What, then, is the object, what the method, of an art, and what the
source of its power? The whole secret is that no art does "compete
with life." Man's one method, whether he reasons or creates, is to
half-shut his eyes against the dazzle and confusion of reality.
The arts, like arithmetic and geometry, turn away their eyes from
the gross, coloured and mobile nature at our feet, and regard
instead a certain figmentary abstraction. Geometry will tell us of
a circle, a thing never seen in nature; asked about a green circle
or an iron circle, it lays its hand upon its mouth. So with the
arts. Painting, ruefully comparing sunshine and flake-white, gives
up truth of colour, as it had already given up relief and movement;
and instead of vying with nature, arranges a scheme of harmonious
tints. Literature, above all in its most typical mood, the mood of
narrative, similarly flees the direct challenge and pursues instead
an independent and creative aim. So far as it imitates at all, it
imitates not life but speech: not the facts of human destiny, but
the emphasis and the suppressions with which the human actor tells
of them. The real art that dealt with life directly was that of
the first men who told their stories round the savage camp-fire.
Our art is occupied, and bound to be occupied, not so much in
making stories true as in making them typical; not so much in
capturing the lineaments of each fact, as in marshalling all of
them towards a common end.
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