Recollect this triple group; it will help you to solve many difficult
problems. And remember that though the hand must be at the bottom of
everything, it must also go to the top of everything; for Fine Art must
be produced by the hand of man in a much greater and clearer sense than
manufacture is. Fine Art must always be produced by the subtlest of all
machines, which is the human hand. No machine yet contrived, or
hereafter contrivable, will ever equal the fine machinery of the human
fingers. Thoroughly perfect art is that which proceeds from the heart,
which involves all the noble emotions;--associates with these the head,
yet as inferior to the heart; and the hand, yet as inferior to the
heart and head; and thus brings out the whole man.
Hence it follows that since Manufacture is simply the operation of the
hand of man in producing that which is useful to him, it essentially
separates itself from the emotions; when emotions interfere with
machinery they spoil it: machinery must go evenly, without emotion. But
the Fine Arts cannot go evenly; they always must have emotion ruling
their mechanism, and until the pupil begins to feel, and until all he
does associates itself with the current of his feeling, he is not an
artist. But pupils in all the schools in this country are now exposed
to all kinds of temptations which blunt their feelings. I constantly
feel discouraged in addressing them because I know not how to tell them
boldly what they ought to do, when I feel how practically difficult it
is for them to do it. There are all sorts of demands made upon them in
every direction, and money is to be made in every conceivable way but
the right way. If you paint as you ought, and study as you ought,
depend upon it the public will take no notice of you for a long while.
If you study wrongly, and try to draw the attention of the public upon
you,--supposing you to be clever students--you will get swift reward;
but the reward does not come fast when it is sought wisely; it is
always held aloof for a little while; the right roads of early life are
very quiet ones, hedged in from nearly all help or praise. But the
wrong roads are noisy,--vociferous everywhere with all kinds of demand
upon you for art which is not properly art at all; and in the various
meetings of modern interests, money is to be made in every way; but art
is to be followed only in _one_ way. That is what I want mainly to
say to you, or if not to you yourselves (for, from what I have heard
from your excellent master to-night, I know you are going on all
rightly), you must let me say it through you to others. Our Schools of
Art are confused by the various teaching and various interests that are
now abroad among us. Everybody is talking about art, and writing about
it, and more or less interested in it; everybody wants art, and there
is not art for everybody, and few who talk know what they are talking
about; thus students are led in all variable ways, while there is only
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