66 The Rice Institute Pamphlet
tanry; the artist no longer serves it, but it serves the private
and futile interests of the artist as the vilest of slaves.
Nevertheless, objection has been taken to the idea of the
circle in general, which affords so much aid in making clear
the connection of dependence and independence of art and
of the other spiritual forms, on the ground that it thinks the
work of the spirit as a tiresome and melancholy doing and
undoing, a monotonous turning upon itself, not worth tire
trouble of effecting. Certainly there is no metaphor but
leaves some side open to parody and caricature; but these,
when they have gladdened us for a moment, oblige us to
return seriously to the thought expressed in the metaphor.
And the thought is not that of a sterile repetition of going
and corning, but a continuous enrichment in the going of the
going and coming of the coming. The last term, which again
becomes the first, is not the old first, but presents itself with
a multiplicity and precision of concepts, with an experience
of life lived, and even of works contemplated, which was
wanting to the old first term; and it affords material for a
more lofty, more refined, more complex and more mature
art. Thus, instead of being a perpetually even revolution,
the idea of the circle is nothing but the true philosophical
idea of progress, of the perpetual growth of the spirit and of
reality in itself, where nothing is repeated, save the form of
the growth; unless it should be objected to a man walking,
that his walking is a standing still, because he always moves
his legs in the same time!
Another objection, or rather another movement of rebel-
lion against the same idea, is frequently to be observed,
though not clearly self-conscious: the restlessness, existing
in some or several, the endeavour to break and to surpass
the circularity that is a law of fife, and to attain to a region