The Way To Perfection Is Through A

Many Attempts Have Been Made By Writers On Art And Poetry To Define Beauty In The Abstract, To Express It In The Most General Terms, To Find Some Universal Formula For It.

It Is With A Rush Of Home-sickness That The Thought Of Death Presents Itself.... Such Sentiment Is The Eternal Stock Of All Religions, Modified Indeed By Changes Of Time And Place, But Indestructible, Because Its Root Is So Deep In The Earth Of Man's Nature. The Breath Of Religious Initiators Passes Over Them; A Few "rise Up With Wings As Eagles" [isaiah 40:31], But The Broad Level Of Religious Life Is Not Permanently Changed. Religious Progress, Like All Purely Spiritual Progress, Is Confined To A Few.

Such Discussions Help Us Very Little To Enjoy What Has Been Well Done In Art Or Poetry, To Discriminate Between What Is More And What Is Less Excellent In Them, Or To Use Words Like Beauty, Excellence, Art, Poetry, With A More Precise Meaning Than They Would Otherwise Have.

Experience, Already Reduced To A Group Of Impressions, Is Ringed Round For Each One Of Us By That Thick Wall Of Personality Through Which No Real Voice Has Ever Pierced On Its Way To Us, Or From Us To That Which We Can Only Conjecture To Be Without.

Art Comes To You Proposing Frankly To Give Nothing But The Highest Quality To Your Moments As They Pass.