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[3]
Had Praxiteles attempted to carve
a statue out of a millstone, I should have preferred
a rough block of Parian marble to any such statue.
On the other hand, if the same artist had produced
a finished statue from such a block of Parian marble,
its artistic value would owe more to his skill than
to the material. To conclude, nature is the raw
material for education: the one forms, the other is
formed. Without material art can do nothing,
material without art does possess a certain value,
while the perfection of art is better than the best
material.
[p. 351]
Quintilian. With an English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1920.
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