ongenial to his mind.
Instead of a footprint we might find an arrow; instead of a disordered
room, a well-planted orchard--things which would not only have betrayed
the agent's habits, but would have served and expressed his intent. Such
propitious forms given by man to matter are no less instrumental in the
Life of Reason than are propitious forms assumed by man's own habit or
fancy. Any operation which thus humanises and rationalises objects is
called art.

[Sidenote: Art is plastic instinct conscious of its aim.]

All art has an instinctive source and a material embodiment. If the
birds in building nests felt the utility of what they do, they would be
practising an art; and for the instinct to be called rational it would
even suffice that their traditional purpose and method should become
conscious occasionally. Thus weaving is an art, although the weaver may
not be at every moment conscious of its purpose, but may be carried
along, like any other workman, by the routine of his art; and language
is a rational product, not because it always has a use or meaning, but
because it is sometimes felt to have one. Arts are no less automatic
than instincts, and usually, as Aristotle observed, less thoroughly
purposive; for instincts, being transmitted by inheritance and imbedded
in congenital structure, have to be economically and deeply organised.
If they go far wrong they constitute a burden impossible to throw off
and impossible to bear. The man harassed by inordinate instincts
perishes through want, vice, disease, or madness. Arts, on the contrary,
being transmitted only by imitation and teaching, hover more lightly
over life. If ill-adjusted they make less havoc and cause less drain.
The more superficial they are and the more detached from practical
habits, the more extravagant and meaningless they can dare to become; so
that the higher products of life are the most often gratuitous. No
instinct or institution was ever so absurd as is a large part of human
poetry and philosophy, while the margin of ineptitude is much broader in
religious myth than in religious ethics.

[Sidenote: It is automatic.]

Arts are instincts bred and reared in the open, creative habits acquired
in the light of reason. Consciousness accompanies their formation; a
certain uneasiness or desire and a more or less definite conception of
what is wanted often precedes their full organisation. That the need
should be felt before the means for satisf