to set himself down or set down a cup, he will know all he needs to know for his purpose.  The label tells him just those facts that serve his practical ends; of the thing itself that lurks behind the label nothing is said.  Artists, qua artists, are not concerned with labels.  They are concerned with things only as means to a particular kind of emotion, which is the same as saying that they are only concerned with things perceived as ends in themselves; for it is only when things are perceived as ends that they become means to this emotion.  It is only when we cease to regard the objects in a landscape as means to anything that we can feel the landscape artistically.  But when we do succeed in regarding the parts of a landscape as ends in themselves—­as pure forms, that is to say—­the landscape becomes ipso facto a means to a peculiar, aesthetic state of mind.  Artists are concerned only with this peculiar emotional significance of the physical universe:  because they perceive things as “ends,” things become for them “means” to ecstasy.

The habit of recognising the label and overlooking the thing, of seeing intellectually instead of seeing emotionally, accounts for the amazing blindness, or rather visual shallowness, of most civilised adults.  We do not forget what has moved us, but what we have merely recognised leaves no deep impression on the mind.  A friend of mine, a man of taste, desired to make some clearance in his gardens, encumbered as they were with a multitude of trees; unfortunately most of his friends and all his family objected on sentimental or aesthetic grounds, declaring that the place would never be the same to them if the axe were laid to a single trunk.  My friend was in despair, until, one day, I suggested to him that whenever his people were all away on visits or travels, as was pretty often the case, he should have as many trees cut down as could be completely and cleanly removed during their absence.  Since then, several hundreds have been carted from his small park and pleasure grounds, and should the secret be betrayed to the family I am cheerfully confident that not one of them would believe it.  I could cite innumerable instances of this insensibility to form.  How often have I been one of a party in a room with which all were familiar, the decoration of which had lately been changed, and I the only one to notice it.  For practical purposes the room remained unaltered; only its emotional significance was new.  Question your friend as to the disposition of the furniture in his wife’s drawing-room; ask him to sketch the street down which he passes daily; ten to one he goes hopelessly astray.  Only artists and educated people of extraordinary sensibility and some savages and children feel the significance of form so acutely that they know how things look.  These see, because they see emotionally; and no one forgets the things that have moved him.  Those forget who have never