in anything else, and the charm and fascination of doing it so — these, I take it, are the real clue to the fundamental question of aesthetics, which is “how feeling and its body are created adequate to one another.” It is parallel to the question in general philosophy, “Why the soul has a body.” It is the same sort of thing as the theory of the rising mountain, but it is much less open to caprice, being absolute fact all through, and it explains not merely the interpretation of lines and shapes, but the whole range and working of the aesthetic imagination in the province of fine art, which is its special province.
To this doctrine belongs the very fruitful modern topic of the relation of beautiful handicraft with the workman’s life, as the outcome and expression of his body-and-mind, and amid all the disparagement which the most recent views of art are apt to throw upon Ruskin, we must remember that it was first and foremost to his inspired advocacy that this point of view owes its recognition to-day, and William Morris,
