Whether you know life depends on whether you can appreciate many things. So far, we've been talking about the creation and appreciation of art. To conclude this section, I propose a brief explanation of the relationship between art and life. In the opening chapter, I emphasize the distinction between aesthetic attitude and practical attitude, and the distance between art and practical life. If I had said so far, you might misunderstand me for treating art and life as two separate things. That's not what I meant. Life is a multifaceted but mutually harmonious whole, to analyze it, we say that a part is practical activity, a part is scientific activity, a part is aesthetic activity, for the sake of justice, the original should be this separation; But let us not forget that the full life is found in the average development of these three activities. They are distinguishable but not in conflict. "Real life" has a narrower meaning than life as a whole. The common mistake is to regard them as equal, to assume that art, being separate from "real life," has no value in the whole of life. In order to maintain the status of art, some people want to force it into the small scope of "actual life". Such people not only misunderstand art, but also fail to understand life. We regard real life as a fragment of the whole life, so when we affirm the distance between art and real life, we do not affirm the estrangement between art and the whole life. Strictly speaking, there is no art without life, because art is the expression of interest, and the origin of interest is in life; On the contrary, there is no life without art, because all creation and appreciation are artistic activities, without creation, without appreciation of life is a self-contradictory term. Life is an art in a broader sense. Every man's life history is his own work. This kind of work can be artistic or not, just like the same kind of hard stone, one person can carve it into a great statue, while another person can not make it "synthesizer", the difference is all in sex and cultivation. He who knows life is an artist, and his life is a work of art. Living a whole life is like writing an article. Every perfect life has the beauty of a good article. First, a good essay must be a complete organism in which the whole and parts are closely related and cannot be moved or added or subtracted slightly. The whole spirit can be found in every word and sentence. For example, Tao Yuanming's poem Drinking Wine was originally written as "Leisurely seeing the South Mountains under the east hedge of picking chrysanthemums", but later people misprinted the word "see" as the word "Wang", thus completely losing the expression of nature and things meeting in the original. This artistic integrity is called "personality" in life. Every perfect life is the expression of character. The big and the big and the big and the small and the voice and the smile and the appearance, none of them conflict with the whole personality. Refusing to bend over to the village children for the five-bucket rice is a proper passage in Tao Yuanming's life history. If he misses this subsection, he will lose Tao Yuanming. When he was sent to prison, he refused to escape, and when he was executed, he told his neighbors to pay the debt of a chicken. This was a proper passage in Socrates' life history, otherwise he would have lost his name as Socrates. This kind of life history can make people regard it as a picture to be amazed, it is a masterpiece of art. Secondly, "rhetoric is sincere" is the key of the article, a poem or a beautiful article must be the ultimate deep feeling, stored in the middle and then form outside, there is no any false. Interest is originally the result of empathy. The scenery is changing, and the interest is growing. I have my personality, things also have the personality of things, and this personality changes and grows and develops at any time. The scene which each person sees at one moment, and the interest which each scene arouses at one moment, is of its own peculiarity, and cannot be exactly the same as the scene which another person sees at another moment, and the interest which another scene arouses at another moment. The slightest difference is the most subtle. In this endless interest we can see the nature of life. If this kind of life is revealed in language, it is a good article. Show it in words and deeds, is a happy history of life. Article avoid vulgar, life also avoid vulgar. Vulgar is not their own nature and conform to the old rules of others. Dongshi has no heart, strong learning holding heart eyebrow posture, can only attract disgust. In the west is creation, in the east is platitude. Cliches arise from the dryness of life, which is the expression of hypocrisy. "Hypocrisy" is "ugliness," Croce has said. "Popular water, natural pattern", the article is so, so is the beauty of life. What kind of position, what kind of person, what kind of feeling, what kind of demeanour, what kind of words and deeds, so that people can feel at first sight of their harmony and integrity, this is the artistic life.