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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from In the South Seas by Robert Louis Stevenson: the most dull of man's inventions, and the spectator yawns under
its length as at a college lecture or a parliamentary debate. But
the Gilbert Island dance leads on the mind; it thrills, rouses,
subjugates; it has the essence of all art, an unexplored imminent
significance. Where so many are engaged, and where all must make
(at a given moment) the same swift, elaborate, and often arbitrary
movement, the toil of rehearsal is of course extreme. But they
begin as children. A child and a man may often be seen together in
a maniap': the man sings and gesticulates, the child stands before
him with streaming tears and tremulously copies him in act and
sound; it is the Gilbert Island artist learning (as all artists
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