The Portland daily press., 1875-09-24
From an Address before the Massachusetts, Charita-
BILE Mechanics Association, by William Ralph En-
erson,]
The Artisan and the Artist.



1t need be no disparagement to the Ameri-
can mechanic to be told that though he can
equip an army of hundred thousand men
with clothing-shoes, tents, guns and powder,
and put them on remote battle-grounds, and
warrant long tally of victories, in quicker
time, by quicker steam, brains and electricity
than any other nation under heaven, yet in
manufacturing articles of taste even the South
Sea Islander can beat him, with his coarse fab
RIGS of skin or grass and few simple stains;
that the poor italian monk can beat him, who,
in his lonely cell, with a few tools, cuts his
very soul into his rosary or crucifx. The Swiss
herdsman can beat the Yankee whittier on his
own ground; for though the Yankee may sail
through the soft hearts of the Governor and
Council on a frigate built by his jack knife,
with crew of overgrown piratical monsters,
so ugly that it should have whitfield him fur
ther in than out, yet the power to give his
work the least touch of beauty is wanting;
while, in few hours, the peasant, watching
his flock on an Alpine slope, will cut the light
footed chamois from block half-inch high,
with the very poise and grace of nature in its
delicate limbs, a marvel of beauty; and though
nous continuous wo ool spinner that will do
more and better work with one-half the spin
dies at less than one-half the expense, and in
less than One-quarter the space of the most i'm
proved process of Europe, yet the Hindoo
weaver can beat even that. With his primi-
tive loom hung to tree, he weaves cotton so
fine that ten yard length of it. one yard wide
weighs but three ounces; with delicate touch
and fine sense of b, auty and infinite patience.
he spins muslin SO fine that it is running wa.
ter" a "wsb of woven air. it is Dew of
Night" Now the reason why the productions
of these deft wOrkmen are SO beautiful and at
tractive is that they have been done by hand;
they are the outgrowsh of thought and feeling;
there is in them the love of the thing itself and
the very labor of doing it; the human soul has
been concerned in it; there is no sense OF the
market in it; it is unique in itself; there Is not
another like it and never can be. These, then,
being the distinctive excellences of every work
which does not express these states of the mind
and heart, cannot be called fine art work.
Let me not even seem to imply that for the
present low state of the ornamental arts the
American mechanic is any more castaway
than the people whose demand it is his bus-
ness to supply. The supply has been in all re-
spects as good and pralseworthy as the de-
mand. Give him good elementary training
in the Iarts of drawing and designing. Give
him museums where he shall see only the best
of beautiful things. Let him copy honestly
and faithfully the simple forms of natural OBJ
jects. Let him not trust to his own instincts
as his guide until he can give reason for the
falth That Is IN him. Let him not set up in the
market places the work of his hands unless 1t
Is good, and he can tell why it is beautiful.
When such opportunities are given him, then
he may with reason be held responsible for the
public taste he shall help to create and for the
progress of it that he shall in part direct.