1 82 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY 



could we hope to traverse the Iliad and the Odyssey, 

 the Book of Job, the Agamemnon, the Antigone, the 

 Rubaiydt, the Divina Commedia, the Hamlet, Lear, 

 Othello, and MacbetJi, the Death of Wallenstein, and 

 the Faust. Even then, almost the whole of lyric 

 poetry, and the whole of comic, would be left 

 untouched. We are fortunate, however, in having 

 a swifter method within our reach. We can set 

 out from a theory concerning the essential principle 

 of art in general. As poetry is a species of art, its 

 essential principle must be a specific development of 

 the principle essential to all art ; and it will merely 

 remain for us to determine what the specific addi- 

 tion is, which the peculiar conditions of the poet's 

 art make to the principle of art in general. 



The general principle of art has been lucidly 

 and forcibly presented to you in the lecture by my 

 predecessor. Professor Le Conte.^ Starting from 

 the familiar contrast between the ideal and the real, 

 which people for the most part take so abstractly 

 as to place the two in irreconcilable antagonism, 

 Professor Le Conte has shown us how one-sided are 

 the usual views of art. These, as we all know, 

 come forward in two implacably hostile schools, — 

 the school of Realism and the school of Idealism. 

 The one would have art reproduce Nature in all 



1 Joseph Le Conte : " The Principle of Art as illustrated in the 

 Novel," in the Overland Monthly, April, 1885. 



