152 MASON — PJPENING OF THOUGHTS IN COMMON. [April 9, 



agencies of enjoyment accounts for otherwise inexplicable concur- 

 rences in art expression. The foundation of art, as of all other 

 human actions, is laid in nature. That artists without consulting 

 one another should copy this or that feature of the world around 

 them is not surprising. 



But art is limited in execution. Tennyson's prayer, 



" I would that my tongue could utter 

 The thoughts that arise in me," 



has been breathed by every artist that ever lived. Fatigued with 

 failure he falls back on his fellow-workers, on the habits of the 

 guild, on conventionalism, which is art-methods in common. 

 It is wonderful how far and wide, and how long these survive. 

 When a student of form in design, familiar with scrolls and frets in 

 Grecian art, discovers the same forms wrought out on Pima Indian 

 basketry and lacework, he lifts his hands with surprise. The eth- 

 nologist knows that the Indian woman has not necessarily held 

 converse with the countrymen of Phidias. He realizes that the 

 Pima woman is in the preparatory school, of which the Greek 

 artists were full graduates. Once upon a time Grecian women 

 wove into perishable basketry {vAvaazpa^ forms that have never 

 died and which their descendants fixed imperishably in marble. 



Besides the throng of specially endowed creators of art forms 

 cooperating to their origin and perpetuation, there is a united, I 

 almost said organized, admiration-in-common by the enjoyers or 

 consumers of art products. Their habits of judgment, or canons, 

 are intensified and fixed by custom. 



Social Life. 



The phrase ''social life" is here used in its most comprehensive 

 sense, taking in the sources of all artificial activities performed by 

 persons working unitedly. Two men managing a canoe down a 

 rapid are intensely social; any rupture in the common thought 

 would be fatal. Social organizations furnish the occasion for 

 growth in what is here under consideration. They are like propa- 

 gating gardens, farms, or stock ran'ges, where plants and animals are 

 raised in vastly greater numbers than nature unaided would 

 produce. 



It would do no violence to partnerships, corporations, trades 

 unions, and guilds in the industrial world ; to secret societies, clubs, 



