Those who do not part company with me till the last stage of my metaphysical excursion agree that the emotion expressed in a work of art springs from the depths of man’s spiritual nature; and those even who will hear nothing of expression agree that the spiritual part is profoundly affected by works of art.  Art, therefore, has to do with the spiritual life, to which it gives and from which, I feel sure, it takes.  Indirectly, art has something to do with practical life, too; for those emotional experiences must be very faint and contemptible that leave quite untouched our characters.  Through its influence on character and point of view art may affect practical life.  But practical life and human sentiment can affect art only in so far as they can affect the conditions in which artists work.  Thus they may affect the production of works of art to some extent; to how great an extent I shall consider in another place.

Also a great many works of visual art are concerned with life, or rather with the physical universe of which life is a part, in that the men who created them were thrown into the creative mood by their surroundings.  We have observed, as we could hardly fail to do, that, whatever the emotion that artists express may be, it comes to many of them through the contemplation of the familiar objects of life.  The object of an artist’s emotion seems to be more often than not either some particular scene or object, or a synthesis of his whole visual experience.  Art may be concerned with the physical universe, or with any part or parts of it, as a means to emotion—­a means to that peculiar spiritual state that we call inspiration.  But the value of these parts as means to anything but emotion art ignores—­that is to say, it ignores their practical utility.  Artists are often concerned with things, but never with the labels on things.  These useful labels were invented by practical people for practical purposes.  The misfortune is that, having acquired the habit of recognising labels, practical people tend to lose the power of feeling emotion; and, as the only way of getting at the thing in itself is by feeling its emotional significance, they soon begin to lose their sense of reality.  Mr. Roger Fry has pointed out that few can hope ever to see a charging bull as an end in itself and yield themselves to the emotional significance of its forms, because no sooner is the label “Charging Bull” recognised than we begin to dispose ourselves for flight rather than contemplation.[5] This is where the habit of recognising labels serves us well.  It serves us ill, however, when, although there is no call for action or hurry, it comes between things and our emotional reaction to them.  The label is nothing but a symbol that epitomises for busy humanity the significance of things regarded as “means.”  A practical person goes into a room where there are chairs, tables, sofas, a hearth-rug and a mantel-piece.  Of each he takes note intellectually, and if he wants