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I have already stated that the other arts have for their ideal that fusing of subject and expression which in music is complete, and I have further stated that the purpose or object of music is to present emotion ordered and guided by the mind and illumined by the imagination. In this latter respect all the arts are alike. It is in the very nature of their being that they seek to find the heart of the great secret. The purpose of painting and sculpture is not to present objects as objects, but to set them forth in such harmonious perfection of line and color and rhythm as will reveal their deepest significance. The greatest examples of the plastic arts cannot be understood through sense-perception of objects. Rembrandt is a greater painter than Bougereau, not only because he has superior technique, but because he has deeper insight. This is why the “subject” in painting is comparatively unimportant.

It is the same with literature. In “Jane Eyre” the “subject” is more tangible and vivid than in “Villette,” but the latter is the finer book, because the technical skill is greater, the insight deeper. “There are no good subjects or bad subjects,” says Hugo; “there are only good poets and bad poets.” Any subject is interesting when a master-mind presents it in full significance. A custom-house is a prosaic thing, and a custom-house that has neither exports nor imports, but only a few sleepy old pensioners dozing in the sun, might be thought a dull subject for a writer; but Hawthorne’s imagination and subtlety of literary expression clothe it with both beauty and significance. Even the noblest and most tragic deeds find their best justification in a sublime harmony of beauty. The Greeks knew this well. Euripides, in “The Trojan Women,” puts on the lips of Hecuba these words:—