solve; and only just so far as the artist succeeds in solving it, can he satisfy himself by reaching the end for which he is striving. The unity of the idea in a great work of art is such a unity as goes forth into a full expression of its own endless nature, in the manifoldness of an outward existence; and this manifoldness, again, in the whole diversity of its details, must be such as everywhere to carry us back to the unity of the idea out of which it flows. Wherever such a work has been achieved, we need not first to be told of it in order to perceive it, even though our experience may be small; for it speaks to a keener eye than that of outward sense, and to another power of judgment than that which is formed by much study. In fact, as ideal beauty is, in its own way, nothing but the clear outward expression of reason itself, it only needs that one should have arrived at some consciousness of his own essential being, to recognize and appreciate it at once. And here it is important to understand in what sense the language is used when it is asserted, that this ideal beauty surpasses that of nature. Doubtless it is a vain and foolish fancy which has led any one to imagine that the human mind, however highly gifted, could ever vie with that deep in working power whose effects are to be seen in the most insignificant of nature's productions, especially in organic life.. "What fine chisel Could ever yet cut breath?" 1 And to speak of a still higher life. What poet or philosopher has ever yet produced such a true representation of man as has been furnished by the actual history of humanity, and would be presented to us, were it possible to grasp that actual history as a whole, and bring it within the compass of a single glance. But still there is a sense in which. the artist may be said to make the marble or the canvas breathe, and in which the poet can embody in a single character, and present before us in one vivid intuition, a truer and more complete representation of the kind, stripped of all accidents of the individual, than any actually living and merely human individual ever exhibited. The peculiar essence of each thing, the law of its particular being, working from within and fixing its own limits, defines the form of that thing. This is constant, perennial, ever the same; all the rest temporary, transient, accidental. The material elements which enter into the presently existing individual, the point of development actually reached, the relations and circumstances from 1 Winter's Tale, Act v. sc. iii. To fond Imagination, Dost rival in the light of day Her delicate creation. WORDSWORTH, "Yarrow Revisited." without which hinder or modify the working of that inward principle, — all these, compared with the latter, are unessential. That inward law seeking simply and entirely to realize itself, but with such materials as are presented, under such outward circumstances, hostile or favorable to success, as may happen to exist, is what we mean by the truth of nature; and all such truth is more or less beautiful. Now this truth is what art endeavors to seize in its purity, and quite separated from all the accidents by which it may be disturbed, or curtailed of its full proportions; and with an unlimited choice of materials and circumstances. Thus, while nature can present only the individual, art can represent the kind. While nature presents the individual itself only in a series of developments, following one after the other in a never ending succession of growth or decay, art can seize it at the highest, or at any other, point of its being; and arresting it there, make it independent of time, and bring out the unchanging truth which belongs to the chosen moment. And finally, while nature presents its object under certain inevitable circumstances, which by themselves considered are all accidents, and hence we speak of an accidental effect in nature, produced by a grouping of objects, where no such effect was designed,-art can place its objects in whatsoever circumstances and combinations it pleases, and so represent the beautiful, either in the calm repose of unconscious truth, or in the moment of genial excitement, or struggling with hostile elements, which, in seeking to destroy, but serve to call into fuller expression the latent power which lay reserved within. Now if every individual thing in nature is beautiful just in the same proportion as it is a true expression of that which it was originally meant to be, and if everything is deformed just in the same proportion as it fails, whether owing to the imperfection of its materials, or to the power of counteracting agencies without itself, of being fully informed by its own appropriate law, much more is this so in the case of man. Both religion and philosophy teach us to regard him as the crowning work of creation. All that elsewhere in the world is scattered in fragmentary portions is in him gathered up and concentrated. What elsewhere is the product of an unconscious law, acting with necessity, is in him the rational self-conscious being, so much the work of his own freedom, that if it goes wrong, he is not only so far deformed, but guilty, and his guilt is his worst deformity. While everything in external nature is necessarily individual, man can rise above his narrow self, and wholly identify himself in all his interests, hopes, fears, and affections, with his kind. He can realize in himself the whole idea of that humanity of which his individual self is but a single exponent. For all these reasons, the highest possible type of ideal beauty for art is to be found in man; and this is the point, therefore, to which all its strivings tend. But above and below this central point, the ideal of humanity, in which spiritual and sensible are so completely blended and harmonized, stretch other regions of unlimited extent for the boundless range of the creative imagination. There is the whole world of external nature, and the still freer world of pure spiritual existences. The question is, what is the ideal here, and after what manner, in what possible form, can it be attained? For that ideal beauty must be confined to the human being alone, no one, certainly, will pretend. How then are we to conceive of the ideal in these two cases, in which the object in the first falls below, and in the second transcends, the human nature, since both these legitimately come within the province of art, and both must in some sense be idealized? And first, with regard to the objects which, in dignity, fall below the human nature. It is gen erally conceded at the present time that a bare imitation, a direct never can fulfill the copying, of external nature purpose of art. In fact, this has always been felt. Hence it has been supposed that the talent of the artist consists in selecting what is most beautiful in nature, and then forming it into new combinations. This seems to have been the opinion of Sir Joshua Reynolds,1 and 1 See Reynolds' Works. Discourse iii. |