uty; or whether the interest of it is produced by
its beauty as an essential concomitant, and comes of itself as soon as
it is beautiful; or whether interest is at any rate compatible with
the main end of art; or, finally, whether it is a hindrance to it.

In the first place, it is to be observed that the interest of a work
of art is confined to works of poetic art. It does not exist in the
case of fine art, or of music or architecture. Nay, with these forms
of art it is not even conceivable, unless, indeed, the interest be of
an entirely personal character, and confined to one or two spectators;
as, for example, where a picture is a portrait of some one whom we
love or hate; the building, my house or my prison; the music, my
wedding dance, or the tune to which I marched to the war. Interest of
this kind is clearly quite foreign to the essence and purpose of art;
it disturbs our judgment in so far as it makes the purely artistic
attitude impossible. It may be, indeed, that to a smaller extent this
is true of all interest.

Now, since the interest of a work of art lies in the fact that we
have the same kind of sympathy with a poetic representation as with
reality, it is obvious that the representation must deceive us for the
moment; and this it can do only by its truth. But truth is an element
in perfect art. A picture, a poem, should be as true as nature itself;
but at the same time it should lay stress on whatever forms the
unique character of its subject by drawing out all its essential
manifestations, and by rejecting everything that is unessential and
accidental. The picture or the poem will thus emphasize its _idea_,
and give us that _ideal truth_ which is superior to nature.

_Truth_, then, forms the point that is common both to interest and
beauty in a work of art, as it is its truth which produces the
illusion. The fact that the truth of which I speak is _ideal truth_
might, indeed, be detrimental to the illusion, since it is just here
that we have the general difference between poetry and reality, art
and nature. But since it is possible for reality to coincide with
the ideal, it is not actually necessary that this difference should
destroy the illusion. In the case of fine arts there is, in the range
of the means which art adopts, a certain limit, and beyond it illusion
is impossible. Sculpture, that is to say, gives us mere colourless
form; its figures are without eyes and without movement; and painting
pr