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facility. We can only ask: in which have we evidence of most profound vision; which of these artists is the greater vessel? For this is what we really mean, when we relinquish our preoccupation with the accidentals of technique and accomplishment, and still observe that at various moments in the history of an individual or of a school there is a varying degree of vision.

This is not a variability of art, but of the individual. Two men at the same time, or one man at different times, may go down to the sea, with a bucket or a cup, and bring back a bucketful or a cupful of water; but each brings back the same water, whether the vessels be large or small, of gold or clay. In other words, however broad or narrow, noble or ignoble the subject of the art, however elegant or crude the language, art is always recognizable as art. All that we can demand of an artist is that he should offer us living water: for this water has a miraculous quality and even though it be offered in a thimble, it will fill a bowl. One can only say that there are greater and lesser artists, as there are greater and lesser lovers; but we can no more speak of progress in art than we could speak of progress in love.

If Mrs. Eddy speaks of the same truth that Jesus speaks of, it is not because of her defective literary education that she fails to touch us, but because of the less intensity or clarity of her experience. The most awkward means are adequate to the communication of authentic experience, and the finest words 1o compensation for the lack of it. It is for this reason that we are moved by the true Primitives and that the most accomplished art may leave us cold.

It is as hard for the learned artist as for the rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. In saying this, we need not forget that the gates are as widely opened to the learned and the rich as to the illiterate and the poor. There is no essential virtue in immaturity: for the greatest art is required not merely love, but the comprehension of what is loved, and full self-consciousness. Skill and sophistication, learning and wealth are neither good nor bad in themselves—that is to say, they can be used or misused. And both are relative terms. Most great artists have been learned in their own time and place (Giotto was acclaimed as a realist), and there is nothing in the coincidence of the external signs of art with the dimensional aspect of nature which of itself precludes the possibility