ABSTRACT
Art is the liberator of the submerged selves because it enables them to walk in daylight, to be incarnated and to find expression, without wrecking the continuity of organized life. But art cannot do its work if it remains incommunicable. Man cannot live vicarious lives in a medium in which he does not understand. Above all, he cannot find utterance in decoration or "externality" alone. Moral science is in perplexity and confusion, and if ever any order is attained it will be by long study and invention. The material of human conflict is sufficiently understood to furnish art with its greater themes. For painters, poets, novelists are happiest when they live in a moral tradition. So they have turned away from the theme and concentrated on the externals of their craft, on technique, or form, or pattern, or color, or on the less important objects of the natural world.
