Art and artifice

Use in the book

The art that teaches a child to esteem gold can collaborate with error, erecting invented wealth in place of natural treasures. Yet children are also to learn that God makes lesser objects through human ministry; the correction concerns comparative worth, not the denial of workmanship. There is an art of managing love, and divine wisdom itself is the painter's art that fills the infinite field of creation. The term thus crosses the apparent boundary between nature and contrivance. A skill is good when it serves the true capacities and ends of its object. It goes wrong when cleverness imposes a false scale of value or becomes sufficient justification for its own products.

Places to read

1. II.69The art of love is its rational and proportionate management.
2. III.9Art and error cooperate in producing conventional riches.
3. III.11Humanly made objects can be acknowledged as God’s gifts while assigned a subordinate value.
4. V.5Divine wisdom is the art in the extended figure of creation as painting.
5. III.41The artist exemplifies mastery of a discipline, whose value depends on the purpose of knowing.

In this edition

“Curious” beside art usually suggests skilful or elaborate workmanship. “Artifice” and “contrivance” are lookup equivalents here, not claims that these exact abstract nouns occur in the cited sentences.

Artist

The greatest artist in III.41 is a master of an art or science. The surrounding examples include astronomy, medicine, grammar and poetry, not only visual workmanship. Their learning becomes fruitful when its objects are known for their value and as the learner’s own concern. Mere expertise for talk or display does not satisfy that demand.