thing, or accidental
only. Only, of course, the proper bridle of man is not a leathern one:
what kind of texture it is rightly made of, we find from that command,
"Be ye not as the horse or as the mule which have no understanding,
whose mouths must be held in with bit and bridle." You are not to be
without the reins, indeed; but they are to be of another kind: "I will
guide thee with mine Eye." So the bridle of man is to be the Eye of God;
and if he rejects that guidance, then the next best for him is the
horse's and the mule's, which have no understanding; and if he rejects
that, and takes the bit fairly in his teeth, then there is nothing left
for him than the blood that comes out of the city, up to the
horse-bridles.

19. Quitting, however, at last these general and serious laws of
government--or rather bringing them down to our own business in hand--we
have to consider three points of discipline in that particular branch of
human labour which is concerned, not with procuring of food, but the
expression of emotion; we have to consider respecting art: first, how to
apply our labour to it; then, how to accumulate or preserve the results
of labour; and then, how to distribute them. But since in art the labour
which we have to employ is the labour of a particular class of men--men
who have special genius for the business--we have not only to consider
how to apply the labour, but, first of all, how to produce the labourer;
and thus the question in this particular case becomes fourfold: first,
how to get your man of genius; then, how to employ your man of genius;
then, how to accumulate and preserve his work in the greatest quantity;
and, lastly, how to distribute his work to the best national advantage.
Let us take up these questions in succession.

20. I. Discovery.--How are we to get our men of genius: that is to say,
by what means may we produce among us, at any given time, the greatest
quantity of effective art-intellect? A wide question, you say, involving
an account of all the best means of art education. Yes, but I do not
mean to go into the consideration of those; I want only to state the few
principles which lie at the foundation of the matter. Of these, the
first is that you have always to find your artist, not to make him; you
can't manufacture him, any more than you can manufacture gold. You can
find him, and refine him: you dig him out as he lies nugget-fashion in
the mountain-stream; you bring him home;