nrise, the knowledge of the true nature of the
orb may lead the painter to feel more profoundly, and express more
fully, the distance between the bars of cloud that cross it, and the
sphere of flame that lifts itself slowly beyond them into the infinite
heaven. But, for one visible truth to which knowledge thus opens the
eyes, it seals them to a thousand: that is to say, if the knowledge
occur to the mind so as to occupy its powers of contemplation at the
moment when the sight work is to be done, the mind retires inward, fixes
itself upon the known fact, and forgets the passing visible ones; and a
_moment_ of such forgetfulness loses more to the painter than a day's
thought can gain. This is no new or strange assertion. Every person
accustomed to careful reflection of any kind, knows that its natural
operation is to close his eyes to the external world. While he is
thinking deeply, he neither sees nor feels, even though naturally he may
possess strong powers of sight and emotion. He who, having journeyed all
day beside the Leman Lake, asked of his companions, at evening, where it
was,[10] probably was not wanting in sensibility; but he was generally a
thinker, not a perceiver. And this instance is only an extreme one of
the effect which, in all cases, knowledge, becoming a subject of
reflection, produces upon the sensitive faculties. It must be but poor
and lifeless knowledge, if it has no tendency to force itself forward,
and become ground for reflection, in despite of the succession of
external objects. It will not obey their succession. The first that
comes gives it food enough for its day's work; it is its habit, its
duty, to cast the rest aside, and fasten upon that. The first thing that
a thinking and knowing man sees in the course of the day, he will not
easily quit. It is not his way to quit anything without getting to the
bottom of it, if possible. But the artist is bound to receive all things
on the broad, white, lucid field of his soul, not to grasp at one. For
instance, as the knowing and thinking man watches the sunrise, he sees
something in the color of a ray, or the change of a cloud, that is new
to him; and this he follows out forthwith into a labyrinth of optical
and pneumatical laws, perceiving no more clouds nor rays all the
morning. But the painter must catch all the rays, all the colors that
come, and see them all truly, all in their real relations and
succession; therefore, everything that occupies r