achievement of personality, the possession of self, the conquest of the world by means of thought and image. Ibsen's exhortation—"Be yourself"—is absurd. Every one of us is himself, whether he will or no; and when one imitates another it simply means that the instinct of imitation is part of himself. Leonardo da Vinci gives us something better than an exhortation: the glorious example of a life fair, rich, and intimate, a life which seeks ever to surpass itself, to become deeper, more individual, more spiritual.
In the name of this lover of fair forms, who hid that which he loved and that which he discovered, we may proclaim a new age of the spirit, an age for which a little band of his younger brothers is seeking to prepare the way.
Above our common life, outside the throng of those who have not ears to hear, beyond the little steaming ring wherein men seek the means of sustenance, let us speed our hearts toward the master of shadows and of smiles.
