Turning from the consideration of idealism in its general effect on modern life to examine its more special effect upon art, we recognize at once its importance as an æsthetic force. Art is the expression of man’s physical, emotional, and spiritual life, in organized fullness. Wherever there is direct, complete, and beautiful expression of what seems to man precious, there is art. Wherever, on the contrary, there is suppression of any genuine human impulse, in fancied service to some other, as in the case of mediæval mysticism, there is artistic immaturity or arrest; and wherever there is an exaggerated development of any one impulse, at the expense of others and of the balance or symmetry of all, as in the cases of modern French realistic literature and of program music, for example, there is artistic decadence. And since idealism insists both on the claims of all legitimate human impulses to recognition, and on their submission to adjustment in the interests of a rounded human nature, idealism is a potent stimulus to true art. All this is amply illustrated in that great development of art under the spur of idealism which we name the Renaissance. By renaissance, or rebirth, is meant a reawakening of the human spirit to fuller activity, an increased recognition of its native dignity and value as transcending all artificial sanctions and limits. The renaissance period was, as it were, the adolescence of humanity. It was the time of putting away childish things--passive dependence on authority, superstition, timorous conventionality--and of asserting the freedom and the responsibilities of men. In the race, as in the individual, it was primarily an internal event, which reached external expression only with difficulty and after a struggle. The youth has his vague internal sense of the sacredness of his convictions long before he can work these out into the fabric of actual life. A long fight with stubborn customs, with indifferent circumstances, must take place before ideals can become actualities. Just so, the idealism of the race had to meet in mortal combat a thousand opposing conditions, had to conquer its foes and acquire its ways and means, before it could victoriously express itself in art. In other words, feeling had to enter into and transform technique in order that the art might voice fully the impulse that animated it. When we speak of the renaissance, therefore, we mean no narrow, special period of time, precisely dated, like a battle or a treaty. We mean a new spirit of liberty and self-respect in the human mind, which expressed itself in one way at one time, in another at another, according to the facility and promptitude with which it acquired mastery over these ways. The expression followed the effort only after a long interval, and different expressions came at different epochs, far apart in time. In a general way we may say that the Renaissance has occupied the centuries of our era from the