Page:Ploughshare and Pruning-Hook.djvu/188

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168
Ploughshare and Pruning-Hook

weapons—first of the chase, and then of war. No sooner had he proved their use than he began to ornament them—to make them records, trophies, and so—objects of beauty. He cannot stop from doing so; his delight in the skill of his hands breaks out into ornament. It is the same with the arts of peace the work of the woman-primitive—she moulds a pot, or weaves a square of material, and into it—the moment she has accomplished the rudiments—goes pattern, beauty, something additional and memorable that is not for use material, but for use spiritual—pleasure, delight.

And that quite simple example, from a time when man was living the life, as we should now regard it, of a harried and hunted beast—with his emergence from surrounding perils scarcely yet assured to him—goes on consistently up and up the scale of human evolution; and the more strongly it gets to be established in social institutions, the more noble is likely to be the form of civilization which enshrines it. And the less it shows, the less is that form of civilization likely to be worthy of preservation, or its products of permanent value to the human race.

It is not the millionaire who leaves his mark on the world so that hereafter men are glad when they name him; it is the "maker" who has turned uses into delights; not the master of the money-market, but the Master of Arts. The nearest thing we have on earth