Life as a Fine Art. 415 



produce artistic effects. Michelangelo bent night after night 

 over the dissecting-table to obtain this accurate knowledge of 

 the human form. How many have done likewise, and how 

 few have become great artists ! The true artist studies from 

 life rather than from skeletons and lay-figures. He must 

 catch the play of emotions, the change of feature, in person 

 or in landscape ; he must transfer the fleeting but charac- 

 teristic quality of his subject to the canvas ; if he works 

 toward an ideal end, he must strive for an ideal beauty ; he 

 must combine qualities on his canvas or in the clay which 

 are nowhere combined in nature, or he fails in his attempt. 

 So in life, it is the beauty of holiness, not holiness by rule 

 and measure, that we must seek. In morality, as in artistic 

 delineation, symmetry and spontaneity indicate the highest 

 type of character and accomplishment. And no matter how 

 rude the material with which we labor, if it so be that we 

 work faithfully and intelligently, the imprisoned god or 

 goddess shall at last step forth, obedient to the command of 

 the master. Whatever may be man's daily occupation, his 

 true vocation is the development of his own manhood, that 

 so he may best serve the world. " Each one of us," says 

 Thoreau, " is the builder of a temple called his body ; nor 

 can he get off by hammering marble instead." There is no 

 body so misshapen, there are no features so rugged and ill- 

 formed, that they can not be ennobled and rendered attract- 

 ive by constant striving for the highest ideals in life and 

 character; nor is any countenance so beautiful, any sym- 

 metry of form and feature so perfect, that they may not be 

 fatally smirched and marred by sordid aims and unworthy 

 thoughts. And what is true of the body is true in a yet 

 deeper sense of the life and character. Profound indeed is 

 the truth that " as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." 

 "Know ye not," says Carlyle, "that Thought is stronger 

 than artillery-parks, molding the world like soft clay? * 

 Even so it molds the individual character, and directs its 

 physical expression. 



All truly artistic productions concentrate attention and 

 command applause, not so much by rigid perfection of de- 

 tail as by their evident unity of plan and conception. " It 

 is the object of a work of art, says Taine, " to manifest 

 some essential character, and to employ as a means of ex- 

 pression an aggregate of connected parts the relations of 



* The French Revolution. 



