Excerpt from Gleanings in the Fields of Art<br><br>Human life itself is the greatest of all forms of art, unless we go still further and say, with Coleridge and Allston, that creation is the Art of God; since by it he has uttered his thought and made matter the vehicle of expression.<br><br>Art, Religion, Science, are all closely allied, and unite in their central thoughts, yet their manifestations are different. It is the object of Science to observe facts, and so to ar range them as to develop their mutual relations and show the law which underlies them. She is bound only to exam ine carefully, to state clearly, and to reason logically. She is not bound to develop the spiritual meaning of these facts to make them useful in practical life, or to give them a bind ing force on the consciences of mefi; yet she works in bar mony with Art, furnishing to her both means of expression and a wider range of insight; so that, as Goethesays,all that Science needs is needed for Art; and with Religion, by showing the universality of Law, and revealing the infi nite resources and immeasurable achievements of the Cre ative Power. But Religion has a higher function, not only to see the truth, not only to reveal the law, not only to enjoy the beauty in God's universe, but so to control the conscience and the will of intelligent beings as to bring the life of the individual into true relation with the Universal, and bind men by Duty as the Universe is bound by Law.<br><br>About the Publisher<br><br>Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com<br><br>This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.