It is essential to the full effect of a work of art that the artist should create it, and the hearer or beholder should enjoy it, without thinking of the rules and laws of beauty. A work of art must act immediately upon the feelings; it must appear to be spontaneous, and must be felt without reference to any aim or plan. What is æsthetically beautiful pleases a cultivated taste at once without any reflex consideration. But when, by the help of the understanding, we seek to account for the harmony and perfection of the several parts, and find by more searching study that the work is in conformity to the laws of reason, our enjoyment will naturally be enhanced. But this study must always come as a consequence of the first effect upon the soul, otherwise all effect is wanting. The _unconscious_ enjoyment of the legitimate in art is the first condition of the influence of the beautiful upon the soul. The happy, elevated feeling which all works of art immediately awaken in us is thus only an unconscious recognition of the reasonable, the harmonious, the symmetrical. But this unconscious impression is instantly disturbed by any, the least imperfection, before we perceive where and in what it consists, for the human mind is not able fully and at once to examine a production of art in its entirety to its minutest parts. An artist must, therefore, be esteemed according as his works excite and ravish the hearers or beholders without their knowing why, and he stands all the higher the simpler and the more naturally--i.e., the more _unconsciously_--this takes place. In order to reach such a height, and to be able to act upon the souls of men with an elevating and informing power, it is first of all necessary that an artist should cultivate the form, or the _technique_, of his art to its greatest possible perfection, and have such perfect command of it, that the practical application of it is as natural to him as to breathe. _For empty and dead as all technical knowledge is unless it is animated with a soul, yet no product of art æsthetically beautiful is possible without a perfect technique._ * * * * *