[The German painter Kurt] Schwitter's exaltation of the grossest material to the rank of art, to a "cathedral" (in which the rubbish would leave no room for a human being) faithfully followed the old alchemical tenet according to which the sought-for precious object is to be found in filth. Kandinsky expressed the same ideas when he wrote: "Everything that is dead quivers. Not only the things of poetry, stars, moon, wood, flowers, but even a white trouser button glittering out of a puddle in the street.... Everything has a secret soul, which is silent more often than it speaks."
What the artists, like the alchemists, probably did not realize was the psychological fact that they were projecting part of their psyche into matter or inanimate objects. Hence the "mysterious animation" that entered into such things, and the great value attached even to rubbish. They projected their own darkness, their earthly shadow, a psychic content that they and their time had lost and abandoned.