It is the record of the cause behind the outward effect of that action.
It is the record of fact. It is the recording of life.

To the on-looker, Art is the satisfaction of a need. It is the luxury
of the intellect. It is a renewal of love, energy, and effort in that
fugitive understanding companionship fusing the life of the on-
looker with the life of the artist (in the life of his motif) for a fleet-
ing instant. It is recreation. It is re-creation. :
Every action is the “‘effect’”’ of cause (or of causes). All existence
is made up of action. Action that is gradually built up by “cause’’
until it reaches its maximum “‘effect’’ and then slowly crumbles away
in the fusion of its identity with other “‘action’’ until with complete
fusion we find another completed action has taken place, and so on
ad infinitum.

Even a stone on the bare sand has, in the sense used here, action. If
it has been placed there by the wind and waves, it will have an en-
tirely different ‘‘action’” from that which it would have if idly
thrown there by some individual on the beach; and if it is coming up
from the rock layer beneath it will again have a different “action.”
That is, there will be a different force behind that action, though
the placing and environment of the stone—its shape and material—
may be the same in every case.

It is the Artist’s business to show the Action in that stone. Not just
the ‘‘effect’”” nor just the ‘‘cause,’’ but the unity, Action, ‘‘cause’’
and “effect.” The obvious place to find both together is at their
fusion——when ‘‘cause’” has just brought about, “‘effect’’ has just
“become,”’ and is therefore in the full process of “‘being’’ (being
one!). That is, when Action is at its fullest, having been built up
by ‘‘cause’”’ until it reaches its maximum “effect’’ and before it starts
slowly to crumble away. That is the moment at which the Artist
must visualize and find his Motif. That, in fact, is the only moment
at which he may do so. It is in that fleeting instant that Nature
balances all her forces—that she sends to the eye her ““Motif’’—her
perfect and complete emotional experience of ‘‘oneness’’ in line,.
form, colour, and mass expressing her perfect and complete action.
It is that action’s richest moment, that moment at which, once in
all eternity, all of Nature’s forces needed for that particular action,
are used.

And as in that fleeting instant she sends to us her Motif, that com-
plete ‘‘oneness’’ in her emotional experience of line, form, colour,
and mass, which portrays the cause and effect of her action—it is
then that the Artist must live, and move, and have his being in that
action that no foreign thought, no adulteration of the Motif may
creep in. It is then that the fully awakened, sensitive Artist recog-
nizes the emotional sensation he is receiving as a “‘Motif’’—or point

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