he
development of life, continuous and without breach or sudden end; it
is the expression step by step of ever fuller and ever deeper
experience.

Creation, therefore, follows upon the consciousness of need,
whether the need be physical, as with the traveler, or spiritual, as
with the painter; from physical to spiritual we pass by a series of
gradations. At their extremes they are easy to distinguish, one from
the other; but along the way there is no break in the continuity. The
current formula for art, that art is the utterance of man's joy in his
work, is not quite accurate. In the act of creation the maker finds the
expression of himself. The man who decorates a bowl in response to
his own creative impulse is expressing himself. The painter who
thrills to the wonder and significance of nature is impelled to
expression; and his delight is not fully realized and complete until he
has uttered it. Such art is love expressed, and the artist's work is his
"hymn of the praise of things." But the joy for both the potter and
the painter, the joy which is so bound up with art as to partake of its
very essence, is the joy which attends self-expression and the
satisfaction of the need.

A work of art is a work of creation brought into being as the
expression of emotion. The traveler creates not the wood and stone
but shelter, by means of the hut; the painter creates not the landscape
but the beauty of it; the musician creates not the musical tones, but
by means of a harmony of tones he creates an emotional experience.
The impulse to art rises out of the earliest springs of consciousness
and vibrates through all life. Art does not disdain to manifest itself
in the little acts of expression of simple daily living; with all its
splendid past and vital present it is ever seeking new and greater
forms whose end is not yet. I spoke of the work of the traveler
through the wilderness as art; the term was applied also to
railroad-building and to housekeeping. The truth to be illustrated by these
examples is that the primary impulse to artistic expression does not
differ in essence from the impulse to creation of any kind. The
nature of the thing created, as art, depends upon the emotional value
of the result, the degree in which it expresses immediately the
emotion of its creator, and the power it possesses to rouse the
emotion in others. To show that all art is creation and that all
creation tends toward art is not to obscure useful