ve confined the
illustration of it to architecture, but I must not leave it as if true
of architecture only. Hitherto I have used the words imperfect and
perfect merely to distinguish between work grossly unskilful, and work
executed with average precision and science; and I have been pleading
that any degree of unskilfulness should be admitted, so only that the
labourer's mind had room for expression. But, accurately speaking, no
good work whatever can be perfect, and _the demand for perfection is
always a sign of a misunderstanding of the ends of art_.

This for two reasons, both based on everlasting laws. The first, that
no great man ever stops working till he has reached his point of
failure: that is to say, his mind is always far in advance of his
powers of execution, and the latter will now and then give way in
trying to follow it; besides that he will always give to the inferior
portions of his work only such inferior attention as they require; and
according to his greatness he becomes so accustomed to the feeling of
dissatisfaction with the best he can do, that in moments of lassitude
or anger with himself he will not care though the beholder be
dissatisfied also. I believe there has only been one man who would not
acknowledge this necessity, and strove always to reach perfection,
Leonardo; the end of his vain effort being merely that he would take
ten years to a picture and leave it unfinished. And therefore, if we
are to have great men working at all, or less men doing their best, the
work will be imperfect, however beautiful. Of human work none but what
is bad can be perfect, in its own bad way.[161]

The second reason is, that imperfection is in some sort essential to
all that we know of life. It is the sign of life in a mortal body, that
is to say, of a state of progress and change. Nothing that lives is, or
can be, rigidly perfect; part of it is decaying, part nascent. The
foxglove blossom,--a third part bud, a third part past, a third part in
full bloom,--is a type of the life of this world. And in all things
that live there are certain irregularities and deficiencies which are
not only signs of life, but sources of beauty. No human face is exactly
the same in its lines on each side, no leaf perfect in its lobes, no
branch in its symmetry. All admit irregularity as they imply change;
and to banish imperfection is to destroy expression, to check exertion,
to paralyze vitality. All things are literally bet