al tragic art of
AEschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. Ceasing to be a practical
invocation to the gods it became an artistic enterprise
in and for itself. Repeatedly we find in primitive life that
activity is not exhausted in agriculture, hunting, and handicraft,
or in a desperate commerce with divinity. Harvest
becomes a festival, pottery becomes an opportunity for decoration,
and prayer, for poetry. Even in primitive life men
find the leisure to let their imaginations loiter over these
intrinsically lovely episodes in their experience.

The potter may be more interested in making a beautifully
moulded and decorated vessel than merely in turning out a
thing of use; the maker of baskets may come to "play with
his materials," to make baskets not so much for their usefulness
as for the possible beauty of their patterns. When this
interest in beauty becomes highly developed, and when
circumstances permit, the fine arts arise. The crafts come to
be practiced as intrinsically interesting employments of the
creative imagination. The moulding of miscellaneous materials
into beautiful forms becomes a beloved habitual practice.

[Footnote 1: See Jane Harrison: _Ancient Art and Ritual_, especially chap. I.]

The context in which art appears in primitive life is paralleled
in civilized society. The energies of men are still largely
consumed in necessary pursuits. Men must, as of old, by the
inadequacy of the natural order in which they find themselves,
find means by which to live; and, being by nature constituted
so that they must live together, they must find ways
of living together justly and harmoniously. "Industry,"
writes Santayana, "merely gives to Nature that form which,
if more thoroughly humane, she might already have possessed
for our benefit." It is creative in so far as it transforms matter
from its crude indifferent state to forms better adapted to
human ideals. It makes cotton into cloth, wool into clothing,
wheat into flour, leather into shoes, coal into light and power,
iron into skyscrapers. It is devoted to annulling the discrepancies
between nature and human nature. It turns refractory
materials and obdurate forces into commodious goods
and useful powers.

But, in the broadest sense, industry is a means to an end.
Interesting and attractive it may well become, as when a
bookbinder or a printer takes a craftsman's proud delight in
the manner in which he performs his work, and in the quality
of its produc