rsal of
these two stages may be seen in nature, where nutrition and reproduction
fit the body for its ideal functions, whereupon sensation and
cerebration make it a direct organ of mind. Industry merely gives nature
that form which, if more thoroughly humane, she might have originally
possessed for our benefit; liberal arts bring to spiritual fruition the
matter which either nature or industry has prepared and rendered
propitious. This spiritual fruition consists in the activity of turning
an apt material into an expressive and delightful form, thus filling the
world with objects which by symbolising ideal energies tend to revive
them under a favouring influence and therefore to strengthen and refine
them.

[Sidenote: Each partakes of the other]

It remains merely to note that all industry contains an element of fine
art and all fine art an element of industry; since every proximate end,
in being attained, satisfies the mind and manifests the intent that
pursued it; while every operation upon a material, even one so volatile
as sound, finds that material somewhat refractory. Before the product
can attain its ideal function many obstacles to its transparency and
fitness have to be removed. A certain amount of technical and
instrumental labour is thus involved in every work of genius, and a
certain genius in every technical success.

CHAPTER III

EMERGENCE OF FINE ART

[Sidenote: Art is spontaneous action made stable by success.]

Action which is purely spontaneous is merely tentative. Any experience
of success or utility which might have preceded, if it availed to make
action sure, would avail to make it also intentional and conscious of
its ulterior results. Now the actual issue which an action is destined
to have, since it is something future and problematical, can exert no
influence on its own antecedents; but if any picture of what the issue
is likely to be accompanies the heat and momentum of action, that
picture being, of all antecedents in the operation, the one most easily
remembered and described, may be picked out as essential, and dignified
with the name of motive or cause. This will not happen to every
prophetic idea; we may live in fear and trembling as easily as with an
arrogant consciousness of power. The difference flows from the greater
or lesser affinity that happens to exist between expectation and
instinct. Action remains always, in its initial phase, spontaneous and
automatic; it reta