It will be well, at the outset, to make clear the meaning of the title and to place the subject; for such terms as “art” and “perspective,” in this particular company at least, may easily be taken in quite other meanings than are here intended. I must at once declare (and I hope I disappoint no one) that I shall not be speaking here about art of the kind which our chairman is interested in collecting in his museum, nor of perspective as it is taught in the classrooms at the Fogg—at least not primarily in those senses. Both terms are here intended in a much broader meaning: “perspective” simply in the sense of “angle of vision”; and “art” in that much more inclusive sense which it had had for as many centuries before the Renaissance as may be counted from (at least) Aristotle to Thomas Aquinas; art, that is, as any activity concerned with making. And, as will soon be evident, I am interested in this broad conception of art not merely in so far as art may be distinguished by its particular aim and object, but as its distinction from other forms of human activity may be affirmed with respect to the subject of the action, the maker, the agent, the artist. You will readily recognize the distinguishing features of art so intended as I quote from the Ethics of Aristotle and from the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas.
In the Summa, as you may recall, Aquinas becomes concerned with art in connection with the subject of the virtues, and specifically in conjunction with the virtue of Prudence—mainly, we gather, because his master the Philosopher had in the Ethics considered Art in connection with Prudence. Thus, Aquinas, calling his own tune as usual by way of objections raised, brings in the question of Art are distinguished from Prudence:
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