me up
to the perfect idea of dove, tiger, or scorpion.

In the first or sympathetic operation of the theoretic faculty, it will
be remembered, we receive pleasure from the signs of mere happiness in
living things. In the second theoretic operation of comparing and
judging, we constituted ourselves such judges of the lower creatures as
Adam was made by God when they were brought to him to be named, and we
allowed of beauty in them as they reached, more or less, to that
standard of moral perfection by which we test ourselves. But, in the
third place, we are to come down again from the judgment seat, and
taking it for granted that every creature of God is in some way good,
and has a duty and specific operation providentially accessory to the
well-being of all, we are to look in this faith to that employment and
nature of each, and to derive pleasure from their entire perfection and
fitness for the duty they have to do, and in their entire fulfilment of
it: and so we are to take pleasure and find beauty in the magnificent
binding together of the jaws of the ichthyosaurus for catching and
holding, and in the adaptation of the lion for springing, and of the
locust for destroying, and of the lark for singing, and in every
creature for the doing of that which God has made it to do. Which
faithful pleasure in the perception of the perfect operation of lower
creatures I have placed last among the perfections of the theoretic
faculty concerning them, because it is commonly last acquired, both
owing to the humbleness and trustfulness of heart which it demands, and
because it implies a knowledge of the habits and structure of every
creature, such as we can but imperfectly possess.

Sec. 2. The two senses of the word "ideal." Either it refers to action of
the imagination.

The perfect _idea_ of the form and condition in which all the properties
of the species are fully developed, is called the ideal of the species.
The question of the nature of ideal conception of species, and of the
mode in which the mind arrives at it, has been the subject of so much
discussion, and source of so much embarrassment, chiefly owing to that
unfortunate distinction between idealism and realism which leads most
people to imagine the ideal opposed to the real, and therefore _false_,
that I think it necessary to request the reader's most careful attention
to the following positions.

Any work of art which represents, not a material object, but