Article January 1, 1910 Issue

LIFE AS AN ART

HAPPY FRANKLIN PORTER.

It has been well said that "there is art in everything." Webster defines art as "applied knowledge." In the highest and best sense, art is that which makes for perfection: it is sign and seal of the infinite, made manifest in the realm of effect through human skill and effort. It is the ripe fruit of patience and persistence along right lines, the tangible attestment of perpetual striving for truer and nobler ways of externalizing ideas. There must be, and is, a right way of doing all things, a Principle back of and governing all human activity.

The reaching up continually for this right way in all things one attempts, be it writing or digging, throwing a baseball or painting a picture, kneading dough or managing a business, constitutes the art of it. Thus the art of living is to bring out harmony in every detail of life and in every relation with one's fellow-men. It is to be well and happy, able and efficient. Life completely ordered by divine Principle would be entirely harmonious. In other words, its art would be perfect, and its possibilities of expressing perfection limitless. This is the sense of Life into which we should all strive unceasingly to enter. The knowledge of Life is in truth an art: it is the art of arts, to attain the mastery of which requires, as Mrs. Eddy tells us, "absolute consecration of thought, energy, and desire" (Science and Health, p. 3).

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