r, or obey; between this, I say, and the taking
of your appointed part in the heroism of Rest; the resolving to share in
the victory which is to the weak rather than the strong; and the binding
yourselves by that law, which, thought on through lingering night and
labouring day, makes a man's life to be as a tree planted by the
water-side, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season;--

"ET FOLIUM EJUS NON DEFLUET,
ET OMNIA, QUAECUNQUE FACIET, PROSPERABUNTUR."

LECTURE II

THE RELATION OF ART TO RELIGION

31. It was stated, and I trust partly with your acceptance, in my
opening lecture, that the study on which we are about to enter cannot be
rightly undertaken except in furtherance of the grave purposes of life
with respect to which the rest of the scheme of your education here is
designed. But you can scarcely have at once felt all that I intended in
saying so;--you cannot but be still partly under the impression that the
so-called fine arts are merely modes of graceful recreation, and a new
resource for your times of rest. Let me ask you, forthwith, so far as
you can trust me, to change your thoughts in this matter. All the great
arts have for their object either the support or exaltation of human
life,--usually both; and their dignity, and ultimately their very
existence, depend on their being "+meta logou alethous+," that is
to say, apprehending, with right reason, the nature of the materials
they work with, of the things they relate or represent, and of the
faculties to which they are addressed. And farther, they form one united
system from which it is impossible to remove any part without harm to
the rest. They are founded first in mastery, by strength of _arm_, of
the earth and sea, in agriculture and seamanship; then their inventive
power begins, with the clay in the hand of the potter, whose art is the
humblest but truest type of the forming of the human body and spirit;
and in the carpenter's work, which probably was the early employment of
the Founder of our religion. And until men have perfectly learned the
laws of art in clay and wood, they can consummately know no others. Nor
is it without the strange significance which you will find in what at
first seems chance, in all noble histories, as soon as you can read
them rightly,--that the statue of Athena Polias was of olive-wood, and
that the Greek temple and Gothic spire are both merely the permanent
representations of useful wooden str