"Art isolates a thing from everything, that it may be unexpected, that it may be supernatural."

For the whole meaning of the strange thing called Art is merely this, that by copying a thing, by making it over again, and above all by making it over again with a slight difference, we can see something of the primary wonder of it, a spasm, as it were, of the enduring astonishment of God. Anyone, for instance, who has ever looked with certain feelings at a child's dolls'-house, knows the thing of which I speak. The very fact that the dolls'-house is small, makes us realise with surprise that houses can be so large. The very fact that it is not real makes us remember, with a sort of shock, that houses are real. We see the thing at second hand; and then only we realise it at first hand. In this the dolls'-house is the symbol and seed of the whole of art. Art, as I have said, has exactly the opposite aim to the aim of science. Science connects a thing with everything, that it may be natural and expected. Art isolates a thing from everything, that it may be unexpected, that it may be supernatural.

 -The Independent Review, Volume 5, February-April 1905