20 ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM*

fectly accomplished, who sees and hears, and is able to»
retain the presentation most complete.

The artist has, indeed, a sense almost of terror lest
the vision should be lost before he is able to impress it
upon his empirical consciousness. It is owing to the same
cause that we feel the sense of irreparable loss which is
associated with the destruction of a work of real art; for
by such destruction something has been taken out of the-
circle of our ordinary consciousness, which perhaps can
never be restored to it.

It is said of a certain famous craftsman that, when
designing, he seemed not to be making, but merely to be
outlining a pattern that he already saw upon the paper
before him. The true artist does not ' compose' (put-
together) his picture, but i sees ' it; his desire is to re-
present his vision in the material terms of line and
colour. To the great painter such pictures come conti-
nually, often too rapidly and too confusedly to be*
caught and disentangled. Could he but control his mental
vision, define and hold it! It is here that the relation
between the methods of the Indian worshipper and the
Indian artist becomes significant.

" Fickle is the mind, forward, forceful, and stiff; I
deem it as hard to check as is the wind." Yet by " con-
stant labour and passionlessness it may be held," and this-
concentration of mental vision has been from long ago the
very method of Indian religion, and the control of thought
its ideal of worship. It is thus that the Hindu worships,
daily his Ishta Devata, the special aspect of divinity that is
to him all and more than the Patron Saint is to the Catho-
lic. Simple men may worship such an one as Ganesar
not far,away ; some,can make the greater
.N&tara$a; aand only for