65 
and the world ‘‘which we do not originate but find’’ repre- 
sent nature; those ‘‘ which we do not find but originate’’ repre- 
sent art. Thus the human element comes into art to mold nature 
to its purposes. Art, too, is not science. Science concerns itself 
with knowledge and the investigation of truth, and it may be said 
to be the law of knowing, dealing with the facts of the universe, its 
chief instrument being the reason whose special function is analysis. 
Art has also to do with knowledge, and art may aid in the search of 
truth; but it does not end in knowing. Art is, in fact, a science 
as far as its methods of ¢echnigue are concerned, and it applies sci- 
ence to its own methods, but its end is farther on in the perfect 
and joy-giving work touching profounder emotions, rather than in 
scientific knowledge or the technical process. Art, in like manner, is 
not philosophy, nor religion, nor morality ; and it does not pretend 
to overtop, oppose, usurp or meddle with these while keeping to its 
own sphere, and much confusion has been caused (and no one has 
done more of this than Mr. Ruskin) by mixing these; but the dif- 
ference in such cases is obvious. Art, however, is no negative 
thing, but is a most positive reality, in that it implies the existence 
of natural material on which to work and out of which to create its 
results, requiring at the same time a principle of susceptive thought 
that understands and orders nature for its conscious ends. In every 
work of art, its original material of nature, the subjective idea 
which calls it forth, and the form which is complete in itself like a 
divine creation, are comprehended. This applies to all forms of 
art, even the most mechanical ; and, first, the term doubtless meant 
the arts of bare existence, first of all, probably, the art of agricul- 
ture—the ‘‘ coarse arts’’ as Emerson called them in contradistinc- 
tion to the ‘* fine arts’’—so that the useful was the first idea, and, 
indeed, what is not intrinsically useful is worthless now in art, in the 
highest art, which belongs to the highest needs of being, and com- 
pared with which its commoner uses are as earth and clay. But as 
new methods of civilization arose, art came up into its more spirit- 
ual spheres. Nature was studied ; her subtle laws of working were 
lovingly observed ; finer natures were touched to finer issues ; and 
the arts which have in them a thoughtful element, which spring 
,from an idea, succeeded the arts of mere existence, until ‘‘ art’’ 
won a peculiar meaning, limited to the production which has in it 
the love of perfect creation, of beauty, which Plato says is the most 
PROC. AMER, PHILOS. SOC. XxxtI. 143 1. PRINTED NOV. 28, 1893. 
