ideas, there is one action proper to the senses, and another which is proper to the mind. Hence, setting aside all question as to the origin of ideas, our theory being in accordance with language, which is a kind of universal criterion, recognizes, in the works of imitation, as in the twofold faculty whose concurrence is necessary, two species of qualities which divide them into two classes.

The works of the first class, produced by the action of the senses in particular, have the individual work of nature for their absolute and exclusive model, and it is essential to this manner of imitating, that it be conformable to what it takes for its model, without adding, curtailing, or changing any thing whatever. It is imitation in the world of realities.

The works of the second class are specially produced by that faculty of the understanding, which takes for their model, not only what the outward sense sees in reality, but also what can only be discovered by that organ which scrutinizes the causes and motives of nature, in the formation of things and beings. As such a model has nowhere any material existence, and as it is the mind that alike copies and discovers it, the works resulting from it are called creations or inventions. It is imitation in the world of ideas;ideal imitation

Ideal signifies, therefore, whatever, in the imitation of the fine arts, is composed, formed, and

executed by virtue of that faculty in man, which enables him to conceive in his mind, and to realize what he has conceived, that is to say, a whole such as nature would never present to him in its reality.

It may now be readily seen, how wrong it is to apply the notion of the ideal (as it is too much the custom to do in the arts of design), solely to works which require the imitation of beauty, I mean corporeal beauty, whether limited to juvenile or to female figures. The idea of the beautiful or of beauty, thus restricted, would confine the ideal within too narrow a circle. There is a sort of corporeal beauty belonging to every time of life, even though the farthest removed from that in which the charm of beauty, as commonly understood, shines forth. The customary idiom of languages affords proof of it. We say a beautiful old man, as we say a beautiful young one. This arises from the idea of beauty being formed from that of the perfection appropriate to every thing and being; and, therefore, every species of object, and every kind of quality being capable of perfection, may also have its ideal. Ugliness may have its ideal, as well as beauty; a satyr in a work of art, as well as a Venus. There may even be an ideal horrible. The Satan of Paradise Lost is, in its kind, as ideal as it is possible to conceive; but its character is not of that corporeal ideal beauty which the imagina

tion conjoins with youth, when it would picture to itself, or would represent an angel. In like manner there is in poetry an ideal of all the most opposite qualities. While in Achilles we have the ideal of courage, Thersites equally displays the ideal of cowardice.

CHAPTER VI.

IDEAL IMITATION THE RESULT OF A GENERALIZED STUDY OF

NATURE.

AMONG all the ideas or notions which are formed in the mind, one of the first, the most easy to receive, and the most frequent of application, is undoubtedly that designated by the word individuality. The same cannot be said of the opposite idea or notion, that of generality.

As the eye begins by viewing in detail, before it embraces the whole together, so the mind in its operations particularizes before it generalizes. What takes place in the habitual labour of the understanding of man, has come to pass on a great scale in the successive labours of the human mind. Thus, little by little, has the labour of imitation, in all its modes, progressed from particular observation to general knowledge, and from the simple to the compound.

This would seem to require some explanation: for it may be thought that the simple must here

be found in that general which produces the collective whole, and that the compound must appertain to what is in detail. The words themselves will afford the explanation required. Now, we do not speak here of the work, but only of the labour of imitation, the operation of the mind. Certain it is, that the first process of this operation, which is that of instinct, is always addressed, in the labour of imitation, to what is partial or individual, and is hence confined within a very narrow circle; it is to this that the idea of simple is applied. Hence the idea of compound accords with that labour of the judgment and understanding, which embraces the grand relations of objects and their most extended points of view,—a labour, the result of which is generalized imitation.

It is not required of us to go back into the earliest periods of time to learn when imitation had its commencement.

Several efforts have been made with that end in view, and some differences have been found, in different countries, as to its point of starting, and the direction of its advance; we shall, however, again advert to this topic more especially as respecting art among the Greeks (see Chap. x.); but the historical account hereafter given of the original cause of the imitative system of the Greeks being constituted on the ideal, does in no wise contradict what we have here advanced respecting the natural progress of the mind, pro