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he it is that should never deviate from nature, and that should care for truth before all other things. The artist's standard is feeling, his end is refined pleasure; he goes to nature, and selects what chimes in with his feelings of artistic effect, and passes by the rest. He is not even bound to adhere to nature in her very choicest displays; his own taste being the touchstone, he alters the originals at his will. The scientific man, on the other hand, must embrace every fact with open arms; the most nauseous fungus, the most loathsome reptile, the most pestilential vapour, must be scanned and set forth in all its details.

The amount of regard that the artist shows to truth, so far as I am able to judge, is nearly as follows. In the purely effusive arts, such as music or the dance, truth and nature are totally irrelevant; the artist's feeling, and the gratification of the senses of mankind generally, are the sole criterion of the effect. So, in the fancies of decorative art, nature has very little place; suggestions are occasionally derived from natural objects, but no one is bound to adopt more of these than good taste may allow. Nobody talks of the design of a calico as being true to nature; it is enough if it please the eye. Art is art because it is not nature.' The artist provides dainties not to be found in nature. There are, however, certain departments of art that differ considerably from music and fanciful decoration, in this respect, namely, that the basis of the composition is generally something actual, or something derived from the existing realities of nature or life. Such are painting, poetry, and romance. In these, nature gives the subject, and the artistic genius the adornment. Now, although, in their case also, the gratification of the senses and the æsthetic sensibilities is still the aim of the artist, he has to show a certain decent respect to our experience of reality in the management of his subject; this not being purely imaginary, like the figures of a calico, but chosen from the world of reality. Hence, when a painter makes choice of the human figure, in order to display his harmonies of colour, and beauties of form, and picturesqueness of grouping,-he

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 æsthetic 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

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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.

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. Of 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 Timæus 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 Pluralthe 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