For the artist stands nearest, not farthest from his contemporaries.

He is not, however, a mere medium in their hands, not a mere secretary or recorder of their ideas and feelings.

He is separated from them in the clearness of his vision of the significance of their activities, the ends towards which they are moving, the ideas which they are working out; but, in the exact degree of his greatness, he is one with them in sympathy, experience, and comprehension.

They live for him, and he lives with them; they work out ideas in the logic of free life, and he clarifies, interprets, and illustrates those ideas.

The world is not saved _by_ the remnant, as Matthew Arnold held; it is saved _through_ the remnant.