Every layman in this country who finds it necessary to establish himself a critic of Art and artists should hear that lecture and try to understand it, if only in parts. But I suppose they wouldn’t accept Tagore’s word for it because he doesn’t take them in on the ground floor, in the manner of _The Seven Arts_, for instance. I can’t quote directly, as the lecture is not yet published, but he has said all the things that one longs to say oneself. He defines the artist as one who says to the world: “I see you where you are what I am.” Art is the most personal thing in the world. Man reveals himself and not his objects in Art. Matter and manner find their harmonics in our personality. The artist does not particularize through peculiarity, which is the discord of the unique, but through the personality, which is its harmony. Art is man’s answer to the “Supreme Person.” Art is personal and beyond science. So, too, is beauty. Beauty is not a fact but an expression. “Facts are like wine-cups that carry it.” To all the confusion and misconceptions about beauty in Art he answers: The creation of beauty is not the object of Art. Beauty in Art has merely been an instrument and not its complete and ultimate significance. And to those who demand teaching or utility in Art there is this answer: The stage of pure utility is like a state of heat which is dark. When it surpasses itself it becomes white heat and then it is expressive; and when man thwarts his desire for delight, wanting to make it into good or into knowledge, it loses its bloom and healthiness. Taking up the old controversy of Art for Art’s sake, the fact that the phrase has fallen into disrepute is a sign of the return of the ideals of the puritanic age when enjoyment as an end in itself was held to be sinful. The idea of Art for Art’s sake had its origin in a surplusage of life, not in asceticism or decadence. When our personality is at its flood-tide with love or other emotion it longs to express itself for the sake of expression, and we forget the claims of usefulness and the thrift of necessity. After all the fighting and arguing one has to do up and down the world over what is Art, and Art for Art’s sake, one comes from this lecture feeling: “He leadeth me beside the still waters; he maketh me to lie down in green pastures; he restoreth my soul.” _Little Theatre Atrocities_ Last month the Chicago Little Theatre strayed down into the Playhouse with _Mrs. Warren’s Profession_. I won’t say anything about the acting, nor even of Mrs. Warren and her Oak Park vulgarity—Mrs. Warren of London, Brussels, Budapest! But I can’t let the scenery go by without a protest.