confusion regarding them is, in some cases, quite out of the question. Every one, for instance, knows that painting has no power of making the personages it represents speak to the ear, that the reality of motion, which properly belongs to the mimic art, is unattainable in sculpture, that the images which music presents are not intended for the eye. It cannot be necessary to prove such things as these to be incompatible; and, in adducing them, it is only as demonstrated premises of a theory whose part it is by sure deductions to establish the exclusive property to which each of these arts is entitled. We shall hereafter have occasion to speak of the mistakes and reciprocal encroachments that take place respecting them.

On the other hand, when the arts which have moral nature for their model, are in question, the confounding them, or the trenching of one upon the properties of another, does not to the generality of persons appear so real a violation. Why? - Because the limits, by which the modes of moral or poetical imitation are separated, are not in an equal degree palpable to the senses. And since it belongs to the understanding, the judgment, or the sentiments to determine them, it is hence evident how great scope is afforded, in criticism of this nature, for paradoxical subtlety to elude the strictness of a demonstration which cannot be other than of an abstract nature.

We have, throughout, endeavoured to show,

V

and we think we have succeeded, (see the close of the preceding chapter,) that the rule of truth, in cases of imitation more especially related to the mind, acquires a moral evidence, equivalent in its kind, to that which the senses compel us to recognize in the imitation of physical and corporeal things.

We will then proceed to show the reality of the barriers existing between the arts of moral imitation, or the different forms of poetry; and further, that, nature having here also established limits, to transgress them, in whatever manner it takes place, is to transgress the natural laws by which this branch of imitation is regulated.

In order to prove the separations which nature has imperatively established between the several arts of the poetical domain, or of the mind, we shall be contented to advert to the entire similarity which theoretical analysis displays as connecting these arts with those of corporeal imitation.

We have seen that among the differences on which the limits that divide all the arts are founded, those of the organs and faculties to which the several arts are necessarily addressed, and those of the qualities inherent in the objects of every form of imitation, hold the first rank.

Thus the first fact from which the natural separations between the arts of moral imitation are deduced, is that the mind is composed of

faculties as different from each other, as are the organs of the body.

The second fact is, that the objects which afford matter for moral imitation, are composed of qualities as different from each other, as are the properties of bodies, and that these qualities severally correspond as exclusively to certain faculties of the mind, as do the physical qualities with the organs of the body.

We have cited as a primary fact, as one which admits of no controversy, that the mind is composed of different parts, which are its distinct and separate organs. They are universally acknowledged under the names of understanding, reason, sentiment, imagination, &c.; names expressive of the different ideas which we conceive of those

faculties and their operations. They are distinguished in language, because their effects cannot be confounded. Who is there that, in accounting to himself for these effects, though ever so superficially, does not rest convinced that to perceive is not to imagine, that the act of comprehending is other than that of reasoning, that the faculty of distinguishing the relations of things or their impressions, does not at all resemble that of memory?-This is no part of our system; but a fact already observed, and acknowledged as such, in metaphysical science.

But this fact admitted, it as certainly follows

that any one of these faculties can only perform one and always the same operation, which also is sufficiently acknowledged to preclude the necessity of farther insisting on it in this place.

Every one will at once remark the similarity existing between those faculties which we call the organs of the mind, and the physical organs, which are the faculties of the body.

If the mind, like the body, has its different senses or organs, readily distinguishable from one another by the particular and distinct nature of their operations, then the arts of the mind or the modes of moral imitation and the mental organs we have above recognised must of necessity be severally so related in an exclusive and especial manner, the one to the other. For instance, the forms of composition into which poetical imitation is divided, must be each singly in relation either with the perceptive, the imaginative, or the reasoning part of the mind.

It may be taken for granted, that there is no work emanating from the mind, in which imitation is in any degree concerned, that does not, more or less, directly correspond with one or other of the faculties of which the mind is constituted. It is sufficient to open any one of the numerous treatises on literature or the art of poetry to find abundant proofs of this. What is their principal object, unless it be, after having analyzed and classed the different forms of composition employed

in the art of poetry, to appropriate to each its own particular kind of invention, composition, taste, tone, measure, diction, style, according as each of those forms is more or less allied to one or other of the faculties of the mind.

I may also, without undue anticipation of the corollaries of this theory, remark, that all critics, though without deducing their precepts from the elementary principles of imitation such as I have elucidated them, arrive notwithstanding at the same result. Guided by instinctive truth, and the influence of the example and suffrage of every age, they are all unanimous in condemning the anomalies arising from a non-observance of appropriate forms of composition, and the improprieties of character which result from it. But these anomalies and improprieties are alone occasioned by a want of due regard, on the part of the author, to the organ he addresses himself to, or, which is the same thing in its consequences, from neglecting the imitative means specially in relation with that organ.

Thus errors, about which all the world is agreed, afford the most incontestible proof of the existence of distinct faculties of the mind, and of the separations that nature has established between them.

The second fact on which reposes the evidence of these separations between the faculties of the mind, and, consequently, between the different