It is true that
the imagined world creates special conditions for emotion, and that the
will does not act in respect to that world; but does this imply any
radical difference in the emotion, or does it draw after it the
consequence that the will does not act at all? Checked emotion, emotion
dying in its own world, is common in life; and so, too, is contemplation
as a mode of approach to beauty, as in landscape, or even in human
figures where there is no thought of any other possession than the
presence of beauty before the eye and soul; escape, too, into a sphere
of impersonality, in the love of nature or the spectacle of life, is a
common refuge. Art does not give us new faculties, generate unknown
habits, or in any way change our nature; it presents to us a new world
only, toward which our mental behaviour is the same as in the rest of
life. Why, then, should emotion, the most powerful element in life, be
regarded as a fruitless thing in that ideal art which has thus far
appeared as a life in purer energy and higher intensity of being than
life itself?
The distinction between emotion depicted and that felt in response must
be kept in mind to avoid confusion, for both sorts are present at the
same time.
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