432 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



a special class of arts. There are arts which deal with wood, stone and 

 iron (lifeless elements), arts that deal with living things, and arts that 

 deal with organized groups of men, or societies. Hence there are three 

 grand divisions of the arts corresponding to the three grand divisions of 

 the material world. Simplifying our terminology, we may call them 

 the physical arts, the vital arts and the social arts. 



The physical arts are relatively the lowest. The material upon 

 which they are employed is passive. It ( stays put.' The principles 

 underlying these arts are extremely simple. The mechanical prin- 

 ciples, for instance, are seven in number. They may indeed be re- 

 duced to two — the lever and the inclined plane. Historically probably, 

 as well as analytically, the art of making and using tools comes first. 

 The primitive man who chipped his arrow-head from a piece of flint, 

 and fashioned the shaft of his arrow from a stick of wood, employed 

 art. He was an artist. If in the practise of his art he manifested no 

 sense of beauty, it was due to the pressing demands of the more 

 imperative desires rather than to the absence of the esthetic sense. 

 What birds and beasts, and even insects, possess must have been present 

 in the lowest of men. Archeology shows that even the cave-dweller 

 tried his hand occasionally at the purely decorative arts. But the first 

 arts were the hand arts — manufacture, in the strict sense of that word. 



As intelligence increased, and inventive genius was applied, hand- 

 making grew into machine-making. The machine is a combination of 

 tools in the operation of which a natural force, like wind, water, steam 

 or electricity, is usually employed. The machine arts are more com- 

 plex than the hand arts. Their social potentiality is greater. Their 

 object, like that of the hand arts, is not necessarily the production of 

 articles of vulgar utility only. It may be idealistic in the highest 

 degree. The various fine arts must fall under one division or the other. 

 Hand-making (manufacture) and machine-making (machino-facture) 

 completely cover the realm of the physical arts. Under the first are 

 the manual occupations (handicrafts), and under the second the 

 mechanical occupations, imperfectly designated ' the trades.' 



Now, the physical arts that minister to the vulgar wants, or needs, 

 of mankind have reached a high degree of perfection. They are to-day 

 the theater for the display of the highest reaches of inventive genius. 

 A watch, a locomotive, a printing-press, are marvels of ingenuity. We 

 do not wonder that untutored men have worshiped a watch as a su- 

 perior being. A printing-press, working automatically, will print, fold 

 and deliver twelve thousand twenty-four-page papers in an hour. 

 Machines in almost every industry turn out articles which in quantity, 

 regularity and delicacy of form could not possibly be produced by hand. 

 But the object of these arts has been quantity rather than quality, 

 mercantile utility rather than beauty. Salability has been their main 



