Unconsciousness is childishness in art, and leads to vagueness of meaning, to the perpetuation of personal idiosyncrasies; and while a larger consciousness may be induced from the mind side, positive and overwhelming inspiration will be needed to overcome habitual limitations. A musician must love music itself, as well as its meanings, and a voice cannot be made the best of by one who does not love its music. Self-consciousness represents the stage of work and endeavor where faults are being overcome, power enlarged, and new forms of activity mastered. This may be at first a hindrance to spontaneity, and seem to hamper the imagination; but as facility is acquired joy comes back, and the joy of conquest with the adustment of means to ends is a stage of self-consciousness dangerous for the egotist, but is inspiration and incitement to larger effort. This is a stage where many artists remain--most of the time. But the super-conscious stage is that state in which with perfected facility and power of self-mastery the doing becomes lost in supreme realization; and right action, now become habitual, is forgotten in the full consciousness of oneness with the ideal. Then the voice--or the artist--embodies the ideal, becomes the part for the time being, and is, as we say, inspired.
We may forget what we are doing, but we must be able to know, or there will be nothing worth while to forget! The danger of the mechanical idea--the extreme technician's notion that the sign is enough--is that the person may become an automaton and inhibit the power of real feeling in himself; and though he may perform admirably and win the applause of some critics who love form unduly, he fails in the great issue and wins only superficial success or fails utterly, without seeing why. The real experience has a magnetism of its own and will win above mere technicality whenever it has the opportunity.
Some believe that psychic response to the sign is desirable. This develops merely sensitiveness, reflex action, and does not enlarge the power of feeling nor encourage the motive and the real heart. The desirability of emotional response quickly reaches its limit; and while it may be feeling, it does not spring from an adequate cause, so has not the dignity and sweep of absolute sincerity. We must have _motif_ first, then technique to adapt and adjust expression and to develop facility in the active agents. We want the Real, idealized by Art, and the Ideal, made real and tangible by Art, the Revealer!