rises the evident order of art. And in the completed work the artist's
_idea_ stands forth salient and victorious.

That consciousness of need which compels creation is the origin of
art. The owner of a dwelling who first felt the need of securing his
door so that he alone might possess the secret and trick of access
devised a lock and key, rude enough, as we can fancy. As the maker
of the first lock and key he was an artist. All those who followed
where he had led, repeating his device without modification, were
but artisans. In the measure that any man changed the design,
however, adapting it more closely to his peculiar needs and so
making it anew, to that extent he was an artist also. The man who
does a thing for the first time it is done is an artist; a man who does a
thing better is an artist. The painter who copies his object imitatively,
finding nothing, creating nothing, is an artisan, however skillful he
may be. He is an artist in the degree in which he brings to his subject
something of his own, and fashioning it, however crudely, to express
the idea he has conceived of the object, so creates.

The difference between work which is art and work which is not art
is just this element of the originating impulse and creative act. The
difference, though often seemingly slight and not always
immediately perceived, is all-important. It distinguishes the artist
from the artisan; a free spirit from a slave; a thinking, feeling man
from a soulless machine. It makes the difference between life rich
and significant, and mere existence; between the mastery of fate and
the passive acceptance of things as they are.

If a mind and heart are behind it to control and guide it to expression,
even the machine may be an instrument in the making of a work of
art. It is not the work itself, but the motive which prompted the
making of it, that determines its character as art. Art is not the way a
thing is done, but the reason why it is done. A chair, though turned
on a lathe, may be a work of art, if the maker has truly expressed
himself in his work. A picture, though "hand-painted," may be
wholly mechanical in spirit. To set about "making a picture" is to
begin at the wrong end. The impulse to art flows from within
outwards. Art is bound up with life itself; like nature, it is organic
and must grow. The form cannot be laid on from the outside; it is
born and must develop in response to vital need. In so far as our acts
are consci