necessity from the vulgar fate by being instant and alive and man as well as his works in its flowing this influence is visible in the principles and history of art on one side in communication with absolute truth through thought and instinct the human mind by an equal necessity on the other side to the publication and of its thought � modified and by the and which in all our experience the wonderful medium through which it passes the child not only suffers but cries not only but eats the man not only thinks but speaks and acts every thought that arises in the mind in its rising aims to pass out of the mind into act just as every plant in the moment of struggles up to light thought is the seed of action but action is as much its second form as thought is its first it rises in thought to the end that it may be uttered and acted the more profound the thought the more always in proportion to the depth of its sense does it knock at the gates of the soul to be spoken to be done what is in will out it struggles to the birth speech is a great pleasure and action a great pleasure they cannot be the utterance of thought and emotion in speech and action may be conscious or unconscious the child is an unconscious actor a man in an of fear or anger is an unconscious actor a large part of our habitual actions are unconsciously done and most of our necessary words are unconsciously said the conscious utterance of thought by speech or action to any end is art from the first of a child to the of eloquence from his first pile of toys or bridge to the of light house or the canal from the of the on art to the gallery from the simplest expedient of private prudence to the american constitution from its first to its last works art is the spirit s voluntary use and combination of things to serve its end the will it as spiritual action to themselves the bee the bird the have no art for what they do they do instinctively but to the supreme being they have and the same is true of all unconscious action to the it is instinct to the first cause it is art in this sense the spirit which nature rightly said those things which are said to be done by nature are indeed done by divine art art universally is the spirit it was defined by the reason of the thing without the matter as he i defined the art of ship building to be all of the ship but the wood if we follow the popular distinction of works according to their aim we should say the spirit in its creation aims at use or at beauty and hence art itself into the useful and the fine arts the useful arts comprehend not only those that lie next to instinct as building weaving c but also practical and the construction of all the grand and delicate tools and instruments by which man serves himself as language the watch the ship the and also the so far as they are made serviceable to political economy the moment we begin to reflect on the pleasure we receive from a ship a railroad a dry dock or from a picture a dramatic representation a statue a poem we find that they have not a quite simple but a blended origin we find that the question � what is art leads us directly to another � who is the artist and the solution of this is the key to the history of art i hasten to state the principle which through means its firm law to the useful and the beautiful arts the law is this the universal soul is the alone creator of the useful and the beautiful therefore to make anything useful or beautiful the individual must be submitted to the universal mind in the first place let us consider this in reference to the useful arts here the agent is nature all m art human acts are to her nature is the representative of the universal mind and the law becomes this � that art must be a to nature strictly it was said in allusion to the great of the ancient the and bridges � that their art was a nature working to ends that is a true account of all just works of useful art built on the model of an oak tree as being the form in nature best designed to resist a constant force formed his on the model of the human eye built a bridge by letting in a piece of stronger timber for the middle of the under surface getting his hint from the structure of the bone the first and last lesson of the useful arts is that nature over our works they must be to her law or they will be ground to powder by her activity nothing droll nothing will endure nature is ever interfering with art you cannot build your house or as you will but as you must there is a quick bound set to our caprice the leaning tower can only lean so far the or roof can curve upward only to a certain point the slope of your roof is determined by the weight of snow only within narrow limits that the discretion of the may range gravity wind sun rain the size of men and animals and such like have more to say than he it is the law of that the shape of the boat � and bows � and in the finer above the form and tackle of the sails man seems to have no about his tools but merely the necessity to learn from nature what will fit best as if he were 