"Nature is made better by no mean, But nature makes that mean: so, over that art Which, you say, adds to nature, is an art That nature makes." ... "This is an art Which does mend nature, change it rather, but The art itself is nature."
A posthumous essay of John Stuart Mill contains a full philosophical exposition and defence of this mode of regarding the relations of Nature and Art. Defining Nature as above, and again as a "collective name for all facts, actual and possible," that writer proceeds to say that such a definition
"is evidently inapplicable to some of the modes in which the word is familiarly employed. For example, it entirely conflicts with the common form of speech by which Nature is opposed to Art, and natural to artificial. For in the sense of the word Nature which has thus been defined, and which is the true scientific sense, Art is as much Nature as anything else; and everything which is artificial is natural--Art has no independent powers of its own: Art is but the employment of the powers of Nature for an end. Phenomena produced by human agency no less than those which, as far as we are concerned, are spontaneous, depend on the properties of the elementary forces, or of the elementary substances and their compounds. The united powers of the whole human race could not create a new property of matter in general, or of any one of its species. We can only take advantage for our purposes of the properties we find. A ship floats by the same laws of specific gravity and equilibrium as a tree uprooted by the wind and blown into the water. The corn which men raise for food grows and produces its grain by the same laws of vegetation by which the wild rose and the mountain strawberry bring forth their flowers and fruit. A house stands and holds together by the natural properties, the weight and cohesion of the materials which compose it. A steam engine works by the natural expansive force of steam, exerting a pressure upon one part of a system of arrangements, which pressure, by the mechanical properties of the lever, is transferred from that to another part, where it raises the weight or removes the obstacle brought into connexion with it. In these and all other artificial operations the office of man is, as has often been remarked, a very limited one; it consists of moving things into certain places. We move objects, and by doing this, bring some things into contact which were separate, or separate others which were in contact; and by this simple change of place, natural forces previously dormant are called into action, and produce the desired effect. Even the volition which designs, the intelligence which contrives, and the muscular force which executes these movements, are themselves powers of Nature."