Zoophites were developed into megatheriums and mastodons. Mammoths and elks sported on plains which now form the mountain tops of our continents. Scarcely visible coral animals were still engaged in constructing mountain chains, and a luxuriant vegetation covered the small continents. Such transformations, convulsions, and changes are gigantic, grand, awe-inspiring--sublime, but not beautiful. Whenever nature is at work, disturbing the air with electric currents or shaking huge mountains, so that they bow their lofty summits, or when the dry soil is rent asunder, and sends forth streams of glowing lava, we are in the presence of the sublime, not of the beautiful. Whenever man’s nature is overawed, whenever he is made to feel his impotence by the phenomena of nature, he faces the sublime. In art, only a few divinely-gifted and chosen geniuses have ever reached the sublime. When, however, the cosmical forces had expended their exuberant powers--when a diversified climate had produced those plants and animals that surround us--when man appeared on this revolving planet, and by degrees reached self-consciousness as his highest development--then only beauty acquired existence and dominion on earth. Without men capable of understanding what is beautiful, art would have no meaning. The aim of science is to vanquish error; the province of industry to subdue matter, and the vocation of art to produce beauty. The artist must not neglect science, for he has to be truthful, as error is ugly; he must make himself well acquainted with matter, for he has to use, to transform, and to modify it; and, finally, he has to hallow this scientifically-treated matter by impressing it with the stamp of ideal beauty. The attainment of this, the perfection of art, has been slow and gradual. Though art, like all the inventions, took its origin in want and necessity, the _utilitarian_ spirit is the very bane of art, for art flourishes only under the influence of the very highest intellectual culture. Nature produces like art; but the products of nature are the unconscious effects of the immutable law of causation. The products of art are the results of the conscious intellectual power of the artist. It is the free, yet well-regulated, consciousness of the artist that elevates his productions into works of art. Undoubtedly the great store-house of the artist is nature; he learns from nature how to ornament, but he has to discern, to combine, to adapt, to select, his forms. The whole success of the artist, in whatever branch he works, must depend on an earnest and severe use of the word CHOICE.