ON THE EELATION OF OPTICS TO PAINTING. 137 



accurate sensuous intelligibility of artistic representa- 

 tion, may seem to many of you as a very subordinate 

 point a point which, if mentioned at all by writers on 

 aesthetics, is treated as quite accessory I think this 

 is unjustly so. The sensuous distinctness is by no 

 means a low or subordinate element in the action of 

 works of art ; its importance has forced itself the more 

 strongly upon me the more I have sought to discover 

 the physiological elements in their action. 



What effect is to be produced by a work of art, 

 using this word in its highest sense ? It should 

 excite and enchain our attention, arouse in us, in easy 

 play, a host of slumbering conceptions and their cor- 

 responding feelings, and direct them towards a common 

 object, so as to give a vivid perception of all the fea- 

 tures of an ideal type, whose separate fragments lie 

 scattered in our imagination and overgrown by the 

 wild chaos of accident. It seems as if we can only 

 refer the frequent preponderance, in the mind, of art 

 over reality, to the fact that the latter mixes some- 

 thing foreign, disturbing, and even injurious ; while art 

 can collect all the elements for the desired impression, 

 and allow them to act without restraint. The power of 

 this impression will no doubt be greater the deeper, 

 the finer, and the truer to nature is the sensuous 

 impression which is to arouse the series of images 

 and the effects connected therewith. It must act cer- 



