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and end of imitation. But we have seen that the value of this pleasure and its degree will be increased or diminished, according as the one or the other system of identical or of imitative resemblance is acted up to, according as the work, emanating more or less from the one principle or the other, shall be limited to pleasing the instinct, shall be restricted to the senses, or shall enter by the senses only in order to reach the mind; according as the artist, contenting himself with an approximation to reality more or less actual, shall make that approximation the goal of his efforts, or shall only employ what is real in his model and material in his means, in order to raise himself to a loftier and more enlarged view of his model, and produce from it those generalized images, the relations of which the mind alone can discriminate, and whose impressions it alone can receive.

Finally, it seems to me, that this theory after having enabled us to discover in the very nature of imitation itself, the bond that connects all the fine arts by one common principle, still further discloses to us a common tendency in them all towards the same object, and leads us to the knowledge of what ought to be their true end.

PART II.

OF THE END OF IMITATION IN THE FINE ARTS.

Poeta tabulas cum cepit sibi,

Quærit quod nusquam est gentium, reperit tamen.

PLAUT. Pseudol., Act 1. sc. 4.

CHAPTER I.

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PLEASURE, THE OBJECT OF IMITATION. OF THE TWO KINDS

OF PLEASURE IT AFFORDS.-WHICH OF THE TWO IS ITS END.

NATURE, in according the faculty of imitating to man, intended no doubt that it should first be subservient to his wants. To it is man indebted for the ability to form those incipient sounds, which by degrees he learns to modify, as his ear conveys to him the rudiments of language. By it all the arts that he sees performed become his own, and he appropriates the forms, motions, accents, and habits of all that has preceded him, to communi

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cate them in like manner to those who shall come after him in the career of life.

Nature having under every circumstance associated pleasure with wants, the faculty of imitating must consequently acquire new developments in an improved state of society. After having been exercised in fixing, by the imitative signs of objects, the ideas of those objects, it came to pass that lineaments thus roughly traced by and from necessity were invested with greater perfection. Finally, when casting off the fetters of symbolical images, writing had reached the point of representing ideas by abbreviated signs, or arbitrary strokes designating not the things themselves, but the sounds of the words expressing them, the art of repeating the forms of bodies was applied to another purpose, the principal object of which was to please.

All this is too well known to render it necessary that I should stop to point out the cradle of the arts of imitation, in the wants attendant on every kind of communication that by degrees society establishes among men.

Thus the pleasure of imitation succeeded every where to the want of imitation.

As pleasure sprang from want, so, under another state of things, it created in its turn new wants. To perpetuate the memory of benefactors or of benefits; to raise the mind to ideas of immortality by the sight of monuments; to embody and trea

sure up in expressive language, moral opinions, and religious sentiments: these were indeed true wants among civilized people; and to supply such would prove an end as advantageous to the imitation of the fine arts as to society.

This point of view, however, can never enter, either directly or necessarily, into a theory which has only to do with imitation in itself. It is with this theory, as with poetics, in which, without discussing the moral purpose of poetry, which ought to have a tendency to render men better, the end proposed is to show how, and of what, good poems are formed, and not how they may influence the manners of a people. In like manner here, having to make known what imitation, viewed theoretically in its nature, its end, and its means, ought to be, it would be irrelevant to join to those considerations, that of the moral action which the lessons contained in works of art exercise on public feelings and opinions.

The end we have assigned to imitation is that of pleasing. But it will be seen, that the kind of pleasure involved in that end is not denuded of all action on the moral nature of man.

The better to prosecute this second Part according to the conclusions arrived at in the first, we shall begin by recalling what has been already said: namely, that the imitation of the fine arts is capable of procuring more than one sort of plea

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sure, which admits of different degrees according as the senses are more or less concerned in it. In every art the pleasure of the senses necessarily proceeds from that component part which, as in man, may be termed its physical substance.

There is no one art, as already shown, that does not address itself more or less directly to some one of our external organs, and by some means or agency more or less dependent upon matter. The pleasure that the organ thus receives is indeed one of the ends of every art, since, if that pleasure did not exist, the action of the art itself would be as though it were not. But that such can be its true end, that is, the essential and definitive end of imitation, is one of the errors arising from ignorance and thoughtlessness: well might it be maintained that the pleasure derived from eating and drinking is the aim or end of that want; while it is surely nothing more than a means of attaining another pleasure, that of health, strength, and the use of our faculties.

Undoubtedly the pleasure of the senses must accompany the action of imitation upon us, but after the same manner, that is, less as an end than a means, which nature has herself placed as an incentive to those appetites, that lead the way to the accomplishment of all her designs.

In like manner in the action of the fine arts, the charms of sensual enjoyment should only invite

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