lexity and perfection of the great
works of art could have been obtained solely in works so necessarily
rare and few; and that the particular forms constituting each separate
style could have originated save under the repeated suggestion of
everyday use and technique. And can we not point to the patterns grown
out of the necessities of weaving or basket-making, the shapes started
by the processes of metal soldering or clay squeezing; let alone the
innumerable categories of form manifestly derived from the mere
convenience of handling or using, of standing, pouring, holding,
hanging up or folding? This much is certain, that only the manifold
application of given artistic forms in useful common objects is able
to account for that very slow, gradual and unconscious alteration of
them which constitutes the spontaneous evolution of artistic form; and
only such manifold application could have given that almost automatic
certainty of taste which allowed the great art of the past to continue
perpetually changing, through centuries and centuries, and adapting
itself over immense geographical areas to every variation of climate,
topography, mode of life, or religion. Unless the forms of ancient art
had been safely embodied in a hundred modest crafts, how could they
have undergone the imperceptible and secure metamorphosis from
Egyptian to Hellenic, from Greek to Graeco-Roman, and thence, from
Byzantine, have passed, as one great half, into Italian mediaeval art?
or how, without such infinite and infinitely varied practice of minute
adaptation to humble needs, could Gothic have given us works so
different as the French cathedrals, the Ducal Palace, the tiny chapel
at Pisa, and remained equally great and wonderful, equally _Gothic_,
in the ornament of a buckle as in the porch of Amiens or of Reims?

Beauty is born of attention, as happiness is born of life, because
attention is rendered difficult and painful by lack of harmony, even
as life is clogged, diminished or destroyed by pain. And therefore,
when there ceases to exist a close familiarity with visible objects or
actions; when the appearance of things is passed over in perfunctory
and partial use (as we see it in all mechanical and divided labour);
when the attention of all men is not continually directed to shape
through purpose, then there will cease to be spontaneous beauty and
the spontaneous appreciation of beauty, because there will be no need
for either. Beauty of musi