In such a result would be found evidence not only that there is a great principle or law by which art operates and reaches its highest mark humanly possible, but that it remains constant and true in the sensible artist and can be traced running through all he does. If further evidence of the existence of the law is needed I can point to the conscious use of it today by painters who are seeking to give the facts of ordinary experience a non-representative character, as though belonging to a world of abstraction. We know that Picasso is busy converting everyday forms of his own contemporary surroundings into rhythmic shape from which all clichés have been carefully eliminated. We know too that other painters following the epoch-making example of John D. Fergusson are boldly rhythmising the people and affairs of everyday life as though convinced that the big unified rhythmic design is symbolic of the intense movement by which Art moves and expresses itself. We see in their canvases an obvious attempt to give the widest expansion to the fundamental rhythm of each subject treated. At first sight it appears to be a step in the right direction, one leading away from the fallacy or blindness, which led the old masters to turn out wonderful patchworks by giving each object in their canvases a structural unity of its own. Indeed it looks as though these painters have mastered the secret of binding a composition together by a unified design springing from a central note that expands by spontaneous motion till it not only fills the canvas but passes out of it on a very wide sweep, and having order, intelligibility, and coherence in all its parts. It looks as though they have discovered the great law of creative organic unity of which I speak. Closer examination of their work, however, reveals it is not so. For one thing their pictures are not growths from small beginnings to great ends, each the successive sweep of one curve expanding in oneness from a root-point. It is true that the starting point in them may be feeling, as with the work of the unconscious artist. But as soon as feeling has decided the start, knowledge and reason decide the rest. They decide what shapes and colors are to be selected and carefully related to the central shape and color. If the character of the subject is zigzag then the composition will take a zigzag course. If a sharp curve, then sharp curves will be gathered from objects surrounding the central one and related to it. In fact the law of association is called in and kept busy throughout. Everything in a picture is consciously associated just as a builder associates the materials of a house. Intuition is checked by reason.