What, then, is the conclusion of the whole matter?  No more than this, I think.  The contemplation of pure form leads to a state of extraordinary exaltation and complete detachment from the concerns of life:  of so much, speaking for myself, I am sure.  It is tempting to suppose that the emotion which exalts has been transmitted through the forms we contemplate by the artist who created them.  If this be so, the transmitted emotion, whatever it may be, must be of such a kind that it can be expressed in any sort of form—­in pictures, sculptures, buildings, pots, textiles, &c., &c.  Now the emotion that artists express comes to some of them, so they tell us, from the apprehension of the formal significance of material things; and the formal significance of any material thing is the significance of that thing considered as an end in itself.  But if an object considered as an end in itself moves us more profoundly (i.e. has greater significance) than the same object considered as a means to practical ends or as a thing related to human interests—­and this undoubtedly is the case—­we can only suppose that when we consider anything as an end in itself we become aware of that in it which is of greater moment than any qualities it may have acquired from keeping company with human beings.  Instead of recognising its accidental and conditioned importance, we become aware of its essential reality, of the God in everything, of the universal in the particular, of the all-pervading rhythm.  Call it by what name you will, the thing that I am talking about is that which lies behind the appearance of all things—­that which gives to all things their individual significance, the thing in itself, the ultimate reality.  And if a more or less unconscious apprehension of this latent reality of material things be, indeed, the cause of that strange emotion, a passion to express which is the inspiration of many artists, it seems reasonable to suppose that those who, unaided by material objects, experience the same emotion have come by another road to the same country.

That is the metaphysical hypothesis.  Are we to swallow it whole, accept a part of it, or reject it altogether?  Each must decide for himself.  I insist only on the rightness of my aesthetic hypothesis.  And of one other thing am I sure.  Be they artists or lovers of art, mystics or mathematicians, those who achieve ecstasy are those who have freed themselves from the arrogance of humanity.  He who would feel the significance of art must make himself humble before it.  Those who find the chief importance of art or of philosophy in its relation to conduct or its practical utility—­those who cannot value things as ends in themselves or, at any rate, as direct means to emotion—­will never get from anything the best that it can give.  Whatever the world of aesthetic contemplation may be, it is not the world of human business and passion; in it the chatter and tumult of material existence is unheard, or heard only as the echo of some more ultimate harmony.