Page:Points of View (1924).pdf/136

 successful, is a personality. As personality is the soul of art, to state it—that is, to produce its characteristics in critical terms—is, as Mr. Brownell declares, "the crown of critical achievement."

It is something to have formulated such a method. That he has applied it with brilliant success to revealing, in turn, the characteristics of the French people, of French painting and sculpture, of the literature of England, and finally of the literature of America, assures to Mr. Brownell, I do not doubt, a secure and distinguished place in the history of our criticism. But if my own analysis has been of any avail, I have disclosed a personality which requires only to be known to them in order to make a wider and wider appeal to all those members of the younger generation who feel any concern in the "study of perfection." There are other living American apostles of culture who profess the power of initiation into that liberty of the spirit which results from knowing and following the law of our own higher natures; but there is no other, as it seems to me, of anything like his eminence, who can give to our somewhat fiercely realistic young people so much which they are now prepared to receive.

No apostle of culture, no one but a king of the South Sea Islands, could conceivably give to the left wing of the Party of Nature all that it desires. But Mr. Brownell has occupied himself for fifty years with that crucial problem which has vexed the best minds of the world since the eighteenth century and which is still before us as the central