of one particular kind of emotion, that specific artistic emotion which I believe to be an emotion felt for reality, generally perceived through form:  but the nature of the focus is immaterial.  It is almost, though not quite, true to say that one problem is as good as another.  Indeed all problems are, in themselves, equally good, though, owing to human infirmity, there are two which tend to turn out badly.  One, as we have seen, is the pure aesthetic problem; the other is the problem of accurate representation.

The vulgar imagine that there is but one focus, that “right” means always the realisation of an accurate conception of life.  They cannot understand that the immediate problem of the artist may be to express himself within a square or a circle or a cube, to balance certain harmonies, to reconcile certain dissonances, to achieve certain rhythms, or to conquer certain difficulties of medium, just as well as to catch a likeness.  This error is at the root of the silly criticism that Mr. Shaw has made it fashionable to print.  In the plays of Shakespeare there are details of psychology and portraiture so realistic as to astonish and enchant the multitude, but the conception, the thing that Shakespeare set himself to realise, was not a faithful presentation of life.  The creation of Illusion was not the artistic problem that Shakespeare used as a channel for his artistic emotion and a focus for his energies.  The world of Shakespeare’s plays is by no means so lifelike as the world of Mr. Galsworthy’s, and therefore those who imagine that the artistic problem must always be the achieving of a correspondence between printed words or painted forms and the world as they know it are right in judging the plays of Shakespeare inferior to those of Mr. Galsworthy.  As a matter of fact, the achievement of verisimilitude, far from being the only possible problem, disputes with the achievement of beauty the honour of being the worst possible.  It is so easy to be lifelike, that an attempt to be nothing more will never bring into play the highest emotional and intellectual powers of the artist.  Just as the aesthetic problem is too vague, so the representative problem is too simple.

Every artist must choose his own problem.  He may take it from wherever he likes, provided he can make it the focus of those artistic emotions he has got to express and the stimulant of those energies he will need to express them.  What we have got to remember is that the problem—­in a picture it is generally the subject—­is of no consequence in itself.  It is merely one of the artist’s means of expression or creation.  In any particular case one problem may be better than another, as a means, just as one canvas or one brand of colours may be; that will depend upon the temperament of the artist, and we may leave it to him.  For us the problem has no value; for the artist it is the working test of absolute “rightness.”  It is the gauge that measures the pressure of steam; the artist stokes his fires to set the little handle spinning; he knows that his machine will not move until he has got his pointer to the mark; he works up to it and through it; but it does not drive the engine.