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. It is illustrated in the familiar passage of Shakespeare,
where Polixenes reminds Perdita that
"Nature is made better by no mean,
But nature makes that mean: so, over that art
Which, you say, adds to nature, is an art
That nature makes." ...
"This is an art
Which does mend nature, change it rather, but
The art itself is nature."
A posthumous essay of John Stuart Mill contains a full philosophical
exposition and defence of this mode of regarding the relations of Nature
and Art. Defining Nature as above, and again as a "collective name for
all facts, actual and possible," that writer proceeds to say that such a
definition
"is evidently inapplicable to some of the modes in which the word is
familiarly employed. For example, it entirely conflicts with the
common form of speech by which Nature is opposed to Art, and natural
to artificial. 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. 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.
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. 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
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