habitation and a name.

The

A Midsummer Night's Dream, v., I.

Or, if Shakespeare belonged to an unscientific age, let