Sidney Colvin

“ For in the sense of the word Nature which has thus been defined, and which is the true scientific sense, Art is as much Nature as anything else; and everything which is artificial is natural—Art has no independent powers of its own: Art is but the employment of the powers of Nature for an end. Phenomena produced by human agency no less than those which, as far as we are concerned, are spontaneous, depend on the properties of the elementary forces, or of the elementary substances and their compounds. ”

“ Sometimes we draw an arbitrary line in the action of individuals and societies, and say, Here Nature ends and Art begins—such a law, such a practice, such an industry even, is natural, and such another is artificial ”

“ The requirements of society, stimulating the ingenuity of its individual members, have led to the invention of arts and groups of arts, constantly progressing, with the progress of civilization, in number, in complexity, and in resource. The religious imagination of early societies, who find themselves in possession of such an art or group of arts, forgets the history of the invention, and assigns it to the inspiration or special grace of some god or hero. ”

“ In such phrases we intend to designate familiarly as Nature all which exists independently of our study, forethought and exertion—in other words, those phenomena in ourselves or the world which we do not originate but find; and we intend to designate familiarly as Art all which we do not find but originate—or, in other words, the phenomena, which we add by study, forethought and exertion to those existing independently of us. ”

“ Science consists in knowing, Art consists in doing. What I must do in order to know, is Art subservient to Science: what I must know in order to do, is Science subservient to Art.
Art, then, is defined by two broad distinctions: first, its popular distinction from Nature; and next, its practical and theoretic distinction from Science. Both of these distinctions are observed in the terms of our definition given above. Within the proper limits of this definition, the conception of Art, and the use of the word for it, have undergone sundry variations. ”

“ The united powers of the whole human race could not create a new property of matter in general, or of any one of its species. We can only take advantage for our purposes of the properties we find. A ship floats by the same laws of specific gravity and equilibrium as a tree uprooted by the wind and blown into the water. The corn which men raise for food grows and produces its grain by the same laws of vegetation by which the wild rose and the mountain strawberry bring forth their flowers and fruit. ”

“ Science, of which the essence is only in knowledge and theory, came to be spoken of as Art, of which the essence is all in practice and production. Cicero, notwithstanding his citation of the Stoical dictum that practice and production were of the essence of Art, elsewhere divides Art into two kinds—one by which things are only contemplated in the mind, another by which something is produced and done. ”

“ Man, on the other hand, has an infinity of different arts which were not born with his race, and of which the glory is his own.” Dr Johnson might reply that those properties of variety and of originality or individual invention, which Fontenelle himself alleges in the ingenuities of man but not in those of the lower animals, are sufficient to make a generic difference, and to establish the impropriety of calling a honeycomb or a spider’s web a work of Art. It is not our purpose to trespass on ground so debateable as that of the nature of consciousness in the lower animals. ”

“ Arts that work in a kindred way with different materials are those of dancing and music. Dancing works with the physical movements of human beings. Music works with sound. Between that imitative and plastic group, and the group of these which only produce motion or sound and pass away, there is the intermediate group of eloquence and the drama, which deal with the expression of human feeling in spoken words and acted gestures. There is also the comprehensive art of poetry, which works with the material of written words, and can ideally represent the whole material of human life and experience. ”

“ Nature was “non artificiosa solum, sed plane artifex.” “That which in the works of human art is done by hands, is done with much greater art by Nature, that is, by a fire which exercises an art and is the teacher of other arts.” This conception of Nature as an all-generating fire, and at the same time as a personal artist both teaching and including in her own activity all the human arts, on the one hand may be said, with Polixenes and J. S. Mill, to merge Art in Nature; but on the other hand it finds the essence of Nature in the resemblance of her operations to those of Art. ”

“ Here, therefore, is the germ of all those arts which produce imitations of natural objects for purposes of entertainment or delight, as painting, sculpture, and their subordinates; and of all those which fashion useful objects in one way rather than another because the one way gives pleasure and the other does not, as architecture and the subordinate decorative arts of furniture, pottery and the rest. ”

“ And Art in general consists of the truths of Science arranged in the most convenient order for practice, instead of the order which is most convenient for thought. Science groups and arranges its truths so as to enable us to take in at one view as much as possible of the general order of the universe. ”

“ The Science receives it, considers it as a phenomenon or effect to be studied, and having investigated its causes and conditions, sends it back to Art with a theorem of the causes and combinations by which it could be produced. Art then examines these combinations of circumstances, and according as any of them are or are not in human power, pronounces the end attainable or not. The only one of the premises, therefore, which Art supplies, is the original major premise, which asserts that the attainment of the given end is desirable. ”

“ Our own word Art the English language has taken, as all the Romance languages of modern Europe have taken theirs, directly from the Latin. The Latin ars, according to the prevailing opinion of philologists, proceeds from a root AR, of which the primitive signification was to put or fit things together, and which is to be found in a large family of Greek words. The Greek τέχνη, the name both for arts in the particular and art in the abstract, is by its root related both to τέκ-των and τέκ-νον, and thus contains the allied ideas of making and begetting. ”

“ Now geometry, understanding by geometry an acquisition of the mind, that is, a collected body of observations and deductions concerning the properties of space and magnitude, is a science and not an art; although there is an art of the geometer, which is the skill by which he solves any given problem in his science, and the rules of that skill, and his exertion in putting it forth. ”

“ But this definition is insufficient, because the abstract word Art, whether used of all arts at once or of one at a time, is a name not only for the power of doing something, but for the exercise of the power; and not only for the exercise of the power, but for the rules according to which it is exercised; and not only for the rules, but for the result. Painting, for instance, is an art, and the word connotes not only the power to paint, but the act of painting ”

“ Enough that when we use the term Art of any action, it is because we are thinking of properties in the action from which we infer, whether justly or not, that the agent voluntarily and designedly puts forth skill for known ends and by regular and uniform methods. ”

“ Of all these arts the end is not use but pleasure, or pleasure before use, or at least pleasure and use conjointly. In modern language, there has grown up a usage which has put them into a class by themselves under the name of the Fine Arts, as distinguished from the Useful or Mechanical Arts. (See Aesthetics and Fine Arts.) Nay more, to them alone is often appropriated the use of the generic word Art, as if they and they only were the arts κατ’ ἐξοχήν. ”

“ When Art and the works of Art are now currently spoken of in this sense, not even music or poetry is frequently denoted, but only architecture, sculpture and painting by themselves, or with their subordinate and decorative branches. In correspondence with this usage, another usage has removed from the class of arts, and put into a contrasted class of manufactures, a large number of industries and their products, to which the generic term Art, according to our definition, properly applies. ”

“ At one stage of civilization one art or group of arts is held in higher esteem, another at another. In societies, like most of those of the ancient world, where slaves were employed in domestic service, and upon the handicrafts supplying the immediate utilities of life—food, shelter and clothing—these constituted a group of servile arts. ”

“ From these premises Art concludes that the performance of these actions is desirable, and finding it also practicable, converts the theorem into a rule or precept.... The grounds, then, of every rule of Art are to be found in the theorems of Science. An Art, or a body of Art, consists of the rules, together with as much of the speculative propositions as comprises the justification of these rules. The complete Art of any matter includes a selection of such a portion from the Science as is necessary to show on what conditions the effects, which the Art aims at producing, depend. ”

“ There are other arts which have not had their origin in positive practical needs, but have been practised from the first for pleasure or amusement. The most primitive human beings of whom we have any knowledge, the cave-dwellers of the palaeolithic period, had not only the useful art of chipping stones into spear-heads, knife-heads and arrow-heads, and making shafts or handles of these implements out of bone ”

“ In these and all other artificial operations the office of man is, as has often been remarked, a very limited one; it consists of moving things into certain places. We move objects, and by doing this, bring some things into contact which were separate, or separate others which were in contact; and by this simple change of place, natural forces previously dormant are called into action, and produce the desired effect. Even the volition which designs, the intelligence which contrives, and the muscular force which executes these movements, are themselves powers of Nature. ”

“ And so every science has its instrumental art or practical discipline; and in as far as the word Art is used only of the practical discipline or dexterity of the geometer, the astronomer, the logician, the grammarian, or other person whose business it is to collect and classify facts for contemplation, in so far the usage is just. ”

“ A house stands and holds together by the natural properties, the weight and cohesion of the materials which compose it. A steam engine works by the natural expansive force of steam, exerting a pressure upon one part of a system of arrangements, which pressure, by the mechanical properties of the lever, is transferred from that to another part, where it raises the weight or removes the obstacle brought into connexion with it. ”

“ Another mode of thought, in some sort complementary to the last, is based on the analogy which the operations of forces external to a man bear to the operations of man himself. Study, forethought and exertion are assigned to Nature, and her operations are called operations of Art. ”

“ Science enunciates her conclusions in the indicative mood, whereas “the imperative is the characteristic of Art, as distinguished from Science.” And as Art utters her conclusions in her own form, so she supplies the substance of her own major premise.
“Every art has one first principle, or general major premise, not borrowed from science, that which enunciates the object aimed at, and affirms it to be a desirable object. The builder’s art assumes that it is desirable to have buildings ”

“ One such view is that wherein all phenomena are regarded as equally natural, and the idea of Nature is extended so as to include “all the powers existing in either the outer or the inner world, and everything which exists by means of those powers.” In this view Art becomes a part of Nature. ”

“ The arts of husbandry or agriculture, on the other hand, have alternately been regarded as servile and as honourable according as their exercise has been in the hands of a subject class, as under feudal institutions, or, as under the Roman republic, of free cultivators. ”

“ And Fontenelle, speaking in the language not of poetry but of science:—“Most animals—as, for instance, bees, spiders and beavers—have a kind of art peculiar to themselves; but each race of animals has no more than one art, and this one has had no first inventor among the race. ”

“ But among peaceful arts, industries or trades, some have always been held to be of higher and others of lower rank; the higher rank being assigned to those that required larger operations, higher training, or more thoughtful conduct, and yielded ampler returns—the lower rank to those which called for simple manual exercise, especially if such exercise was of a disagreeable or degrading kind. ”

“ The definition covers the mechanical arts, which can be efficiently exercised by mere trained habit, rote or calculation, just as well as the fine arts, which have to be exercised by a higher order of powers. ”

“ We thus see that the chief Indo-European languages have with one consent extended a name for the most elementary exercise of a constructive or productive power, till that name has covered the whole range of the skilled and deliberate operations of sentient beings. ”

“ Exception might also be taken to Dr Johnson’s definition on the ground that it excludes all actions of instinct from the genus Art, whereas usage has in more languages than one given the name of Art to several of those ingenuities in the lower animals which popular theory at the same time declares to be instinctive. ”