nction clear in your minds between the arts--of whatever
kind--which are imitative, and produce a resemblance or image of
something which is not present; and those which are limited to the
production of some useful reality, as the blade of a knife, or the wall
of a house. You will perceive also, as we advance, that sculpture and
painting are indeed in this respect only one art; and that we shall have
constantly to speak and think of them as simply _graphic_, whether with
chisel or color, their principal function being to make us, in the words
of Aristotle, "[Greek: theoretikoi tou peri somata kallous]" (Polit. 8.
3), "having capacity and habit of contemplation of the beauty that is in
material things;" while architecture, and its correlative arts, are to
be practiced under quite other conditions of sentiment.

8. Now it is obvious that so far as the fine arts consist either in
imitation or mechanical construction, the right judgment of them must
depend on our knowledge of the things they imitate, and forces they
resist: and my function of teaching here would (for instance) so far
resolve itself, either into demonstration that this painting of a
peach[7] does resemble a peach, or explanation of the way in which this
plowshare (for instance) is shaped so as to throw the earth aside with
least force of thrust. And in both of these methods of study, though of
course your own diligence must be your chief master, to a certain extent
your Professor of Art can always guide you securely, and can show you,
either that the image does truly resemble what it attempts to resemble,
or that the structure is rightly prepared for the service it has to
perform. But there is yet another virtue of fine art which is, perhaps,
exactly that about which you will expect your Professor to teach you
most, and which, on the contrary, is exactly that about which you must
teach yourselves all that it is essential to learn.

[Illustration: FIG. 1]

9. I have here in my hand one of the simplest possible examples of the
union of the graphic and constructive powers,--one of my breakfast
plates. Since all the finely architectural arts, we said, began in the
shaping of the cup and the platter, we will begin, ourselves, with the
platter.

Why has it been made round? For two structural reasons: first, that the
greatest holding surface may be gathered into the smallest space; and
secondly, that in being pushed past other things on the table, it may
come i