that "life is art," but that "life is an art," which of course is a different thing than the foregoing. Tolstoi is even more helpless to himself and to us. For he eliminates further. From his definition of art we may learn little more than that a kick in the back is a work of art, and Beethoven's 9th Symphony is not. Experiences are passed on from one man to another. Abel knew that. And now we know it. But where is the bridge placed?--at the end of the road or only at the end of our vision? Is it all a bridge?--or is there no bridge because there is no gulf? Suppose that a composer writes a piece of music conscious that he is inspired, say, by witnessing an act of great self-sacrifice-- another piece by the contemplation of a certain trait of nobility he perceives in a friend's character--and another by the sight of a mountain lake under moonlight. The first two, from an inspirational standpoint would naturally seem to come under the subjective and the last under the objective, yet the chances are, there is something of the quality of both in all. There may have been in the first instance physical action so intense or so dramatic in character that the remembrance of it aroused a great deal more objective emotion than the composer was conscious of while writing the music. In the third instance, the music may have been influenced strongly though subconsciously by a vague remembrance of certain thoughts and feelings, perhaps of a deep religious or spiritual nature, which suddenly came to him upon realizing the beauty of the scene and which overpowered the first sensuous pleasure--perhaps some such feeling as of the conviction of immortality, that Thoreau experienced and tells about in Walden. "I penetrated to those meadows...when the wild river and the woods were bathed in so pure and bright a light as would have waked the dead IF they had been slumbering in their graves as some suppose. There needs no stronger proof of immortality." Enthusiasm must permeate it, but what it is that inspires an art- effort is not easily determined much less classified. The word "inspire" is used here in the sense of cause rather than effect. A critic may say that a certain movement is not inspired. But that may be a matter of taste--perhaps the most inspired music sounds the least so--to the critic. A true inspiration may lack a true expression unless it is assumed that if an inspiration is not true enough to produce a true expression--(if there be anyone who can definitely determine what a true expression is)--it is not an inspiration at all.

Again suppose the same composer at another time writes a piece of equal merit to the other three, as estimates go; but holds that he is not conscious of what inspired it--that he had nothing definite in mind--that he was not aware of any mental image or process--that, naturally, the actual work in creating something gave him a satisfying feeling of pleasure perhaps of elation. What will you substitute for the mountain lake, for his friend's character, etc.? Will you substitute anything? If so why? If so what? Or is it enough to let the matter rest on the pleasure mainly physical, of the tones, their color, succession, and relations, formal or informal? Can an inspiration come from a blank mind? Well--he tries to explain and says that he was conscious of some emotional excitement and of a sense of something beautiful, he doesn't know exactly what--a vague feeling of exaltation or perhaps of profound sadness.

What is the source of these instinctive feelings, these vague intuitions and introspective sensations? The more we try to analyze the more vague they become. To pull them apart and classify them as "subjective" or "objective" or as this or as that, means, that they may be well classified and that is about all: it leaves us as far from the origin as ever. What does it all mean? What is behind it all? The "voice of God," says the