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ought not to shock our feeling of truth and consistency, by a wide departure from the usual proportions of humanity. We do not look for anatomical exactness; we know that the studies of an artist do not imply the knowledge of a professor of anatomy; but we expect that the main features of reality shall be adhered to. In like manner, a poet is not great because he exhibits human nature with literal fidelity; to do that would make the reputation of a historian or a mental philosopher. The poet is great by his metres, his cadences, his images, his picturesque groupings, his graceful narrative, his exaltation of reality into the region of ideality; and if, in doing all this, he avoid serious blunders or gross exaggerations, he passes without rebuke, and earns the unqualified honours of his genius.

28. The attempt to reconcile the artistic with the true,— art with nature,- has given birth to a middle school, in whose productions a restraint is put upon the flights of pure imagination, and which claims the merit of informing the mind as to the realities of the world, while gratifying the various aesthetic emotions. Instead of the tales of Fairy-Land, the Arabian Nights, the Romances of Chivalry, we have the modern novelist, with his pictures of living men and manners. In painting, we have natural scenery, buildings, men, and animals, represented with scrupulous exactness. The sculptor and the painter exercise the vocation of producing portraits that shall hand down to future ages the precise lineaments of the men and women of their generation. Hence, the study of nature has become a main element in artistic education; and the artist often speaks as if the exhibition of truth were his prime endeavour, and his highest honour. It is probably this attempt, to subject imagination to the conditions of truth and reality, that has caused the singular transference above mentioned, whereby the definition of science has been made the definition of art.

Now, I have every desire to do justice to the merits of the truth-seeking artist. Indeed, the importance of the reconciliation that he aims at is undeniable. It is no slight matter

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ART AND SCIENCE.

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to take out the sting from pleasure, and to avoid corrupting our notions of reality, while gratifying our artistic sensibilities. A sober modern romancist does not outrage the probabilities of human life, nor excite delusive and extravagant hopes, in the manner of the middle-age romances. The change is in a good direction.

Nevertheless, there is, and always will be, a distinction between the degree of truth attainable by an artist, and the degree of truth attained by a man of science or a man of business. The poet, let him desire it never so much, cannot study realities with an undivided attention. His readers do not desire truth simply for its own sake; neither will they accept it in the severe forms of an accurate terminology. The scientific man has not wantonly created the diagrams of Euclid, the symbols of Algebra, or the jargon of technical Anatomy; he was forced into these repulsive elements, because, in no other way, could he seize the realities of nature with precision. It cannot be supposed that the utmost plenitude of poetic genius shall ever be able to represent the world faithfully, by discarding all these devices in favour of flowery ornament and melodious metre. We ought not to look to an artist to guide us to truth; it is enough for him that he do not mis-guide us.

APPENDIX.

PSYCHOLOGY OF ARISTOTLE.

Of

To understand Aristotle's Psychology, we must look at it in comparison with the views of other ancient Greek philosophers on the same subject, as far as our knowledge will permit. these ancient philosophers, none have been preserved to us except Plato, and to a certain extent Epikurus, reckoning the poem of Lucretius as a complement to the epistolary remnants of Epikurus himself. The predecessors of Aristotle (apart from Plato) are known only through small fragments from themselves, and imperfect notices by others; among which notices the best are from Aristotle himself.

In the Timans of Plato, we find Psychology, in a very large and comprehensive sense, identified with Kosmology. The Kosmos, a scheme of rotatory spheres, has both a soul and a body of the two, the soul is the prior, grander, and predominant, though both of them are constructed or put together by the Divine Architect or Demiurgus. The Kosmical soul, rooted at the centre, and stretched from thence through and around the whole, is indued with self-movement, and with the power of initiating movement in the Kosmical body: moreover, being cognitive as well as motive, it includes in itself three ingredients mixed together:-1. The Same-the indivisible and unchangeable essence of Ideas; 2. The Diverse-the Plural — the divisible bodies or elements; 3. A third compound, formed of both these ingredients melted into one. As the Kosmical Soul is intended to know all the three-Idem, Diversum, and Idem with Diversum in one; so it must comprise in its own nature all the three ingredients, according to the received Axiom--

Like knows like-Like is known by like.* The ingredients are blended together according to a scale of harmonic proportion. The element Idem is placed in an even and undivided rotation of the outer or sidereal sphere of the Kosmos; the element Diversum is distributed among the rotations, all oblique, of the seven interior planetary spheres, that is, the five planets, with the Sun and Moon. Impressions of identity and diversity, derived either from the ideal and indivisible, or from the sensible and divisible, are thus circulated by the kosmical soul throughout its own entire range, yet without either voice or sound. Reason and Science are propagated by the Circle of Idem: Sense and Opinion, by those of Diversum. When these last-mentioned Circles are in right movement, the opinions circulated are true and trustworthy.

It is thus that Plato begins his Psychology with Kosmology; the Kosmos is in his view a Divine Immortal being or animal, composed of a spherical rotatory body and a rational soul, cognitive as well as motive. Among the tenants of this Kosmos are included, not only gods, who dwell in the peripheral or celestial regions, but also men, birds, quadrupeds, and fishes. These four inhabit the more central or lower regions of air, earth, and water. In describing men and the inferior animals, Plato takes his departure from the divine Kosmos, and proceeds downwards by successive stages of increasing degeneracy and corruption. The cranium of man was constructed as a little Kosmos, including in itself an immortal rational soul, composed of the same materials, though diluted and adulterated, as the kosmical soul; and moving with the like rotations, though disturbed and irregular, suited to a rational soul. This cranium, for wise purposes which Plato indicates, was elevated by the gods upon a tall body, with attached limbs for motion in different directionsforward, backward, upward, downward, to the right and left.† Within this body were included two inferior and mortal souls; one in the thoracic region near the heart, the other lower down below the diaphragm, in the abdominal region; but both of them fastened or rooted in the spinal marrow or cord, which formed a continuous line with the brain above. These two souls were

* See this doctrine of the Timaeus more fully expounded in Grote's 'Plato and the Other Companions of Sokrates,' Vol. III., c. 36, p. 250-256 seq. Plato, Timæus, p. 41 E.; Grote's Plato, Vol. III., c. 36, p. 264.

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