However far this selection of the essential traits removes the artistic creation from the mere imitative reproduction of the world, a much greater distance from reality results from a second need if the work is to fulfill the purposes of art.  We saw that we have art only when the work is isolated, that is, when it fulfills every demand in itself and does not point beyond itself.  This can be done only if it is sharply set off from the sphere of our practical interests.  Whatever enters into our practical sphere links itself with our impulses to real action and the action would involve a change, an intrusion, an influence from without.  As long as we have the desire to change anything, the work is not complete in itself.  The relation of the work to us as persons must not enter into our awareness of it at all.  As soon as it does, that complete restfulness of the esthetic enjoyment is lost.  Then the object becomes simply a part of our practical surroundings.  The fundamental condition of art, therefore, is that we shall be distinctly conscious of the unreality of the artistic production, and that means that it must be absolutely separated from the real things and men, that it must be isolated and kept in its own sphere.  As soon as a work of art tempts us to take it as a piece of reality, it has been dragged into the sphere of our practical action, which means our desire to put ourselves into connection with it.  Its completeness in itself is lost and its value for our esthetic enjoyment has faded away.

Now we understand why it is necessary that each art should have its particular method for fundamentally changing reality.  Now we recognize that it is by no means a weakness of sculpture that the marble statue has not the colors of life but a whiteness unlike any human being.  Nor does it appear a deficiency in the painting or the drawing that it can offer two dimensions only and has no means to show us the depth of real nature.  Now we grasp why the poet expresses his feelings and thoughts in the entirely unnatural language of rhythms and rhymes.  Now we see why every work of art has its frame or its base or its stage.  Everything serves that central purpose, the separation of the offered experience from the background of our real life.  When we have a painted garden before us, we do not want to pick the flowers from the beds and break the fruit from the branches.  The flatness of the picture tells us that this is no reality, in spite of the fact that the size of the painting may not be different from that of the windowpane through which we see a real garden.  We have no thought of bringing a chair or a warm coat for the woman in marble.  The work which the sculptor created stands before us in a space into which we cannot enter, and because it is entirely removed from the reality toward which our actions are directed we become esthetic spectators only.  The smile of the marble girl wins us as if it came from a living one, but we do not respond to her welcome.  Just as she appears in her marble form she is complete in herself without any relation to us or to anyone else.  The very difference from reality has given her that self-sustained perfect life.