Creative Effort. An Essay in Affirmation

Sydney: Art in Australia, 1920. A beautiful copy of Lindsay's famous work covering the meaning of life and art, drawing on philosophical concepts. Signed on front endpaper by Lindsay with a full page original etching tipped in

"All who would examine the problem of Life must first remove from it the problem of Existence. It is the confusion between these two things that has confused all human morality.
By Existence one comprehends the body, and all that serves to supply its needs, to keep its machinery active.
By Life one understands all that goes beyond the body, the impulse that we vaguely call the mind, the soul, the intellectual process.
The body is the poor relation of the mind, the servant, the vehicle. In serving its needs, one supplies movement; in servings its senses, one supplies material for the intellectual process.
Between these functions, high and low, one must seek a direction for Man's destiny.
To find that direction is to find the High Morality.
In short, to find the direction of Life."

Creative vision, because it is the highest expression of morality, because it is the highest expression the human mind is capable of, is the most difficult vision to describe in words; not only because it exists to express a hidden symbol which other minds cannot have, but because on earth its expression is a condition of being, of seeking, of developing. There is no point at which it stops at a final achievement, so that we might say, "Here, then, is at last the standard from which we may judge all other effort."

[Norman Lindsay]. Edition limited to 120 copies, bound in original paper boards with cloth spine, 145 mm x 228 mm, 296 pages, original signed etching tipped-in; a fine copy.