in the superstructure.

REASON, RHYME, AND RHYTHM.

CHAPTER II.--THE SOUL OF ART.

'In diligent toil thy master is the bee;
In craft mechanical, the worm that creeps
Through earth its dexterous way, may tutor thee;
In knowledge, couldst thou fathom all its depths,
All to the seraph are already known:
But thine, o Man, is Art--thine wholly and alone!'--SCHILLER.

'The _contemplation_ of the Divine Attributes is the source of the
highest enjoyment: their _manifestation_ is the enduring base and
unfailing spring of all true Art.'

Many good and great men persist in refusing to teach, save through
abstract dogmas and logical formulae, always disagreeable to and rarely
comprehended by the masses, those high moral truths, which they are so
eager to imbibe when presented to them under the attractive form of art.
It is indeed impossible for man to grasp the essential truths of life
through the understanding alone; because, created in the image of the
triune God, he can only make vital truths fully his own in the symbolic
unity of his triune being. If considered only as body or sensuous
perception, only as soul or heart, only as spirit or intellect--he
cannot be said to live at all, since it is only in the perfect union of
the Three that his essential life is found. To make instruction really
available to him, he must be taught as God and nature always teach
him--as soul, spirit, and body. To sever them is to disintegrate the
mystic core of his very being; to disregard the triune image in which he
was made. As art is symbolic of man himself, it addresses itself to his
whole being. Thus, man exists as:

Soul-Spirit-Body: to which the corresponding senses are--

Hearing-Seeing--Touching: the corresponding arts--

Music-Painting-Sculpture. Poetry is no fourth art; it but embraces
and embodies them all in its correspondent divisions of--

Rhythm-Description-Form.

The 'Body' draws its life from the world of matter made by God, by an
assimilation of the elements suited to and prepared for its needs.

The 'Spirit' lives by an analogous process; but its proper food is the
wisdom of God.

In a like manner lives the 'Soul;' its tender instincts are to be
pastured upon the love of God.

Oh, marvellous condescension! The Infinite deigns to be appropriated as
the source of all life and growth by the finite!

In close connection with the threefold being of man, st