No doubt the great question for any man in regard to himself—if he is able and willing to put one so searching—is whether he is or is not on the way to aid in the fulfilment of the promise of life. It is a question hard to answer, for the promise of life grows ever greater in our eyes once we have begun to see it at all. There was a time when for our ancestors of the caves it must have called for little more than strength and skill, courage and perseverance, in attack or in defence and in the procuring of shelter, food and wives. The bitter struggle in which they were engaged was a real struggle for existence in which every man must fight for his own hand, or at best for his little group of near kindred. There were not many differences then between the practical demands of the daily life of men and those of the daily life of the hyenas or the wolves. But there were other differences, and they were great and significant. One in particular has left a wealth of evidence behind it, evidence graven and painted in certain caverns. There are bisons, for example, painted by some of the men whom we call primitive, or savage, which are of the truest art. There is no such difference and no such likeness between those bisons and the artistic work of to-day as there is between the flint-headed arrow and the machine-gun. The arrow and the gun are products of an intellectual ingenuity, practising and becoming expert through practice and concentrated on the external relations of thing with thing; the painting comes of a direct intuition of the reality and the essential beauty in a bison's life. They are alive for us, those bisons, and they are beautiful. Their creator was a true artist, able to throw himself into the object he wished to discover, to feel and to depict; and he was able to endow his picture with the bison's life and his own. If you are in aesthetic sympathy with him you can feel the creature he paints as you feel the man painting. The intellect that devised the arrow has always to travel onward by an accumulating process, from step to step; the intuition that felt the bison arrived at once. No doubt there is not only intellect but intuition in the arrow; and there is not only intuition but intellect in the painting; but the emphasis and the proportion are contrasted in the two.

Why did this primitive artist paint at all? There are those who suggest that he had some practical end in view to be reached by the magic of representation—an idea perhaps of thus ensuring luck for his hunting. But at least that can hardly be true of the graceful form and the conventional adornment he gave to some of his tools. It is far more likely that even if he began with magic and a practical end he went on to paint for the pure joy of it, the pure spiritual joy of inspired admiration glowing to a creative act, and winning admiration in its display. That is the manner of art—even to the delight in its being admired by those to whom it is made known—and this man's work is the work of an artist. I should say these men's work is the work of artists, for there were many of them in many generations. There was not merely a single eccentric genius—though even one would have sufficed us for a revelation. Here then, in these caverns, we have a kind of work done by many men, who, however much they looked for admiration from their fellows, worked in something of the self-forgetfulness of an artist; so we may presume. The man who pursued it did not in any lesser way profit by it (unless his fellows were self-forgetful enough to pay him for the joy he gave, and that only extends and strengthens the case); but he assuredly profited in his spirit, which there found its outlet as creative, there showed its self-forgetting love of something beyond self, there in consequence found its joy. The true artist paints or sings for the love of it, and because he must; and wins his joy, even though in and with the artist's pain, and the man's self-seeking. The spirit within him drives him on; no outward necessity, no carnal attraction, no mere self-seeking, is adequate to force or draw him. Art, however skilled and taught, however marred by human weakness, is spontaneous as love. We are in presence here of that of which only faint adumbrations can be discerned in any other creature than man. There are adumbrations; and there is at least a plain foreshadowing of love. But full and lasting self-forgetfulness is to be attained only in man, and true art and true love, like true joy, depend upon it.

The declared promise for the further advance of life in us demands and displays growth in self-forgetfulness. The man who strikes us as being above other men is one who shows us powers other men either have not or do not use, and uses them as other men very often do not use them. He is always stamped with the stamp of spirit. He is creative and he is self-forgetful. We do not really, or at least readily and spontaneously, admire any man who does things from self-interested motives. We may admire the things he does, but we do not admire the man. If, for example, we are religious ourselves, and however much we wish other people to be so too, we do not admire the man who, we know, is religious because he sees his profit in religion either for this world or the next. We do not admire the kind of artist who clutches at beauty because it feeds that deadly appetite which is no other than aesthetic greed. We want him to admire a beautiful thing for its own sake, because it is what it is and is altogether admirable. And no lover holds our respect if for him his beloved is merely a curio to be proud of or a satisfaction of the flesh. We say justly that he is only a lover of himself. To command our admiration a man must stretch out his desire and enlarge his interests beyond the boundary of self; he must give himself, not necessarily without reward—for the joy set before him often comes—but without making the attainment of it a motive spring.

That simple fact proves the spirits that we are. And it is shown in strange places. Even the leader of the gang of thieves wins admiration by his carelessness of personal gain. Robin Hood is always both honourable and honoured, though he steals.

Think then how much life had gained in power of expression when the painters of the caves were reached. Yet the philosopher reminds us that indeed this gain began with the beginning of love. Self-forgetfulness began before man came to show himself called by spirit and life to die daily. Yet in and by him they call with an emphasis and solemnity new in the tale of creation. He is to die to the struggle and the desire to live; he is to give himself and grow by self-giving. That is his proper way.

Not without reason does the philosopher tell us that the supreme secret of life begins to be revealed in the plant which surrenders its own life for its seed. But if we ignore the far plainer voice of man, how can we hear what has been whispered by the plant? If we are made mechanical by slavery to our own tools how can we discern either? And unless we listen with the ears of our intuitive soul we shall never hear what it is that they are saying. Unless we immerse ourselves in the current of the spirit, unless we confide ourselves to the life that would bear us on, we shall miss the fulfilment of our promise. The whole long weary road of life has been travelled on our behalf in vain, unless through the adventure of self-giving we become unceasing spiritual creators of greater selves than those we are now.