As stated in our last lecture, the idea in human life of employment is something that occupies the hands and must belong to material subsistence; yet more than three-fourths of the employments of earthly life are those that have their origin in the mind, and must be goverened by intelligence in order to go forward successfully. Indeed, so feeble and impotent is the physical form of man, that without the aid of this surpassing intelligence the child is most helpless of human beings; the most unprotected of all created things. But by intelligence man achieves victories over his physical surroundings; makes the forest trees to bend to his shelter; the stone from the quarries to fashion his dwelling; the clay of earth to be constructed into habitations, and all the atmosphere, and the sea, and the wide-spread heavens, to minister to his wants; while the products of the earth, carefully cultivated by his hand, nut only minister to his actual necessities, but feed the more luxurious tastes, pander to the appetites that, perhaps, it were better not to satisfy.

In the realm of intellect, genius holds sway. It is the inventive genius that fills the earth with mechanical appliances to overcome the necessary drudgery of the hand-labor, and it is the skilled laborer that demands the highest price for his toil; and it is the inventor that finally benefits his kind by uplifting toil to the realm of intelligence, instead of physical labor. And while, as we said in our last lecture, there can be no doubt that certain employment of the physical is necessary for the well-being of all people, still that unequal distribution of toil which is upon the earth to-day must sooner or later give place to a wider and broaded humanity that will contemplate the intellectual and spiritual needs, while the bodily labor is performed by adequate machinery and equal distribution.

Geniuses are the prophecies of mankind, illustrating what all human life may one day become, when ignorance, poverty, degradation, pride and all sin have been overcome. Nay, they oftentimes teach another lesson: that if one is only great in one direction of intellect, and if there is not corresponding spiritual growth and moral unfoldment, the genius is barren of fruits as Dead Sea waters, giving nothing in return. The genius who is truly such must be one whose heart is in sympathy with his kind, whose spirit is responsive to human sympathy, and who, when he gives his gifts to the world does not seek a selfish return; but only as the flower blossoms to shed its fragrance, or the star shines because it must, so does the genius express himself because he needs must do so.

"In spiritual existence," you ask me, "how can the sculptor carve statues out of empty air, if there is no substantial material on which he can exercise his genius?" Have you never thought, while gazing upon a statue, that the object of carving it was to bring the sculptor's genius within the grasp of human comprehension, and make you aware of the image that was in his mind? If, by the gracious law of spiritual sympathy and the exaltation of your comprehension, you were able to perceive the image perfect and beautiful in his spirit, would not that be still greater satisfaction? For there might be a flaw or speck upon the marble; there might be a faint outline that is unsatisfactory to the sculptor; but in the image of the mind, were you able to perceive it, there stands the object, Faith, Hope, or Love, or whatever quality the marble is intended to portray, with diviner perfection.

Besides this, art is not simply that stones shall speak and curves portray the image, but that the voice of Art shall speak to others' intelligence, other lives, other beings than the artist's. If you have a thought beautiful, perfect, sacred, divine, you would fain impart it to one you love; and if there is no manner of reaching that one by your thought than that of carefully selected words, with a poem of your choice, with flowers that could breathe the divine message, or some pure image that would give to that loved one your thought, it is not the form that conveys it, but the thought that is divine. And when in most sacred hours of communion, your dearest and best beloved is able to perceive your thoughts, to feel and understand what you think, and if without words, how much more soul satisfying it is; how much more than empty sound, since you are conscious of the possession of their thought in the realm of the spirit; how much more satisfying than that condition which must still have graven images and carved statues, and must still rely upon painted pictures for the expression of light, and thought, and genius.

An artist is surrounded with his own creations. The subtle atmosphere of spirit-life portrays unto the one approaching the artist the nature of the sphere which he inhabits. If you expect to see Raphael, not only surrounded by the sweet Madonnas that he painted, but with the loftier and diviner art of his genius, you will find him ensphered not alone in the faces of exquisite pictures that shine out in memory and make Italy immortal, but ensphered in a far more dear and sacred love - the face of the one who inspired him; the form of the child that was the model for the infant Jesus, and the light of eyes that shone upon him during the years of his labor and exalted his genius to that which was angelic and godlike. Those ensphered lives, and not pictures, become the objects of his portrayal; and wheresoever a heart has been touched by the imagery of his art, there is painted a sacred and living image in his spiritual habitation. If you, gazing with transport upon the Madonnas, have lifted your thoughts to the sphere of art which he inhabits, then that thought is immortalized; that praise becomes his picture; that loving remembrance one of the images enshrined in the temple of his life; and pouring the sphere of his genius over the aspirations of the earth not only kindles the love of form, and color, and shapely beauty, but love of love - a true love of that which is divine, which is more than art, which is the eternal soul of genius.