pleased with his own passions and volitions, who rejoices more than other men in the spirit of life that is within him.”[178] The essential purpose of any art-work, then, is to be _expressive of life_—more expressive than the raw facts of life ever can be. The practical problem for every artist in every kind of material is how to make his work expressive; only thus can it be what Tolstoy calls “infectious.” To do this, besides the acquirement of technique, he must clearly have something to express. Let us not imagine, however, as the “plain honest man” is apt to do, that this must necessarily be something capable of being put into terms of the intellect—a fact, a story, a “criticism of life.” Art is rather an exploration than a criticism of life.[179] And life is very great and manifold. Primarily the painter is a man who likes to apprehend life in colour, the sculptor one who apprehends it in the form of masses, the musician in sound, the poet in actions, emotions, ideas. Each may, and probably must, have some of the gifts and faculties of the others, but as painter, musician, or whatever he may be, he thinks and feels in the material of his own art, and he uses that material to express its own virtues, not to imitate those of another. The question of the relation of art to beauty, and the meaning of beauty itself, may now be considered. What is this mysterious element about the nature of which such a torrent of opinion has been poured out since man first began to reflect on his own states of mind? Between the view which holds it to be an absolute and ultimate principle, recognized in, rather than arising from, experience, and that which denies it any right to be called a principle at all, referring it simply to the effect of habit, and refusing to see any essential difference between the Hottentot conception of beauty and the Greek, we can find, I think, a position in strict accordance both with the historical facts of the evolution of the conception and with the claims of the Idealists. Let us look back a moment to the analysis of moral action which we made in the preceding chapters. We found then that while all healthy action tends to maintain and promote life, there are circumstances under which this life-promoting quality comes more saliently into view than is usual. This happens in general when mere personal desires are subjected to the larger life of the Whole, or when a lower form of living is subjected to a higher. This heightening and intensification of life-promoting action we called moral action. And we drew no sharp and distinct line between it and ordinary healthy action, for nature knows no such distinctions, and the philosophy which tries to establish them is stamped with unreality.