Page:Ploughshare and Pruning-Hook.djvu/191

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Use and Ornament
171

leaving the material uses, by which ordinary values are measured, it shifts to the spiritual; and by the spiritual I mean that which animates, vitalizes, socializes.

To that end it may often be—and is generally the case—that, in the material sense, art is a useless addition or refinement upon that which was first planned merely for the service of man's bodily needs. Yet where the need is of a worthy and genuine kind, art never ceases to rejoice at the use that is underlying it. This can be clearly seen in architecture, where the beauty of design, the proportion, the capacity of the edifice—though far transcending the physical need which called it into being—remain nevertheless in subtle relation thereto, and give to it a new expression—useless indeed to the body—but of this use to the mind, that it awakens, kindles, enlivens, sensitizes—making it to be in some sort creative, by perception of and response to the creative purpose which evoked that form. You cannot enter a cathedral without becoming aware that its embracing proportions mean something far more than the mere capacity to hold a crowd; its end and aim are to inspire in that crowd a certain mental attitude, a spiritual apprehension—to draw many minds into harmony, and so to make them one—a really tremendous fact when successfully achieved.

Now nothing can be so made—to awaken and enlarge the spirit—without some apparent