without any one of which that work of art could not have come into
being. First, there is the temperament of the artist himself, his native
endowment for the practise of that special art, his gift of
story-telling or of play-making, as the case may be. Second, there is
the training of the artist, his preparation for his work, his slowly
acquired mastery of the processes of his craft, his technical
accomplishments. And, thirdly, there is the man's own character, his
intelligence, and energy, and determination, his moral sense, his
attitude toward life and its insistent problems. Now, of these three
necessary factors--first, his native gift; second, his technic; and,
third, his character--only the second is improvable by taking thought.
The native gift must remain ever what it is, neither more nor less; and
it cannot be enlarged by any effort of will. So also the character,
which is conditioned by much that is beyond a man's control,--which can
be bettered, perhaps, but only as the man himself climbs upward.

Technic, however, can be had for the asking. Any man can acquire it if
he will but pay the price,--the needful study and experiment. Any man
can make himself a master of his craft, if he will but serve his
apprenticeship loyally. The beginner in painting, for example, can go
into the studio of an older practitioner to get grounded in the grammar
of his art, and to learn slowly how to speak its language, not
eloquently at first, but so as to make his meaning clear. In that
workshop he soon awakens to the fact that permanent success is never won
by any audacity of ignorance, and that the most famous artists are those
who acquainted themselves with every artifice of their craft and with
every trick of their trade. They went to school to certain of their
elders to acquire that tradition of technic, past along from hand to
hand, enriched by the devices of one after another of the strong men who
had practised the art, following each in the other's footsteps and