It does not demand impossibilities, that man should be at one with
the universe or in tune with the infinite; but it does envisage the
highest of all attainable ideals, that man should be at one with
himself, obedient to his own most musical law.
Thus art reveals to us the principle of its own governance. The function
of criticism is to apply it. Obviously it can be applied only by him who
has achieved, if not the actual aesthetic ideal in life, at least a
vision and a sense of it. He alone will know that the principle he has
to elucidate and apply is living, organic. It is indeed the very
principle of artistic creation itself. Therefore he will approach what
claims to be a work of art first as a thing in itself, and seek with it
the most intimate and immediate contact in order that he may decide
whether it too is organic and living. He will be untiring in his effort
to refine his power of discrimination by the frequentation of the finest
work of the past, so that he may be sure of himself when he decides, as
he must, whether the object before him is the expression of an aesthetic
intuition at all.
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