“Surely. But that is not the aspect in which I was considering the question. Those who can so set them forth are artists; and however they may fail of effecting such a representation of their ideas as will satisfy themselves, they yet experience satisfaction in the measure in which they have succeeded. But there are many more men who cannot yet utter their ideas in any form. Mind, I do expect that, if they will only be good, they shall have this power some day; for I do think that many things we call differences in kind, may in God’s grand scale prove to be only differences in degree. And indeed the artist--by artist, I mean, of course, architect, musician, painter, poet, sculptor--in many things requires it just as much as the most helpless and dumb of his brethren, seeing in proportion to the things that he can do, he is aware of the things he cannot do, the thoughts he cannot express. Hence arises the enthusiasm with which people hail the work of an artist; they rejoice, namely, in seeing their own thoughts, or feelings, or something like them, expressed; and hence it comes that of those who have money, some hang their walls with pictures of their own choice, others--” “I beg your pardon,” said Percivale, interrupting; “but most people, I fear, hang their walls with pictures of other people’s choice, for they don’t buy them at all till the artist has got a name.” “That is true. And yet there is a shadow of choice even there; for they won’t at least buy what they dislike. And again the growth in popularity may be only what first attracted their attention--not determined their choice.” “But there are others who only buy them for their value in the market.” “‘Of such is not the talk,’ as the Germans would say. In as far as your description applies, such are only tradesmen, and have no claim to be considered now.” “Then I beg your pardon for interrupting. I am punished more than I deserve, if you have lost your thread.” “I don’t think I have. Let me see. Yes. I was saying that people hang their walls with pictures of their choice; or provide music, &c., of their choice. Let me keep to the pictures: their choice, consciously or unconsciously, is determined by some expression that these pictures give to what is in themselves--the buyers, I mean. They like to see their own feelings outside of themselves.” “Is there not another possible motive--that the pictures teach them something?” “That, I venture to think, shows a higher moral condition than the other, but still partakes of the other; for it is only what is in us already that makes us able to lay hold of a lesson. It is there in the germ, else nothing from without would wake it up.” “I do not quite see what all this has to do with Nature and her influences.”