d the surface are the
expression. The rhythm thus discovered wakens an accordant
rhythm in the spirit of man. The moment gives out its meaning as
man and nature merge together in the inclusive harmony. If the
human spirit were infinite in comprehension, we should receive all
things as beautiful, for we should apprehend their rightness and their
harmony. To our finite perception, however, design is not always
evident, for it is overlaid and confounded with other elements which
are not at the moment fused. Just here is the office of art. For art
presents a harmony liberated from all admixture of conflicting
details and purged of all accidents, thus rendering the single
meaning salient. To compel disorder into order and so reveal new
beauty is the achievement of the artist. The world is commonplace
or fraught with divinest meanings, according as we see it so. To art
we turn for revelation, knowing that ideals of beauty may be many
and that beauty may manifest itself in many forms.

VIII

THE ARTS OF FORM

THE maker of the first bowl moulds the plastic clay into the shape
best adapted to its purpose, a vessel to hold water, from which he
can drink easily; the half-globe rather than the cube affords the
greatest holding capacity with the least expenditure of material. He
finds now that the form itself--over and above the practical
serviceableness of the bowl--gives him pleasure. With a pointed
stick or bit of flint he traces in the yielding surface a flowing line or
an ordered series of dots or crosses, allowing free play to his fancy
and invention. The design does not resemble anything else, nor does
it relate itself to any object external to the maker; it has no meaning
apart from the pleasure which it gave him as he conceived and
traced it, and the pleasure it now gives him to look at it. To another
man who sees the bowl, its form and its decoration afford likewise a
double pleasure: there is first the satisfaction of senses and mind in
the contemplation of harmonious form and rhythmic pattern; and
second, there is communicated to him a feeling of the maker's
delight in his handiwork, and sympathetically and imaginatively the
beholder realizes that delight in his own experience.

I am walking with a friend along a road which climbs a wooded
hillside. A few steps bring us to the top and the edge of a clearing.
There, suddenly a sweep of country is rolled out before us. A quick
intake of the breath, and then the c