every one, all over the world, is training the hands for some purpose.
And such a variety of purposes! One strives to get skill with tools,
another is a conjurer, another spends his life among beautiful and
delicate plants, another reads with his fingers.[53] In any one of
these or of the countless other ways that the hands may be used, no
one may truly be said to have skill until delicacy has been gained.
Even in a forcible use of the hands there must be the greatest
delicacy in the guidance. You can readily see that when the hands are
working at the command of the heart they must be ever ready to make
evident the meaning of the heart, and that is expressed in truthful
delicacy. Not only are all the people in the world training their
hands, but they are, as we have already said, training them in
countless different ways.

Have you ever stopped to think of another matter: that all things
about us, except the things that live, have been made by hands? And of
the things that live very many are cared for by the hands. These
thoughts will suggest something to us. Those things which are good and
beautiful suggest noble use of the hands; while those which are of no
service, harmful and destructive, show an ignoble use. But noble and
ignoble use of the hands is only another evidence of thought. Thought
that is pure in the heart guides the hands to beautiful ends. And if
the heart is impure in its thoughts, of course you know what follows.

I have always been impressed in reading the books of John Ruskin to
note how many times he speaks about the hands. Very truly, indeed,
does he recognize that back of all hand work there is heart-thought,
commanding, directing, actually building. It shows everywhere. The
building of a wall with the stones rightly placed demands _honor_. The
builder may be rude, but if his hands place the stones faithfully one