The name is absent

20 The Rice Institute Pamphlet

shoot,”—as the terzina of father Dante has it,—doubt, which
is what drives the intellect of man “from mount to mount.”
The doctrine of art as intuition, as fancy, as form, now gives
rise to an ulterior (I have not said an “ultimate”) problem,
which is no longer one of opposition and distinction toward
physics, hedonistic, ethic and logic, but the field of images
itself, which sets in doubt the capacity of the image to de-
fine the character of art and is in reality occupied with the
mode of separating the genuine from the spurious image,
and of enriching in this way the concept of the image and
of art. What function (it is asked) can a world of pure
images possess in the spirit of man, without philosophical,
historical, religious or scientific value, and without even
moral or hedonistic value? What is more vain than to dream
with open eyes in life, which demands, not only open eyes,
but an open mind and a nimble spirit? Pure images! But to
nourish oneself upon pure images is called by a name of
little honour, “to dream,” and there is usually added to
this the epithet of “idle.” It is a very insipid and inconclu-
sive thing; can it ever be art? Certainly, we sometimes
amuse ourselves with the reading of some sensational ro-
mance of adventure, where images follow images in the most
various and unexpected way; but we thus enjoy ourselves in
moments of fatigue, when we are obliged to kill time, and
with a full consciousness that such stuff is not art. Such in-
stances are of the nature of a pastime, a game; but were art
a game or a pastime, it would fall into the wide arms of
hedonistic doctrine, ever open to receive it. And it is a
utilitarian and hedonistic need that impels us sometimes to
relax the bow of the mind and the bow of the will, and to
stretch ourselves, allowing images to follow one another in
our memory, or combining them in quaint forms with the aid

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