determine it, resembles that of subject and attribute in the grammatical proposition; and this is the second cause (motif) which renders the allegory cold.

c. To represent the special characteristics of the general idea it has been customary to employ emblems, borrowed either from external facts or from circumstances attaching to manifestation in the real world; or, again, to introduce the instruments, the means used for the realization of the idea. War is, for example, designated by arms, lances, cannons, drums; spring, summer, autumn, by flowers, fruits, etc.; justice, by balances; death, by an hour-glass and a scythe. But as the external forms which serve to represent the abstract idea are entirely subordinated to it, and play the part of mere attributes, the allegory is thus doubly cold. 1. As personification of an abstract idea, it lacks life and individuality. 2. Its external, determinate form presents only signs, which, taken in themselves, have no longer any meaning. The idea which should be the bond and center of all these attributes is not a living unity which develops itself freely and manifests itself through these special forms. Hence, in the allegory, the real existence of personified beings is never taken seriously; and this forbids the giving an allegorical form to an absolute being. The Diké of the Ancients, for example, should not be regarded as an allegory. It is the necessity which weighs upon all beings; it is eternal justice, universal power, the absolute principle of the laws, which govern nature and human life; while at the same time it is the absolute itself, to which are subjected all individual beings, men and gods included.

3. The Metaphor, Image, and Comparison. The third mode of representation, after the enigma and the allegory, is the Figure in general. The enigma, as yet, conceals the meaning which, on its own account, is known, while the form in which it is clothed is of a heterogeneous and farfetched character; and nevertheless, in its affinity with the idea, it appears to be the principal thing. Allegory, on the contrary, makes clearness of meaning the essential end, so that personification and allegorical attributes appear reduced to the level of mere signs. The figure combines this clear

ness of the allegory with the pleasure which the enigma produces in presenting to the spirit an idea under the veil of an exterior appearance which has some analogy with it; and that in such manner that, instead of an emblem to decipher, it is an image in which the meaning is revealed with great clearness, and manifested in its true character.

a. The Metaphor.-In itself the metaphor is a comparison, in so far as it clearly expresses an idea by means of a similar object. But in comparison, properly speaking, the meaning and the image are expressly separated, while in the metaphor this separation, although it offers itself to the mind, is not directly indicated. Thus Aristotle already distinguishes these two figures in saying that in the first comparison we add "as" — a term which is wanting in the second. That is to say, the metaphorical expression mentions only one side, viz., the image; but, in the connection in which the image is used, the precise meaning which is intended is so manifest that it is, so to speak, given immediately and without express separation from the image. If I hear uttered, "the spring-time of his days," or "a river of tears," I know that I must take these words, not in their immediate, but in their figurative, sense, which is made apparent by the connection in which the expressions are used.

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In the symbol and the allegory the relation between the idea and the external form is neither so immediate nor necessary. In the nine steps of an Egyptian stairway, and in a thousand other examples, only the initiated, the wise, and the learned seek to discover a symbolic meaning. In a word, the metaphor can be defined as an abridged comparison.

The metaphor cannot pretend to the value of an independent, representation, but only to that of an accessory one. Even in its highest degree it can appear only as a simple ornament for a work of art, and its application is found only in spoken language.

b. The Image.-Between the metaphor and the comparison is placed the image, which is only a developed metaphor. Notwithstanding its resemblance to the comparison, it differs. from it in this: that the idea is not here disengaged and

expressly developed aside from the sensuous object. It can represent a whole series of states, of acts, of modes of existence, and can render such series sensuous by a like succession of phenomena borrowed from a sphere which is independent, but which presents some analogy with the first; and this without the idea being formally expressed in the development of the image itself. The poem of Goethe, entitled The Song of Mahomet, will serve as an example: "A mountain-spring with the freshness of youth leaps over rocks into the abyss; anon it reappears in bubbling fountains and in rivulets, then flows out upon the plain, greets its brother streamlets, gives its name to many lands, sees cities born beneath its feet, until, at length, it bears in tumultuous joy its treasures, its brothers, and its children into the bosom of the creator who awaits it." The title alone tells us that this magnificent image of a torrent, and of its course, represents to us the flight of Mahomet, the rapid propagation of his doctrine, and the combination of all peoples blended together in the same faith.

The Orientals especially show great boldness in the employment of this class of figures. They love to thus construct a group of ideas, of wholly different orders, and make them agree. A great number of examples of this are furnished by the poetry of Hafiz.

c. Comparison.-The difference between the image and the comparison consists in this: that what the image represents under a figurative form appears in the comparison as abstract thought. Here the idea and the image proceed side by side.

The two terms are entirely separated, each being represented on its own account, after which they are, for the first time, exhibited in presence of one another because of their resemblance.

Comparison, like the image and the metaphor, expresses the boldness of the imagination, which, having an object in view, shows in pausing before it the power it possesses of completely combining by external relations ideas the most widely separated, and which, at the same time, knows how to cause the principal idea to reduce to its sway a whole world of varied phenomena. This power of the imagination, which is revealed

by the faculty of discovering resemblances, of combining heterogeneous objects wholly by means of relations full of interest and of meaning, is, in general, what constitutes the essence of comparison.

In this connection we must remark a difference between the poetry of the East and that of the West. In the Orient, man, absorbed by external nature, entertains few thoughts concerning himself, and knows neither languor nor melancholy. His desires are restricted to experiencing an altogether outward joy which he finds in the objects of his comparisons and in the pleasure of contemplation. He looks about with a free heart, seeking, in what environs him in what he knows and loves an image of that which captivates his senses, and fills his spirit. The imagination, disengaged from all internal concentration, free from every malady of the soul, finds its satisfaction in a comparative representation of the object which interests it, especially if this, because it is compared with what is most brilliant and most beautiful in nature, acquires greater value, and strikes the eye more vividly. In the Occident, on the contrary, man is more occupied with himself, more disposed to break forth in complaints and lamentations respecting his own sufferings, to allow himself to give way to languor and vain desires.

III. Disappearance of the Symbolic Form of Art.

1. Didactic Poetry.-When a general idea, of which the development presents a systematic whole, is conceived in its abstract character by the mind, and when, at the same time, it is exhibited under a form and with ornaments borrowed from art, then is produced the didactic poem. To speak rigorously, didactic poetry ought not to be counted among the forms appropriate to art. Indeed, matter and form are here completely distinct.

At first the ideas are comprehended in themselves, in their abstract and prosaic nature. On the other hand, the artistic form can be joined with the subject-matter only by an altogether external relation, because the idea is already expressed in the

mind, with its abstract character. Instruction is addressed, first of all, to reason and reflection. Thus, its aim being to make known a general truth, its essential condition is clear

ness.

Art, then, can be employed in the didactic poem only upon what concerns the external part; the measure, the nobility of language, the introduction of episodes, the employment of images and comparisons, the expression of sentiments, a swifter progress, more rapid transitions. All the wrappage of poetic forms-which does not touch upon the matter, but is placed outside of it-figures only as something accessory. More or less vivacious and striking, these images enliven a subject otherwise serious, and temper the dryness of the lesson. What is in itself essentially prosaic cannot be poetically developed. It can only be clothed in poetic form. It is thus that the art of gardening, for example, is only the external arrangement of the grounds, of which the general configuration is already given by nature, and which can have in itself nothing beautiful or picturesque. It is thus, again, that architecture, by ornaments and external decorations, gives an agreeable aspect to the simple regularity of an edifice constructed merely with a view to utility, and of which the destination is wholly prosaic.

It is in this way that Greek philosophy, at its beginning, was produced under the form of the didactic poem. Hesiod might be taken as an example. Still, conceptions truly prosaic are properly developed only when reason renders herself mistress of her object in imposing upon it her reflections, her reasonings, and her classifications; when, in other words, she proposes to teach directly, and, in order to reach her aim, calls to her aid elegance, the charms of style, and the harmonies of poetry. Lucretius, who reproduced in verse the system of Epicurus; Virgil, with his instructions in agriculture, furnish us models which, notwithstanding all the ability of the poet and the perfection of his style, fail to constitute a pure and free form of art. In Germany the didactic form has already lost favor. At the close of the last century Delille gave to the French, besides the Poem of the Gardens, or the Art of