al except the True; and
what is Beauty, if not full, complete Being?

What higher aim, therefore, could Art have, than to represent that
which in Nature actually _is_? Or how should it undertake to excel
so-called actual Nature, since it must always fall short of it?

For does Art impart to its works actual, sensuous life? This statue
breathes not, is stirred by no pulsation, warmed by no blood.

But both the pretended excelling and the apparent falling short show
themselves as the consequences of one and the same principle, as soon
as we place the aim of Art in the exhibiting of that which truly is.

Only on the surface have its works the appearance of life; in Nature,
life seems to reach deeper, and to be wedded entirely with matter.
But does not the continual mutation of matter and the universal lot
of final dissolution teach us the unessential character of this union,
and that it is no intimate fusion? Art, accordingly, in the merely
superficial animation of its works, but represents Nothingness as
non-existing.

How comes it that, to every tolerably cultivated taste, imitations of
the so-called Actual, even though carried to deception, appear in the
last degree untrue--nay, produce the impression of spectres; whilst a
work in which the idea is predominant strikes us with the full force
of truth, conveying us then only to the genuinely actual world? Whence
comes it, if not from the more or less obscure feeling which tells us
that the idea alone is the living principle in things, but all else
unessential and vain shadow?

On the same ground may be explained all the opposite cases which
are brought up as instances of the surpassing of Nature by Art. In
arresting the rapid course of human years; in uniting the energy of
developed manhood with the soft charm of early youth; or exhibiting
a mother of grown-up sons and daughters in the full possession of
vigorous beauty--what does Art except to annul what is unessential,
Time?

If, according to the remark of a discerning critic, every growth in
Nature has but an instant of truly complete beauty, we may also say
that it has, too, only an instant of full existence. In this instant
it is what it is in all eternity; besides this, it has only a coming
into and a passing out of existence. Art, in representing the thing
at that instant, removes it out of Time, and sets it forth in its pure
Being, in the eternity of its life.

After everything positive and essential had