Page:Ploughshare and Pruning-Hook.djvu/180

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160
Ploughshare and Pruning-Hook

more senses (in this case between the senses of sight, taste and touch) brings into being a new value which I ask you to bear in mind, as I shall have a good deal to say about it later—the value of association. The more you examine into the matter, the more you will find that association is a very important element for evoking man's faculties of enjoyment; it secures by the inter-relation of the senses a sort of compound interest for the appeal over which it presides. And it is association, with this compound appeal, which again and again decides (over and above all questions of use) what material is the best, or the most delightful, to be employed for a given purpose. You choose a material because it makes a decorative covering to mere utility. That beauty of choice in material alone is the beginning of ornament.

When I began, I spoke for a moment as though use and ornament were opposite or separate principles; but what I shall hope soon to show is that they are so interlocked and combined that there is no keeping them apart when once the spirit of man has opened to perceive the true sacramental service which springs from their union, and the social discordance that inevitably follows upon their divorce. But as man's ordinary definition of the word "use" is sadly material and debased, and as his approval and sanction of the joys of life have too often been limited by a similar materialism of thought, one is obliged, for the