“Except when I overworked myself, then I was mentally tired, my spirit not satisfied—I got wobbly, like any one else.”
“Now what do you do?” asked Adele, in thorough sympathy, her lovely black eyes, full of intelligence, meeting those of the venerable philosopher in art.
“What do I do, my child? What do I do?”
“Therein lies the secret of my life.”
XXII
THE SECRET OF A LIFE
ALL waited reverently until the venerable artist was ready to explain. They watched him take off his spectacles and polish them, so that his physical sight might aid his mental vision, and his spiritual insight assert its potency. He stepped across his studio toward one of his superb paintings—a landscape in which a wealth of rich coloring streamed forth from behind dark, luxuriant foliage. At first sight “the related masses of color rather than the linear extensions” was what appealed to the beholder, as if, as a work of art, it was not intended to instruct or edify, but to awaken an emotion. Le Roy stood with one hand held forth toward the picture; his other, as the Doctor noticed, rested naturally, unostentatiously, upon a sacred volume lying upon a table at his left, as if he wished to feel in physical touch with that book while he spoke.
“You ask me what I do in the final resort—what I do when both science and art grow weak and unstable.
“I retire to be alone, take only certain books with me, and write, applying the principles I have already experienced as true in art to the purest of all forms of reasoning, theology—religious truths scientifically stated. Speaking of and with God in nature is the saving, the salvation of my art. The impressions I then receive are what you see in my pictures and ask me to explain. That is the feeling you recognize and the sentiment you appreciate. You see and appreciate precisely in accordance with your own experience in personal religion, no more, no less. You are part of the truth in unity just as I am; we all have the soul for the beautiful, the beautiful soul within us. One Father breathed into each man when he became a living soul in beauty of mind and spirit. In a way, I worship through my paintings.
“I know I have always had this power; all of us, when at our best, know we have it in some degree, creative or responsive—but I did not always understand the principles which govern it. Science now assures me it is the truth. The unit law of impression, you now see, demands the three in one, Science, Art, and Communion with the Holy Spirit of Truth, God in nature.
“People ask me why I keep on painting, old as I am, and I answer: Simply because of a constraining force from beyond me, from without, something which lifts me higher and higher toward finding the very best forms of truthful expression. Of course this development must depend in a measure on physical strength and individual endowment. I am obliged to watch myself that I do not overwork, and when I grow weary of painting then I open the Book—the Source of Wisdom. This gives me the only point of view, except the artistic, which interests me—in fact, art and religion are very closely connected.”