In the first place, the material world around us, or such portion of it as we are able to perceive, is not, as it stands, a pure expression of life. Holding as we do with Cleanthes in his majestic Hymn to Zeus that all things redundant have their place in the Whole, and that in it all things ugly have their beauty and all things hateful their share of love,[177] it is still true that the world as we see it presents us with a pell-mell of varied forms—some mature and beautiful, some in process of transition, some in decay, some stationary, unchanging, dead. The inner harmony which holds them together is rarely perceptible in any one fragment of actual life. But the artist adds this harmony, this completeness; his work, within its own limits, is a whole. He gives us something which nature cannot give. Taking some aspect of life which he wishes to convey by means of line, colour, or tone, he suppresses, alters, composes, emphasizes, till he has expressed his feeling in its purity, with everything immaterial left out and with the things essential to his conception lifted clearly into view. His work is therefore greater and more vital than nature, that is to say than any fragment of nature, for he is looking at the part he renders _sub specie aeternitatis_, in the light of the Whole. And living in the conception of a great work of art, we live in the Whole; the individual has sunk from view. Zola has finely said, “Art is a bit of Nature seen through the medium of a temperament.” This temperament means the artist’s personal way of seeing life; it means all that makes his art different from a mere record. And the audience who see or hear his work become acquainted with this temperament—there is no other way in which the artist can express it so well. The artist, then, is giving us himself along with his subject, and this is the greatest thing he can give. Whether the wars of Troy ever happened is of very little consequence compared with Homer’s way of imagining them. And when we have learned Homer’s way we can and do apply it for ourselves, for has he not ‘infected’ us with it? The artist opens our eyes, and leaves us in a world infinitely more significant and beautiful than without his aid we should ever have known it to be. His function is thus the liberation within us of faculties, of powers of living, which otherwise might never have risen into consciousness. We commonly call this ‘idealizing the facts of life.’ It would be nearer the mark to say that it makes them real. Art turns our formal, sensible, external perceptions of things into real and vital perceptions, and thus enormously increases the range and volume of life of which those who apprehend it are capable. The glory of light, the music of winds and waters, the dignity of man’s common occupations, the wonder and sweetness of the love of men and women, all these have been revealed to us by the artist, “a man speaking to men ...