a hint as to the nature of his organisation, and ease the way for our aesthetic emotions?  If he give to his forms so much of the appearance of the forms of ordinary life that we shall at once refer them back to something we have already seen, shall we not grasp more easily their aesthetic relations in his design?  Enter by the back-door representation in the quality of a clue to the nature of design.  I have no objection to its presence.  Only, if the representative element is not to ruin the picture as a work of art, it must be fused into the design.  It must do double duty; as well as giving information, it must create aesthetic emotion.  It must be simplified into significant form.

Let us make no mistake about this.  To help the spectator to appreciate our design we have introduced into our picture a representative or cognitive element.  This element has nothing whatever to do with art.  The recognition of a correspondence between the forms of a work of art and the familiar forms of life cannot possibly provoke aesthetic emotion.  Only significant form can do that.  Of course realistic forms may be aesthetically significant, and out of them an artist may create a superb work of art, but it is with their aesthetic and not with their cognitive value that we shall then be concerned.  We shall treat them as though they were not representative of anything.  The cognitive or representative element in a work of art can be useful as a means to the perception of formal relations and in no other way.  It is valuable to the spectator, but it is of no value to the work of art; or rather it is valuable to the work of art as an ear-trumpet is valuable to one who would converse with the deaf:  the speaker could do as well without it, the listener could not.  The representative element may help the spectator; it can do the picture no good and it may do harm.  It may ruin the design; that is to say, it may deprive the picture of its value as a whole; and it is as a whole, as an organisation of forms, that a work of art provokes the most tremendous emotions.

From the point of view of the spectator the Post-Impressionists have been particularly happy in their simplification.  As we know, a design can be composed just as well of realistic forms as of invented; but a fine design composed of realistic forms runs a great risk of being aesthetically underrated.  We are so immediately struck by the representative element that the formal significance passes us by.  It is very hard at first sight to appreciate the design of a picture by a highly realistic artist—­Ingres, for instance; our aesthetic emotions are overlaid by our human curiosity.  We do not see the figures as forms, because we immediately think of them as people.  On the other hand, a design composed of purely imaginary forms, without any cognitive clue (say a Persian carpet), if it be at all elaborate and intricate, is apt to non-plus the less sensitive spectators.  Post-Impressionists,