From our present
point of view its only necessary application concerns the problems of a
man's special occupation. Every special performer needs the power of
criticising the quality and the subject-matter of his own work. Unless
he has great gifts or happens to be brought up and trained under
peculiarly propitious conditions, his first attempts to practice his
art will necessarily be experimental. He will be sure to commit many
mistakes, not merely in the choice of alternative methods and the
selection of his subject-matter, but in the extent to which he
personally can approve or disapprove of his own achievements. The
thoroughly competent performer must at least possess the intellectual
power of profiting from this experience. A candid consideration of his
own experiments must guide him in the selection of the better methods,
in the discrimination of the more appropriate subject-matter, in the
avoidance of his own peculiar failings, and in the cultivation of his
own peculiar strength. The technical career of the master is up to a
certain point always a matter of growth.
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