"The thought that makes the work of art," says Mr. John La Farge in a
discussion of the art of painting of singular insight and
intelligence, "the thought which in its highest expression we call
genius, is not reflection or reflective thought. The thought which
analyses has the same deficiencies as our eyes. It can fix only one
point at a time. It is necessary for it to examine each element of
consideration, and unite it to others, to make a whole. But the
_logic of free life, which is the logic of art_, is like that
logic of one using the eye, in which we make most wonderful
combinations of momentary adaptation, by co-ordinating innumerable
memories, by rejecting those that are useless or antagonistic; and all
without being aware of it, so that those especially who most use the
eye, as, for instance, the painter or the hunter, are unaware of more
than one single, instantaneous action." This is a very happy
formulation of a fundamental principle in art; indeed, it brings
before us the essential quality of art, its illustration of thought in
the order not of a formal logic, but of the logic of free life.
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