dead, but full of significance; Nature something real, the Artist
something apparent. In the works of Nature the spectator must import
significance, thought, effect, reality; in a work of Art he will and
must find this already there. A perfect imitation of Nature is in no
sense possible; the Artist is only called to the representation of the
surface of an appearance. The outside of the vessel, the living whole
that speaks to all our faculties of mind and sense, that stirs our
desire, elevates our intelligence--that whose possession makes us happy,
the vivid, potent, finished Beautiful--for all this is the Artist
appointed." In other words, art has its own laws, as it has its own
aims, and these are not the laws and aims of nature. To mock at rules is
to overthrow the conditions that make a painting or a statue possible.
To send the pupil away from the model to the life of the street, the
gaol, the church, is to send him forth without teaching him for what to
look. To make light of the study of anatomy in art, is like allowing the
composer to forget thorough bass in his enthusiasm, or the poet in his
enthusiasm to forget the number of syllables in his verse. Again, though
art may profit by a free and broad method, yet all artistic significance
depends on the More and the Less. Beauty is a narrow circle in which
one may only move in modest measure. And of this modest measure the
academy, the school, the master, above all the antique, are the
guardians and the teachers.[57]

[57] Diderot's _Versuch ueber die Malerei_. Goethe's _Werke_, xxv.
309, etc.

It is unnecessary to labour the opposition between the two great masters
of criticism. Goethe, as usual, must be pronounced to have the last word
of reason and wisdom, the word which comprehends most of the truth of
the matter. And it is delivered in that generous and loyal spirit which
nobody would have appreciated more than the free-hearted Diderot
himself. The drift of Goethe's contention is, in fact, the thesis of
Diderot's Paradox on the Comedian. But the state of painting in
France--and Goethe admits it--may have called for a line of criticism
which was an exaggeration of what Diderot, if he had been in Goethe's
neutral position, would have found in his better mind.[58]

[58] And of course on occasion did actually find. See xi. 101. Sir
Joshua Reynolds, who was too sincere a lover of his art not to be
above mere patriotic prejudice, describes the c