Of course, you may say that is use; but it is use in which the spiritualities, faith, hope and love, begin to appear; and in the gentleness of its intention it forms a basis for the up-*growth of beauty. Now all the arts are, in the same way, first of all structural—having for their starting-point a sound and economic use of the material on which they are based. Music, architecture, poetry, and the rest were all, to begin with, the result of an instinctive choice or selection, directed to the elimination of superfluities, accidents, excrescences—which to the craftsman's purpose are nothing.
Nature, in her seed-sowing, has gone to work to propagate by profusion; her method is to sow a million seeds so as to make sure that some may live; thus she meets and out-.*matches the chances that are against her. The seed of Art sprang up differently; maker-*man took hold of the one selected seed, not of a dozen, or of a thousand dozen promiscuously, and bent his faculties on making that one seed (his chosen material) fit to face life and its chances: if a house—walls and roof calculated to keep out the rain and resist the force of storms: if a textile—fabric of a staple sufficient to resist the wear and tear to which it would be subjected: if a putting together of words meant to outlast the brief occasion of their utterance—then in a form likely to be impressive, and therefore memorable; so that in an age before writing was known they might find a safe tabernacle, travelling from place to
