CHAPTER I

ALL GREAT ART IS PRAISE

1. The art of man is the expression of his rational and disciplined delight in the forms and laws of the Creation of which he forms a part.

2. In all first definitions of very great things, there must be some obscurity and want of strictness; the attempt to make them too strict will only end in wider obscurity. We may indeed express to our friend the rational and disciplined pleasure we have in a landscape, yet not be artists: but it is true, nevertheless, that all art is the skilful expression of such pleasure; not always, it may be, in a thing seen, but only in a law felt; yet still, examined accurately, always in the Creation, of which the creature forms a part; and not in itself merely. Thus a lamb at play, rejoicing in its own life only, is not an artist;—but the lamb's shepherd, carving the piece of timber which he lays for his door-lintel into beads, is expressing, however unconsciously, his pleasure in the laws of time, measure, and order, by which the earth moves, and the sun abides in heaven.

3. So far as reason governs, or discipline restrains, the art even of animals, it becomes human, in those virtues; but never, I believe, perfectly human, because it never, so far as I have seen, expresses even an unconscious delight in divine laws.