The music of Carmen, the Prince Igor ballet, all the “savage stuff” that always gets the audience, is where the artist must be supposed, logically, to have his home. The truth is that in the trek of the imagination, of however feeble powers, from any man’s Present outwards towards anything, the first region struck is the Savage time, clash of cymbals, howl of clansmen, voluptuous belly-dance, Caucasian cartridge-pockets, castagnettes, vendettas and corybantics. That is about as far as a respectable Public-school fancy takes you. It is like a scene from the more boring of the Russian ballets or a Victory Ball. And there _all_ the “Chelsea artists” are to be found, every form of artist, far too many artists, in fact, and far too few “sauvages purs.” But the sometimes festive philosopher is a bit of an “artist” of that sort himself. And it has been from such regions and hobnobbings that he has borne away his very firm convictions on the nature of “artists,” and their abode in time. It is only since a variety of more adventurous men have pushed out beyond this sententious belt of savage life into lonelier regions, that a new type of “artist” has been met with, far rarer and far more venturesome, who has disposed already of much of the prestige of the dense herds of a manifestly different and falsely labelled species. _The Physiognomy of our Time_ Life, simply, however vivid and tangible, is too material to be anything but a mechanism, and the seagull is not far removed from the hydroplane. Whether a stone flies and copulates, or remains respectably in its place, half hiding the violet from the eye, is little matter. It is just as remarkable to be so hard and big as to be so busy and passionate; though owing to our busyness and passion we have a shoppy interest in the hurrying insect that we do not display for the stone. Life has begun, as language, for instance, begins, with a crowding and redundance that must be ordered and curtailed if the powerfullest instincts of life, even, are to triumph. Where everything is mutually destructive, and where immense multitudes of activities and modes of life have to be scrapped and excised, it is important not to linger in ecstasy over _everything_, simply because it _is_; or to sentimentalise about Life where creation is still possible and urgent; where much life, although pretty, powerful or bewitching, interferes with and opposes the life of something still more bewitching and strong.