INTRODUCTION. 57 



able of marking or guiding any longer our onward career. 

 A few centuries lapse, and posterity will look upon them 

 as we do on the huge monuments of early Eastern civili- 

 sation, on the Sphinx in the desert or the Pyramids of 

 Egypt, wondering by what ingenious contrivances they 

 were raised, what amount of human work and suffering 

 they represent, or what idea lived in the minds of those 

 who planned and placed them where they still remain. 



III. 



It is the privilege of art to represent at a glance the i. 



, . . . n Necessity of 



whole of its object, and thus to produce at once a total choosing a 



road. 



effect on the mind of the beholder. Closer scrutiny may 

 follow and may show how the various parts support 

 the whole, how the uniting idea is revealed in all the 

 manifold detail of the component elements : still the im- 

 pression of the whole remains and supplies the key for 

 the comprehension of every part. Literature, science, and 

 history are denied this privilege of presenting their ob- 

 jects in their entirety, and thus giving from the outset a 

 commanding view, a leading and abiding impression of the 

 whole. We have to ask the student to follow us patiently 

 by an isolated path to the summit : many ways lead to it, 

 and we may err in the choice of the right and convenient 

 one. Even if we succeed in reaching the central position, 

 we may have fatigued the reader on the road or produced 

 sensations which prevent the unbiassed contemplation of 

 the whole view when it is presented. With us the whole 

 is only the sum of its many parts, whereas with the artist 

 the parts are merely fractions of a united whole. In 



