fact, we see them as related planes.  If the representation of three-dimensional space is to be called “representation,” then I agree that there is one kind of representation which is not irrelevant.  Also, I agree that along with our feeling for line and colour we must bring with us our knowledge of space if we are to make the most of every kind of form.  Nevertheless, there are magnificent designs to an appreciation of which this knowledge is not necessary:  so, though it is not irrelevant to the appreciation of some works of art it is not essential to the appreciation of all.  What we must say is that the representation of three-dimensional space is neither irrelevant nor essential to all art, and that every other sort of representation is irrelevant.

That there is an irrelevant representative or descriptive element in many great works of art is not in the least surprising.  Why it is not surprising I shall try to show elsewhere.  Representation is not of necessity baneful, and highly realistic forms may be extremely significant.  Very often, however, representation is a sign of weakness in an artist.  A painter too feeble to create forms that provoke more than a little aesthetic emotion will try to eke that little out by suggesting the emotions of life.  To evoke the emotions of life he must use representation.  Thus a man will paint an execution, and, fearing to miss with his first barrel of significant form, will try to hit with his second by raising an emotion of fear or pity.  But if in the artist an inclination to play upon the emotions of life is often the sign of a flickering inspiration, in the spectator a tendency to seek, behind form, the emotions of life is a sign of defective sensibility always.  It means that his aesthetic emotions are weak or, at any rate, imperfect.  Before a work of art people who feel little or no emotion for pure form find themselves at a loss.  They are deaf men at a concert.  They know that they are in the presence of something great, but they lack the power of apprehending it.  They know that they ought to feel for it a tremendous emotion, but it happens that the particular kind of emotion it can raise is one that they can feel hardly or not at all.  And so they read into the forms of the work those facts and ideas for which they are capable of feeling emotion, and feel for them the emotions that they can feel—­the ordinary emotions of life.  When confronted by a picture, instinctively they refer back its forms to the world from which they came.  They treat created form as though it were imitated form, a picture as though it were a photograph.  Instead of going out on the stream of art into a new world of aesthetic experience, they turn a sharp corner and come straight home to the world of human interests.  For them the significance of a work of art depends on what they bring to it; no new thing is added to their lives, only the old material is stirred.  A good work of visual art carries a person who is