difficult and sometimes impossible. But the
field itself is admittedly "there," in all its
richness and beauty, however bitterly the
surveyors may quarrel about the boundary
lines. (It is well to remember that professional
surveyors do not themselves own these fields
or raise any crops upon them!) How much
map-making ingenuity has been devoted to
this task of grouping and classifying the arts:
distinguishing between art and fine art, be-
tween artist, artificer and artisan; seeking to
arrange a hierarchy of the arts on the basis of
their relative freedom from fixed ends, their
relative complexity or comprehensiveness of
effect, their relative obligation to imitate or
represent something that exists in nature!
No one cares particularly to-day about such
matters of precedence -- as if the arts were
walking in a carefully ordered ecclesiastical
procession. On the other hand, there is ever-
increasing recognition of the soundness of the
distinction made by Lessing in his Laokoon:
or the Limits of Painting and Poetry; namely,
that the fine arts differ, as media of expres-
sion, according to the nature of the material
which they employ. That is to say, the "time-
arts" -- like poetry and music -- deal prima-

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