as well as he who makes laws and he who makes poems; the builder of
houses, with the builder of theologies or cosmogonies; the engineer,
as well as the artist, all work under the rays of this illuminator;
and, other things being equal, he excels all others on whose work
those rays shine with the most sustained and penetrative force.

"'T is the eternal law,
That first in beauty shall be first in might."[2]

[2] Keats.

In short, whatever the mental gift, in order to get from that gift its
best fruit, the possessor must be incited, upborne, enlightened,
inspired by the ideal, which burns as a transfiguring flame in his
mind, and throws thence its joyful light with every blow of his hand.

All good work is more or less creative, that is, a co-working with the
eternal mind; and work is good and productive in proportion to
the intensity of this coöperation. Why is it that we so prize a
fragment of Phidias, a few lines traced by Raphael? Because the minds
of those workers were, more than the minds of most others, in sympathy
with the Infinite mind. While at work their hands were more distinctly
guided by the Almighty hand; they felt and embodied more of the spirit
which makes, which is, life.

Here is a frame of canvas, a block of marble, a pile of stones, a
vocabulary. Of the canvas you make a screen, you build a dwelling with
the pile of stones, chisel a door-sill out of the block, with the
vocabulary you write an essay. And in each case you work well and
creatively, if your work be in harmony with God's laws, if your screen