The purpose of art is not the reproduction of a beautiful object, but the expression in objective form of a beautiful idea. A plaster cast of a hand, however comely the hand may be, is not a work of art. As with the photograph, the work involves only incidentally the exercise of human skill. But that is not all. In order to render the work in the spirit of art, the sculptor must model, not the hand, but his sense of the hand; he must draw out and express its character, its significance. To him it is not a certain form in bone and flesh; to him it means grace, delicacy, sensitiveness, or perhaps resolution, strength, force. As the material symbol of his idea of the hand, he will select and make salient such lines and contours as are expressive to him of that character. Indeed, so little depends upon the exact subject represented and so much upon the artist's feeling toward it, so much depends upon the spirit of the rendering, that the representation of a subject uninteresting or even "ugly" in itself may be beautiful. In the art of literature, the _subject_ is drawn from the life of man. The material of the poem, the novel, the drama, is furnished by man's total experience, the sum of his sensations, impressions, emotions, and the events in which he is concerned. But experience crowds in upon him at every point, without order and without relation; the daily round of living is for most men a humdrum thing. Yet it is just this rudimentary and undistinguished mass of experience which is transmuted into literature; by the alchemy of art the representation of that which is without interest becomes interesting. And it happens on this wise. Life is humdrum only in so far as it is meaningless; men can endure any amount drudgery and monotony provided that it lead somewhere, that they perceive its relation to a larger unity which is the total of life. As part of a whole which can be apprehended, immediately it acquires purpose and becomes significant. It is the sense of meaning in life which gives color and warmth to the march of uniform days. So the literary artist shapes his inchoate material to a definite end; out of the limitless complex details at his command, he selects such passages of background, such incidents, and such traits of character as make for the setting forth of the idea he has conceived. Clearly the artist cannot use everything, clearly he does not aim to reproduce the fact: there are abridgments and suppressions, as there are accent and emphasis. The finished work is a composite, embodying what is essential of many, many preliminary studies and sketches, wrought and compiled with generous industry. The master is recognized in what he omits; what is suppressed is felt but not perceived: the great artist, in the result, steps from peak to peak. "The Sun's rim dips; the stars rush out: At one stride comes the Dark."