And who can understand the growth of the United States, unless the whole of modern history is seen as a background and unless the ideas of state philosophy which have built up the American democracy are grasped in their connection with the whole story of European political thought in preceding centuries?  The scholar may turn to natural or to social events, to waves or trees or men:  every process and action in the world gains interest for him only by being connected with other things and events.  Every point which he marks is the nodal point for numberless relations.  To grasp a fact in the sense of scholarly knowledge means to see it in all its connections, and the work of the scholar is not simply to hold the fact as he becomes aware of it but to trace the connections and to supplement them by his thought until a completed system of interrelated facts in science or in history is established.

Now we are better prepared to recognize the characteristic function of the artist.  He is doing exactly the opposite of what the scholar is aiming at.  Both are changing and remolding the given thing or event in the interest of their ideal aims.  But the ideal aim of beauty and art is in complete contrast to the ideal aim of scholarly knowledge.  The scholar, we see, establishes connections by which the special thing loses all character of separateness.  He binds it to all the remainder of the physical and social universe.  The artist, on the contrary, cuts off every possible connection.  He puts his landscape into a frame so that every possible link with the surrounding world is severed.  He places his statue on a pedestal so that it cannot possibly step into the room around it.  He makes his persons speak in verse so that they cannot possibly be connected with the intercourse of the day.  He tells his story so that nothing can happen after the last chapter. The work of art shows us the things and events perfectly complete in themselves, freed from all connections which lead beyond their own limits, that is, in perfect isolation.

Both the truth which the scholar discovers and the beauty which the artist creates are valuable; but it is now clear that the value in both cases lies not in the mere repetition of the offerings of reality.  There is no reason whatever for appreciating a mere imitation or repetition of that which exists in the world.  Neither the scholar nor the artist could do better than nature or history.  The value in both cases lies just in the deviation from reality in the service of human desires and ideals.  The desire and ideal of the scholar is to give us an interconnected world in which we understand everything by its being linked with everything else; and the desire and ideal of the artist in every possible art is to give us things which are freed from the connection of the world and which stand before us complete in themselves.  The things of the outer world have thousandfold ties with nature and history.  An object becomes beautiful when it is delivered from these ties, and in order to secure this result we must take it away from the background of reality and reproduce it in such a form that it is unmistakably different from the real things which are enchained by the causes and effects of nature.