108
The Law is for All
And he must love this chosen Form, love it with fearful fer­
vour; it is the face of his Fate that craves his kiss, and in her eyes 
Enigma blazes and smoulders; she is his death, her body his coffin 
where he may rot and stink, or writhe in damned dreams, self­
slain, or rise in incorruption self-renewed, immortal and identical, 
fulfilling himself wholly in and by her, splashing all space with 
sparkling stars his sons and daughters, each star an image of his 
own infinity made manifest, mood after mood, by her magick to 
mould him when his passion makes molten her metal.
Thus then must every Artist work. First, he must find himself. 
Next, he must find the form that is fitted to express himself. Next, 
he must love that form, as a form, adoring it, understanding it, 
and mastering it with most minute attention, until it (as it seems) 
adapts itself to him with eager elasticity, and answers accurately 
and aptly, with the unconscious automatism of an organ perfected 
by evolution, to his most subtle suggestion, to his most giant 
gesture.
Next, he must give himself utterly up to that Form; he must 
annihilate himself absolutely in every act of love, labouring day 
and night to lose himself in lust for it, so that he leave no atom 
unconsumed in the furnace of their frenzy, as did of old his Father 
that begat him. He must realize himself wholly in the integration 
of the infinite Pantheon of images; for if he fail to formulate one 
facet of himself, by lack thereof will he know himself falsely.
There is of course no ultimate difference between the Artist as 
here delineated and him who follows the “Way of the Tao,” 
though the latter finds perfection in his existing relation with his 
environment, and the former creates a private perfection of a 
peculiar and secondary character. We might call one the son, the 
other the daughter, of the Absolute.
But the Artist, though his Work, the images of himself in the 
Form that he loves, is less perfect than the Work of his Father, 
since he can but express one particular point of view and that by 
means of one type of technique, is not to be thought useless on 
that account, any more than an Atlas is useless because it presents 
by means of certain crude conventions a fraction of the facts of 
geography.