Note † — Chapter XXIII · Tolstoy’s Infection Theory

It is strange that speculations upon the arts should so rarely have begun from the most obvious fact about them. Mr Roger Fry, in his interesting Retrospect, records the shock with which Tolstoy’s insistence upon communication struck contemporary students in England. “What remained of immense importance was the idea that a work of art was not the record of beauty already existent elsewhere, but the expression of an emotion felt by the artist and conveyed to the spectator.”† It will be useful to examine Tolstoy’s account. He formulates his theory† as follows: “Art becomes more or less infectious in consequence of three conditions: