ously the expression of ourselves they are prompted by the
art spirit.

All our acts are reducible to one of two kinds: either they are acts of
creation, effecting a new result, or they are acts of repetition. Acts of
repetition tend rapidly to become habits; and they may be performed
without attention or positive volition. Thus, as I am dressing in the
morning I may be planning the work for the day; while my mind is
given over to thought, I lose the sense of my material surroundings,
my muscles work automatically, the motor-currents flowing through
the well-worn grooves, and by force of habit the acts execute
themselves. Obviously, acts of repetition, or habits, make up the
larger part of our daily lives.

Acts of creation, on the other hand, are performed by an effort of the
will in response to the consciousness of a need. To meet the new
need we are obliged to make new combinations. I assume that the
traveler constructed his hut for the first time, shaping it to the special
new conditions; that the harmony which the painter discerned in the
tumult around him he experienced for the first time, and the picture
which he paints, shaped with reference to his need and fulfilling it,
is a new thing. In the work produced by this act of creation, the
feeling which has prompted it finds expression. In the making of the
hut, in the painting of the picture, the impelling need is satisfied.

Although acts of repetition constitute the bulk of life, creation is of
its very essence and determines its quality. The significance and joy
of life are less in being than in _becoming._ Growth is expression,
and in turn expression is made possible by growth. In our
conscious experience the sense of becoming is one of our supreme
satisfactions. Growth is the purpose and the recompense of our
being here, the end for which we strive and the reward of all the
effort and the struggle. In the exercise of brain or hand, to feel the
work take form, develop, and become something,--that is happiness.
And the joy is in the creating rather than in the thing created; the
completed work is behind us, and we move forward to new creation.
A painter's best picture is the blank canvas before him; an author's
greatest book is the one he is just setting himself to write. The desire
for change for the sake of change which we all feel at times, a vague
restlessness of mind and body, is only the impulse to growth which
has not found its direction. Outside of u