ABSTRACT
The will is, as generally understood, that activity of the spirit which differs from the merely theoretical contemplation of things, and is productive, not of knowledge, but of actions. The saying: the style is the man, can also not be completely criticized, save by starting from the distinction between the theoretic and the practical, and from the theoretic character of the aesthetic activity. The science is theory and art practice has been many times affirmed. It is usual to distinguish the internal from the external work of art: the terminology seems infelicitous, for the work of art is always internal; and what is called external is no longer a work of art. The impossibility of choice of content completes the theorem of the independence of art, and is also the only legitimate meaning of the expression: art for art's sake. Art is independent both of science and of the useful and the moral.
