III. And therefore, lastly, and chiefly, you must love the creatures to
whom you minister, your fellow-men; for, if you do not love them, not
only will you be little interested in the passing events of life, but
in all your gazing at humanity, you will be apt to be struck only by
outside form, and not by expression. It is only kindness and tenderness
which will ever enable you to see what beauty there is in the dark eyes
that are sunk with weeping, and in the paleness of those fixed faces
which the earth's adversity has compassed about, till they shine in
their patience like dying watchfires through twilight. But it is not
this only which makes it needful for you, if you would be great, to be
also kind; there is a most important and all-essential reason in the
very nature of your own art. So soon as you desire to build largely,
and with addition of noble sculpture, you will find that your work must
be associative. You cannot carve a whole cathedral yourself--you can
carve but few and simple parts of it. Either your own work must be
disgraced in the mass of the collateral inferiority, or you must raise
your fellow-designers to correspondence of power. If you have genius,
you will yourselves take the lead in the building you design; you will
carve its porch and direct its disposition. But for all subsequent
advancement of its detail, you must trust to the agency and the
invention of others; and it rests with you either to repress what
faculties your workmen have, into cunning subordination to your own; or
to rejoice in discovering even the powers that may rival you, and
leading forth mind after mind into fellowship with your fancy, and
association with your fame.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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