Since man lives by reshaping his physical background to serve his purpose,
since he must first define and then create his values—a rational man needs a
concretized projection of these values, an image in whose likeness he will
re-shape the world and himself. Art gives him that image; it gives him the
experience of seeing the full, immediate, concrete reality of his distant
goals.
Since a rational man’s ambition is unlimited, since his pursuit and achievement
of values is a lifelong process—and the higher the values, the harder the
struggle—he needs a moment, an hour or some period of time in which he can
experience the sense of his completed task, the sense of living in a universe
where his values have been successfully achieved. It is like a moment of rest,
a moment to gain fuel to move farther. Art gives him that fuel; the pleasure
of contemplating the objectified reality of one’s own sense of life is the
pleasure of feeling what it would be like to live in one’s ideal world.