gnificance of art.

Art is creative. The artist is a co-worker with God. To his hands is
committed the portion of the world which God has left unfinished--the
immediate environment of man. We cannot live in the fields, like beasts
and savages. Art has for its purpose to make the rooms and houses and
halls and streets and cities in which civilized men pass their days as
beautiful and fair, as elevating and inspiring, as the fields and
forests in which the primeval savage roamed. More than that, art aims to
fill these rooms and halls and streets of ours with forms and symbols
which shall preserve, for our perpetual admiration and inspiration, all
that is purest and noblest and sweetest in that long struggle of man up
from his savage to his civilized estate.

THE DUTY.

+Beauty is the outward and visible sign of inward perfection,
completeness, and harmony.+--In an object of beauty there is neither too
little nor too much; nothing is out of place; nothing is without its
contribution to the perfect whole. Each part is at once means and end to
every other. Hence its perfect symmetry; its regular proportions; its
strict conformity to law.

The mind of man can find rest and satisfaction in nothing short of
perfection; and consequently our hearts are never satisfied until they
behold beauty, which is perfection's crown and seal. Without it one of
the deepest and divinest powers of our nature remains dwarfed, stifled,
and repressed.

+How to cultivate the love of beauty.+--It is our duty to see to it that
everything under our control is as beautiful as we can make it. The
rooms we live in; the desk at which we work; the clothes we wear; the
house we build; the pictures on our walls; the garden and grounds in
which we walk and work; all must have some form or other. That form must
be either beautiful or hideous; attractive or repulsive. It is our duty
to pay attention to these things; to spend thought and labor, and such
money as we can afford upon them, in order to make them minister to our
delight. Not in staring at great works of art which we have not yet
learned to appreciate, but by attention to the beauty or ugliness of the
familiar objects that we have about us and dwell with from day to day,
we shall best cultivate that love of beauty which will ultimately make
intelligible to us the true significance of the masterpieces of art.
Here as everywhere, to him that hath shall more be given. We must serve
beauty humbly