The spirit of man, moving through these means, impresses itself reproductively on the spirits of others with a far better calculation of effect than can be secured through bodily inheritance. For in physical parentage there is always the chance of a throw-back to tainted origins; the sober and moral citizen cannot be sure of sober and moral children in whom the desire of his soul shall be satisfied. They may be drawn, by irresistible forces, to take after some giddy and disreputable old grandfather or grandmother instead of after him; for in his veins run the parental weaknesses of thousands of generations; and over the racial strain that passes through him to others he possesses no control whatever. But the man who has given ornament to life in any form of art--though he commits it to the risks and chances of life, the destructive accidents of peace and war--is in danger of no atavistic trick being played upon the product of his soul; he is assured of his effect, and so long as it endures it reflects and represents his personality more faithfully than the descendants of his blood. Now for the satisfaction of that instinct, the perpetuation of name and identity is not necessary. The artist would not (if told that his self-realisation was destined to become merged anonymously in the existence of fresco, or canvas, or mosaic)--he would not therefore lay down his mallet or his brush, and say that in that case the survival of these things to a future age was no survival for him. The maker of beautiful inlay would not lose all wish to do inlay if the knowledge that he, individually, as the craftsman were destined to oblivion. Let the future involve him in anonymity as impenetrable as it liked, he would still go on expressing himself in ornament; self-realisation would still be the law of his being. That is the psychology of the artist mind--of that part of humanity which produces things that come nearest, of all which earth has to show, to conditions of immortality, and so presumably are the most satisfying to man’s wish for continued individual existence. The makers of beauty do not set any great store on the continuance of their names--the continuance of their self-realisation is what they care about.