seeing spectres of himself, in everlasting
multiplication, gliding helplessly around him in a speechless darkness.
Therefore it is that perpetual difference, play, and change in groups of
form are more essential to them even than their being subdued by some
great gathering law: the law is needful to them for their perfection and
their power, but the difference is needful to them for their _life_.

And here it may be noted in passing, that if you enjoy the pursuit of
analogies and types, and have any ingenuity of judgment in discerning
them, you may always accurately ascertain what are the noble characters
in a piece of painting, by merely considering what are the noble
characters of man in his association with his fellows. What grace of
manner and refinement of habit are in society, grace of line and
refinement of form are in the association of visible objects. What
advantage or harm there may be in sharpness, ruggedness, or quaintness
in the dealings or conversations of men; precisely that relative degree
of advantage or harm there is in them as elements of pictorial
composition. What power is in liberty or relaxation to strengthen or
relieve human souls; that power, precisely in the same relative degree,
play and laxity of line have to strengthen or refresh the expression of
a picture. And what goodness or greatness we can conceive to arise in
companies of men, from chastity of thought, regularity of life,
simplicity of custom, and balance of authority; precisely that kind of
goodness and greatness may be given to a picture by the purity of its
colour, the severity of its forms, and the symmetry of its masses.

You need not be in the least afraid of pushing these analogies too far.
They cannot be pushed too far; they are so precise and complete, that
the farther you pursue them, the clearer, the more certain, the more
useful you will find them. They will not fail you in one particular, or
in any direction of enquiry. There is no moral vice, no moral virtue,
which has not its _precise_ prototype in the art of painting; so that
you may at your will illustrate the moral habit by the art, or the art
by the moral habit. Affection and discord, fretfulness and quietness,
feebleness and firmness, luxury and purity, pride and modesty, and all
other such habits, and every conceivable modification and mingling of
them, may be illustrated, with mathematical exactness, by conditions of
line and colour; and not merely these definab