mankind. Science studies the relations of
things to each other: but art studies only their relations to man; and
it requires of everything which is submitted to it imperatively this,
and only this,--what that thing is to the human eyes and human heart,
what it has to say to men, and what it can become to them: a field of
question just as much vaster than that of science, as the soul is larger
than the material creation.

Sec. IX. Take a single instance. Science informs us that the sun is
ninety-five millions of miles distant from, and 111 times broader than,
the earth; that we and all the planets revolve round it; and that it
revolves on its own axis in 25 days, 14 hours and 4 minutes. With all
this, art has nothing whatsoever to do. It has no care to know anything
of this kind. But the things which it does care to know, are these: that
in the heavens God hath set a tabernacle for the sun, "which is as a
bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoiceth as a strong man to
run a race. His going forth is from the end of the heaven, and his
circuit unto the ends of it, and there is nothing hid from the heat
thereof."

Sec. X. This, then, being the kind of truth with which art is exclusively
concerned, how is such truth as this to be ascertained and accumulated?
Evidently, and only, by perception and feeling. Never either by
reasoning, or report. Nothing must come between Nature and the artist's
sight; nothing between God and the artist's soul. Neither calculation
nor hearsay,--be it the most subtle of calculations, or the wisest of
sayings,--may be allowed to come between the universe, and the witness
which art bears to its visible nature. The whole value of that witness
depends on its being _eye_-witness; the whole genuineness,
acceptableness, and dominion of it depend on the personal assurance of
the man who utters it. All its victory depends on the veracity of the
one preceding word, "Vidi."

The whole function of the artist in the world is to be a seeing and
feeling creature; to be an instrument of such tenderness and
sensitiveness, that no shadow, no hue, no line, no instantaneous and
evanescent expression of the visible things around him, nor any of the
emotions which they are capable of conveying to the spirit which has
been given him, shall either be left unrecorded, or fade from the book
of record. It is not his business either to think, to judge, to argue,
or to know. His place is neither in the closet, nor