ART FOR ART'S SAKE What is Art?
Art is a mystery--something which responds to a special sense, peculiar to the human race.

This is ordinarily called the esthetic sense, but that is an inexact term, for esthetic sense signifies a sense of the beautiful and what is esthetic is not necessarily beautiful.

Sense of style would be better.
Some of the savage races have this sense of style, for their arms and utensils show a remarkable feeling for style, which they lose by contact with civilization.
By art let us understand, if you please, the Fine Arts alone, but including decorative art.

Music ought to be included.
I shall astonish most of my readers, when I say that very few people understand music.

For most people it is, as Victor Hugo said, an exhalation of art--something for the ear as perfume is for the olfactory sense, a source of vague sensations, necessarily unformed as all sensations are.