“I don’t see that it is at all!” cried Leslie, “and, even if it were, you have no right to assume that that is the reality of it.  How do you know that its reality doesn’t consist precisely in the Ideal, as all poets and philosophers have thought?  And, in that case, Art would be more real than what you would call Reality, because it would represent the essence of the world, the thing it would like to be if it could, and is, so far as it can.  That was Aristotle’s view, anyhow.”

“Then all I can say is,” replied Bartlett, “that I don’t agree with Aristotle!  Anyhow, even if Art represents what the world would like to be, it certainly doesn’t represent what it is.”

“I don’t know; surely it does, sometimes,” said Parry, “for instance, there’s the realistic novel!”

“Oh, that!” cried Ellis.  “That’s the most ideal of all—­only it’s apt to be such bad idealism!”

“Anyhow,” said Bartlett, “in so far as it is real, it’s not Art, in the sense, in which we have been using the word.”

I began to be afraid that we should drift away into a discussion of realism in Art.  So, to recall the conversation to the point at issue, I turned to Bartlett, and said: 

“Your criticism seems to me to be fair enough as far as it goes.  You say that the world of Art is a world by itself; that side by side of it, and unaffected by it, moves the world of what you call real life.  And that whatever be the relation between the two worlds, whether we are to say that the one imitates the other, or interprets it, or idealizes it, it does not, in any case, set it aside.  Art is a refuge from life, not a substitute for it; a little blessed island in the howling sea of fact.  Its Good is thus only a partial Good; whereas the true Good, I suppose, would be somehow universal.”

“Still,” said Leslie, “as far as it goes it is a Good without blemish.”

“I am not so sure,” I said, “even of that.  I am inclined to think that Bartlett’s criticism, if we squeeze it tight, will yield us more than we have yet got out of it—­perhaps even more than he knows is in it”

“You don’t mean to say,” cried Bartlett, “that you are coming over to my side!”

“Yes,” I said, “like a spy to the enemy’s camp to see where your strength really lies.”

“I have no objection,” he replied, “if it ends in your discovering new defences for me.”

“Well,” I said, “we shall see.  Anyhow, this is what I had in my mind.  We were saying just now that when people talk about ‘real life,’ the ‘real world,’ and so on, they are not always very clear as to what they mean.  But one thing, I think, perhaps they have obscurely in their heads—­that the Real is something from which you cannot escape; something which forces itself upon you without reference to choice or desire, having a nature of its own which may or may not conform, more or less to yours, but in any case is distinct and independent.  That is why