TENTH MEETING
Shall We Make an Art of Life?
I. Truth, Goodness and Beauty, but the Greatest of these is Beauty, Which Combines the Other Two:
a. Science is knowledge of facts.
b. Philosophy is vision of truth or aim.
c. Art is using our knowledge to create what we seek. Action and purpose.
II. Art is Self-expression, Creation, Action, Relationing:
a. All life, all being, is action, or self-expression.
b. All power in the world is imaginative, creative thought-power:
1. All things must be imagined before they can be known or done.
III. All Great Action, All Goodness, All Power in Life Follows the Same Laws as Art:
a. Therefore let us discover the laws of all arts, and see whether they can be applied to life.
IV. The Message of All the Arts:
a. All have the same laws:
1. Art is the symbol of completeness in a definite shape.
2. Is self-expression and self-fulfilment.
3. Must leave out the unimportant.
4. Must have variety and many-sidedness.
5. Must not be partisan, and must be sympathetic.
6. Must give the impression of truth.
7. Must be aloof, that is, separate from life, and see things, as it were, from a distance, in their wholeness.
V. Review and Conclusion:
a. Each smallest thing can symbolize the whole:
1. Each human life is a symbol of the complete Self, in a definite shape.
2. Each is deserving of reverence:
α. Reverence is the small self awed before its own vastness.
[Note.—As the eleventh meeting was somewhat of a digression, and as the notes taken were covered in later meetings, it is here omitted.]