All good work is more or less creative, that is, a co-working with the
eternal mind; and work is good and productive in proportion to
the intensity of this cooeperation. Why is it that we so prize a
fragment of Phidias, a few lines traced by Raphael? Because the minds
of those workers were, more than the minds of most others, in sympathy
with the Infinite mind. While at work their hands were more distinctly
guided by the Almighty hand; they felt and embodied more of the spirit
which makes, which is, life.
Here is a frame of canvas, a block of marble, a pile of stones, a
vocabulary. Of the canvas you make a screen, you build a dwelling with
the pile of stones, chisel a door-sill out of the block, with the
vocabulary you write an essay. And in each case you work well and
creatively, if your work be in harmony with God's laws, if your screen
be light, sightly, and protective, your dwelling healthful and
commodious, your sill lie solid and square, your essay be judicious
and sound. But if on the canvas you have a Christ's head by Leonardo,
out of the pile of stones a Strasburg Cathedral, from the block of
marble a Venus of Milo, with the vocabulary a tragedy of Hamlet, you
have works which are so creative that they tell on the mind with the
vivid, impressive, instructive, never-wearying delight of the
works of nature.
Pages:
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30