with a lady, and she said to me—­’That isn’t my idea of a horse.’  ’No’—­I answered—­’it’s Tintoret’s.  If it were your idea of a horse, why should you look at it?  You look at a picture to get the artist’s idea.’  But that isn’t the truth about art either.  The artist doesn’t try to substitute his own particular for yours.  He tries to communicate to you that universal which he has experienced, because it is to him a universal, not his own, but all men’s, and he wishes to realize it by sharing it with all men.  His faith, though he may never have consciously expressed it to himself, is in this universal which, because it is a universal, can be communicated to all men.  His effort is based on that faith.  He speaks because he believes all men can hear, if they will.

So the effort of the audience must be to hear and not to distract him with their particular demands.  They must not, for instance, demand that he shall remind them of what they have found pleasant in actual life.  They must not complain of him that he does not paint pretty women for them, or compose bright cheerful tunes.  They are not to him particular persons to be tickled according to their particular tastes, but mankind to whom he wishes to communicate the universal he has experienced.

So, if there is an actual audience listening for that universal and clearing their minds of their own egotistical demands, then art will flourish and the artist will be encouraged to communicate that universal which he has experienced.  But if particular audiences demand this or that and are not happy until they get it, if they say to him—­Tickle my senses—­Persuade me that all is for the best in the world as I like it; that prosperous people like myself have a right to be prosperous; that I am a fine fellow because I once fell in love; that all who disagree with me are wicked and absurd—­then you will have the kind of art you have now, in the theatre, in the picture gallery, in the cinema, in the novel; yes, and in your buildings, your cups and saucers, your pots and pans even.  For in the very arts of use you demand that the craftsman shall provide you with what you demand, and as cheap as possible; because you do not understand that he should express himself, you do not understand also that his expression is worth having and that he ought to be paid for it.  In the very pattern on a tea-cup, if it is worth having at all, there is the communication of that universal which the artist has experienced.  It is there to remind you of itself whenever you drink tea, to bring the sacrament of the universal into everything as if it were music accompanying and heightening all our common actions; but if you want a fashionable tea-cup cheap, you will get that, and you will not get anything expressed or communicated with it.  You will be shut up in yourself and your own particularity and ugliness.  If we want art we must know how we should think and feel and act so as to encourage the artist to produce it.