The moment a man can really do his work he becomes speechless about
it. All words become idle to him--all theories.
Does a bird need to theorize about building its nest, or boast of it
when built? All good work is essentially done that way--without
hesitation, without difficulty, without boasting; and in the doers of
the best, there is an inner and involuntary power which approximates
literally to the instinct of an animal--nay, I am certain that in the
most perfect human artists, reason does _not_ supersede instinct, but
is added to an instinct as much more divine than that of the lower
animals as the human body is more beautiful than theirs; that a great
singer sings not with less instinct than the nightingale, but with
more--only more various, applicable, and governable; that a great
architect does not build with less instinct than the beaver or the
bee, but with more--with an innate cunning of proportion that embraces
all beauty, and a divine ingenuity of skill that improvises all
construction. But be that as it may--be the instinct less or more than
that of inferior animals--like or unlike theirs, still the human art
is dependent on that first, and then upon an amount of practice, of
science,--and of imagination disciplined by thought, which the true
possessor of it knows to be incommunicable, and the true critic of it,
inexplicable, except through long process of laborious years.
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