“True,” I said, “and yet I think that they too feel, or might be made to fed if it were brought home to them, this same antagonism between the nature of the stuff and the form that has been given to it.  The form will seem from this point of view something factitious and artificial given to the stuff, not indeed by themselves, but by one like themselves, and in their interest.  They will contrast, perhaps, as is often done, a picture of the landscape with the landscape Itself.  The picture, they will say, however beautiful, is not a ‘natural’ Good, not a real Good, not a Good in its own right; it is a kind of makeshift produced by human effort, beautiful, if you will, admirable, if you will, to be sought, to be cherished, to be loved in default of a better, with the best faculties of brain and soul, but still not that ultimate thing we wanted, that Good in and of itself, as well as through and for us, Good by its own nature apart from our interposition, self-moved, self-determined, self-dependent, and in which alone our desires could finally rest.—­Don’t you think that some such feeling may, perhaps, be at the bottom of Bartlett’s criticism of Art as unreal?”

Bartlett laughed.  “If so,” he said, “it is quite unknown to myself.  For to tell the truth, I have not understood a word that you have said.”

“Well,” I said, “in that case, at any rate you can’t disagree with me.  But what do the others think?” And I turned to Dennis and Leslie, for Wilson and Parry did not seem to be attending.  Leslie assented with enthusiasm.  But Dennis shook his head.

“I don’t know,” he said, “what to think about all that.  It seems to me rather irrelevant to the work of Art as such.”

“Perhaps,” I said, “but surely not to the work of Art as Good?  Or do you not agree with me that the true Good must be such purely of its own nature?”

“Perhaps so,” he replied; “it wants thinking over.  But in any case I agree with you so far, that I should never place the Good in Art.”

“In what then?”

“I should be much more inclined to place it in Knowledge.”

“In Knowledge!” I repeated.  “That seems to me very strange!”

“But why strange?” he said.  “Surely there is good authority for the view.  It was Aristotle’s for example, and Spinoza’s.”

“I know,” I replied, “and I used to think it was also mine.  But of late I have come to realize more clearly what Knowledge is; and now I see, or seem to see, that whatever its value may be, it is something that falls very far short of Good.”

“Why,” he said, “what is your idea of Knowledge?”

“You had better ask Wilson,” I replied, “it is he who has instructed me.”

“Very well,” he said, “I appeal to Wilson.”

And Wilson, nothing loth, enunciated his definition of Knowledge.

“Knowledge,” he said, “is the description and summing up in brief formulae of the routine of our perceptions.”