“I can’t say I have ever experienced the power of one spirit over another, except in books, of course, at least in any intense way that you mean. Unless you mean the interest one awakes in us, and we long to know more, and none other. I suppose we are all influenced by everybody we come in contact with, in a subconscious way, if not direct, and everything that happens to us is experience; but only the few know it. Most people can only see and hear the noisy sunsets, mountains and waterfalls; but the delicate greys and hues, the star in the puddle, the quiet sailing cloud, is nothing to them. Of course, I only mean this metaphorically, as distinguishing between obvious experiences and the almost imperceptible. I still have no work to do. I think, if nothing turns up here, I will go to Africa. I could not endure to live upon my people; and up till now I have been giving them from what I had managed to save up when I was at work. It is nearly run out now, and if I am to do nothing, I would rather do it somewhere else. Besides, I feel so cramped up here, I can do no drawing, reading, or anything.... “Create our own experience! We can, but we don’t. Very often it’s only the trouble of a word, and who knows what we miss through not having spoken? It’s the man with impudence who has more experience than anybody. He not only varies his own, but makes other people’s his own. * * * * * “Do I like music, and what music I like best? I know nothing whatever about music. Once I heard Schubert’s ‘Unfinished Symphony’ at the band; and—well, I was in heaven. It was a blur of sounds—sweet, fading and blending. It seemed to draw the sky down, the whole spirit out of me; it was articulate feeling. The inexpressible in poetry, in painting, was there expressed. But I have not heard much, and the sensation that gave me I never had again. I should like very much to be one of the initiated. * * * * * “Some more confidences. I’ve discovered I’m a very bad talker: I find it difficult to make myself intelligible at times; I can’t remember the exact word I want, and I think I leave the impression of being a rambling idiot.” In 1910 he went to see the wonderful collection of Japanese paintings lent by Japan to the Exhibition at Shepherd’s Bush. “The thoroughness is astounding. No slipshod, tricky slickness, trusting to chance effects, but a subtle suggestiveness, and accident that is the consequence of intention.” Here are a few sentences from some “Notes on Art”: “Life stales and dulls; the mind demands noble excitement, half-apprehended surmises, the eternal desire, the beautiful. It is a vain belief that Art and Life go hand-in-hand; Art is, as it were, another planet. “Mere representation is unreal, is fragmentary. The bone taken from Adam remains a bone. To create is to apply pulsating rhythmic principles to the part; a unity, another nature, is created.”