Page:The Criterion - Volume 4.djvu/76

 science, the reasons, historical and philosophical, that we have for assuming that scientific truth is true.'

'H'm,' said Gregory.

'And concurrently a series on the meaning and point of art. Start right from the beginning in both cases. Quite a good idea, don't you think?'

'Quite,' said Gregory. One of his monocular glances had been received with a smile of invitation; she was ugly, unfortunately, and obviously professional. Haughtily he glared past her, as though she were not there.

'But whether Tolstoy was right,' Spiller was meditatively saying, 'I never feel sure. Is it true, what he says, that the function of art is the conveyance of emotion? In part, I should say, but not exclusively, not exclusively.' He shook his large head.

'I seem to be getting tipsier,' said Gregory, more to himself than to his companion. He still walked correctly, but he was conscious, too conscious, of the fact. And the suspicion of queasiness was becoming well founded.

Spiller did not hear or, hearing, ignored the remark. 'For me,' he continued, 'the main function of art is to impart knowledge. The artist knows more than the rest of us. He is born knowing more about his soul than we know of ours, and more about the relations existing between his soul and the cosmos. He anticipates what will be common knowledge in a higher state of development. Most of our moderns are primitives compared to the most advanced of the dead.'

'Quite,' said Gregory, not listening. His thoughts were elsewhere, with his eyes.

'Moreover,' Spiller went on, 'he can say what he knows, and say it in such a way that our own rudimentary, incoherent, unrealized knowledge of what he talks about falls into a kind of pattern—like iron filings under the influence of the magnet.'

There were three of them—ravishingly, provocatively