extols
nature, as the one source and fountain of true artistic inspiration.
Even in what looks to us like defect and monstrosity, she is never
incorrect. If she inflicts on the individual some unusual feature, she
never fails to draw other parts of the system into co-ordination and a
sort of harmony with the abnormal element. We say of a man who passes in
the street that he is ill-shapen. Yes, according to our poor rules; but
according to nature, it is another matter. We say of a statue that it is
of fine proportions. Yes, according to our poor rules; but according to
nature?[55]

[55] x. 481, 462.

In the same vein, he breaks out against the practice of drawing from
the academic model. All these academic positions, affected, constrained,
artificial, as they are; all these actions coldly and awkwardly
expressed by some poor devil, and always the same poor devil, hired to
come three times a week, to undress himself, and to play the puppet in
the hands of the professor--what have these in common with the positions
and actions of nature? What is there in common between the man who draws
water from the well in your courtyard, and the man who pretends to
imitate him on the platform of the drawing-school? If Diderot thought
the seven years passed in drawing the model no better than wasted, he
was not any more indulgent to the practice of studying the minutiae of
the anatomy of the human frame. He saw the risk of the artist becoming
vain of his scientific acquirement, of his eye being corrupted, of his
seeking to represent what is under the surface, of his forgetting that
he has only the exterior to show. A practice that is intended to make
the student look at nature most commonly tends to make him see nature
other than she really is. To sum up, mannerism would disappear from
drawing and from colour, if people would only scrupulously imitate
nature. Mannerism comes from the masters, from the academy, from the
school, and even from the antique.[56]

[56] x. 467. For a more respectful view of the antique, and of
Winckelmann's position, see _Salon de 1765_, x. 418.

We may easily believe how many fallacies were discerned in such lessons
as these by the author of _Iphigenie_, and the passionate admirer of
the ancient marbles. Diderot's fundamental error, said Goethe, is to
confound nature and art, completely to amalgamate nature with art. "Now
Nature organises a living, an indifferent being, the Artist something