Artists should not see things as they are; they should see them fuller, simpler, stronger: to this end, however, a kind of youthfulness, of vernality, a sort of perpetual elation, must be peculiar to their lives.—_Nietzsche._ “The Artist in Life” MARGARET C. ANDERSON “People” has become to me a word that—crawls. If you have ever heard Mr. Bryan pronounce it you will know what I mean. He says it “peo-pul”.... And that is the way they act. Sometimes I see peo-pul in this kind of picture: a cosmic squirming mass of black caterpillars moving first one way and then the other, slowly and vaguely, not like measuring worms who cover the ground or like ants who have their definite business, but heavily, blindly, in the stunned manner peculiar to caterpillar organisms. They peer and poke and nod and ponder and creep and crawl and scramble and grow dizzy and turn around and around, wondering whether they shall go on the way they started or go back the way they came or refuse to go at all. Once in a hundred years one of the caterpillars breaks his skin and flies away—a butterfly through the unfriendly air. Then the black mass writhes in protest and arranges that the next butterfly shall have his wings well clipped. I know my metaphor is not scientifically intact, but what does it matter? It satisfies my impulse—which is simply to call names. So I might as well say “People are caterpillars” and be done with it. * * * * * I have a painter artist friend who says that to talk about the artist in life is simply to repeat one of those silly phrases that mean nothing. But it means entirely too much, I think—which is the reason there are so many of the species in evidence: about two in a million perhaps—and I know that is far too optimistic. That would mean some four or five thousand people in the living world who have nothing in common with caterpillars. The count is too high! For really there are no artists among us. Living picturesquely, artistically, has nothing to do with being an artist in life; and even living with the poise that marks a good piece of art hasn’t necessarily anything to do with it. If you ask me to choose a type of the real artist in life I shall say Nietzsche rather than Goethe. For the artist in life has inevitably to do with prophecy rather than with holding up the mirror; and that means chiefly—to have strength!