If art has a basic definition it is: The end product of the act of creating. It is closely related to religion and the concept of God.

Our concept of God is that He is the creator of all things know to us. He manipulated the order of his environment to suit his wants, to get the end product, our environment. We, in fact are God’s work of Art. Perhaps not his only nor his best.

In art we become nearest to being a "what may be called a minor God" We create, and our end product is comparable to the heaven and earth but on a smaller scale.

Our acts of creating involve three major things; our environment, our thought process, and our cultural heritage. Thought processes are the most significant because it is they that change the other two. If you never attempt to change the other two, environment and cultural heritage, then you will never be an artist in the true sense. Your name will not be known in a thousand years.

A true artist uses his intellect to change cultural heritage and the environment. Only history will prove whether he changes it to the better or worse. However, it would be a logical assumption that if he is intelligent and learned enough to see the correlation between the cultural heritage, environment and intellect then he will also change things to the better.

Art began without the cultural heritage but with the intellect and environmental correlation. I probably began similar to what we now observe in the chimpanzee that uses a stem, stripping the leaves from it and inserting it into a hole to retrieve termites. In this tool the chimpanzee has created a work of art. He now has a cultural heritage to pass on to future generations of chimpanzees. In perhaps a thousand years this chimpanzees offspring that still knows how to use this tool may sharpen the point, throw it at a small animal and kill it. He has then created the spear. Another work of art and has increased and improved his tribes cultural heritage. Only the original stiped stick and the original sharpened stick were the works of art. The others that are copies of the original are only tools.

For the chimpanzee to create these works of art then he mush have had an inspiration.

Here we must understand or attempt to understand the creative process or what is commonly called inspiration. It is not scientific and little is know of it. It is believed that the greater your senses are stimulated the greater the possibility of inspiration. The inspiration is an abstraction from the environment.

The following is a hypothetical example:

A farmer is out hunting, it begins to rain and he sets under a cliff resting and thinking about the farm work. His eyes are focused on the fork of a young tree nestling in the trunk of another. The wind blowing the young one back and forth and rubbing the fork back and forth on the big tree. Suddenly the wind shifts, blowing cold rain his face, and the tree breaks about a foot back from the fork with a loud piercing crack. All the farmers major senses are stimulated; touch by the cold rain blowing in his face; sight with the falling object; sound with the breaking noise. He gets inspired and creates the hinge. Had any of the stimuli been left out perhaps his inspiration would not have come. If he had not been thinking about the farm where he could apply the inspiration or if he had not been in the correct place at the correct time when the tree snapped then the inspiration would not have come. As you can see creativity is very complex and is dependent greatly upon fate. However there is one factor that you control. That is what you think about. You cannot be thinking about Sally Jane and discover a way to turn lead into gold.

As art evolved and a cultural heritage of increased complexity developed man began applying his creative process away from the material and toward the spiritual or non-material. At this point his thought process, intellect, is applied directly. Here you must understand that the creative process is a direct abstraction of the physical environment as indicated by the hinge example. The man with the hinge abstracted directly from his environment into a material thing. The chimp with the spear did the same thing. When man moved to the spiritual, he no longer abstracted into the material but the non-material. A more direct application of the thought processes. Here is the true separation of man from other animals. He has reached out beyond his mere physical needs and reached for god-hood. This would be a higher order of art.

In this higher order of art two important creative factors come into play. They are love and beauty. This is also a prerequisite for this higher order of art; To be inspired on this higher order your physical needs must already be fulfilled. As an example; the chimp will first invent the spear to get the food he needs and when life is easy and he has a lot of spare time he will decorate the spear. This higher order of art is more closely related to our concept of art today. The decorated spear would be what we would call beautiful.

A definition of beauty is required here; something beautiful would be something that would stimulate a pleasant neuron in the brain. This neuron could be either innate, what is called inherited, or a memory, learned neuron. When dealing with an innate neuron then the beauty would be universal. When dealing with a memory neuron it would be only local. Example: A portrait of you girl friend would stimulate pleasant sensations in you but do nothing to another male. This would be a memory sensation. However, if a full-length nude photo of your girl friend was observed by this other male then it would stimulate pleasant sensations in him as well as you; this would be an innate sensation. Although little is know for sure about innate neurons, it is generally accepted that design, pattern, harmony, and balance is innately beautiful in art.

As stated earlier, love is also involved in his higher order of art. Love is generally defined as sacrificing ones self for something or someone other than you.

These two, love and beauty go together in this manner. When an artist paints a picture he uses his intellect to produce an object that will stimulate the pleasant sensation neurons of others. He has sacrificed his time in producing this object and although he gets self-satisfaction from it he really produces it for his fellow men to get satisfaction from.

We will now combine these three factors love, beauty, and the necessity to have physical needs full-filled into an example.

A piece of potter in an irregularly thrown together shape serves the purpose of holding a liquid but it had no beauty in a real sense. No neurons are stimulated. When it is made into a smooth geometric bowl and decorated with glaze and shapes it becomes beautiful and at he same time becomes art if we refine our original definition to the point to where art must be beautiful. The definition would then read: "Art is the end product of the act of creating something that is beautiful to others.