A SCIENCE AND AN ART. 19 



mind an ideal, and he works it out upon the 

 clay in some beautiful shape and adorns it with 

 some elegant design. If he be a true artist he 

 will work long and faithfully, making many 

 designs of exquisite loveliness, and yet never 

 satisfying in a single instance the ideal in his 

 brain. The world may applaud, he may him- 

 self feel conscious that he has done good work, 

 true work, but never the highest and best that 

 he had aimed to do. And yet how ductile the 

 clay! How easily moulded to any shape by 

 the cunning fingers under the direction of the 

 eager brain! How receptive the blank surface 

 of the finished vessel and how bright the colors 

 ready prepared for its adornment! But he who 

 breeds cattle has to do with living organisms; 

 plastic, indeed; yielding strange and wonderful 

 changes under the hands of some cunning arti- 

 ficer, now and again, whose masterwork is at 

 once the admiration and despair of many con- 

 temporaries and successors. But even in his 

 hands a thing so highly strung that the tense 

 cord, if I may use a figure from another sphere, 

 seems ready to snap even while it yields the 

 purest strains. Many, even most breeders, seem 

 never to learn how to breed the animal nature 

 to their will. But there is no question that it 

 can be moulded even as the potter's clay. Not 

 so easily only with infinite knowledge and 

 skill. But the very nicety of the work, the 



