THE HARMONY OF VIRTUE

ArtALL Art is interpretation. Creation is amisnomer; nothing in this world is created, all is manifested.All exists previously in the mind of the Knower. Art may interpretthat which is already manifest or was manifest at one time,or it may interpret what will be manifest hereafter. It may evenbe used as one of the agencies in the manifestation. A particulartype of face and figure may be manifested in the work of apopular artist and in a single generation the existing type of faceand figure in the country may change and mould itself to thenew conception. These things are there in the type in the causalworld with which our superconscious selves are perpetually intouch; they manifest in the psychical and become part of ourthought. That thought we put out into the material world andthere it takes shape and body as movements, as institutions,as poetry, Art and knowledge, as living men and women. Mancreates his world because he is the psychic instrument throughwhom God manifests that which He had previously arrangedin Himself. In this sense Art can create the past, the presentand the future. It can re-manifest that which was and has passedaway, it can fix for us that which is, it can prophesy that whichwill be.*Its normal sphere, however, is interpretation of a less pregnantand forceful kind. Here too, there are three things which itcan interpret in the object it selects, the causal part or thing initself, the psychical part, or its passing imaginations, phases,emotions; or the physical part, the outward appearance, incidentor movement as our eyes see them. Indian Art attaches itself tothe two higher interpretations, European to the two lower. Theymeet in the middle term of Art, the imaginative and emotional;but each brings with it the habits of vision, the conventions, themastering movement and tendency of the soul downward to earth