REALISM AND IDEALISM 111 



for moments in our apperception of the universe, so the Ideal 

 and the Real indicate conditions under which the arts fulfil 

 their function. It is not therefore a hopeless task, though it 

 may demand a sanguine spirit, to throw light upon the 

 correlation of these terms. 



I shall attempt to demonstrate that the warfare waged 

 about them in aesthetic schools arises from a false conception 

 of their mutual relations. In the philosophy of Being, 

 Subject and Object are posed as antithetical only to be 

 resumed as the conditions of experience. Even so Idealism 

 and Realism, in the philosophy of Art, denote an antagonism 

 which is more apparent than actual, and upon the resolution 

 of which in practice excellence depends. Both, in fact, and 

 both together, are present in every effort which we make to 

 reproduce and represent the outer world through art. 



In order to gain limitations for the treatment of this 

 topic, I shall here confine myself to Sculpture and Painting. 

 The principles arrived at will be found applicable in some 

 measure to literature. But music and architecture, as is 

 manifest, do not fall immediately within the sphere of these 

 ideas. 



Realism, to begin with, forms the substratum and indis- 

 pensable condition of all figurative art. The very name 

 figurative, which we apply to Sculpture and Painting, 

 indicates that these arts proceed by imitation of external 

 objects, and mainly by imitation of the human form. Now 

 it would be absurd to contend that imitation is the worse 

 for being veracious, the worse for recalling to our minds 

 the imitated thing, or in other words, for being in the right 

 sense realistic. Nobody wants a portrait which is not as 

 precisely like the person represented, as exactly true to that 

 person's entire self, as it can possibly be made. We may 

 want something else besides ; but we demand resemblance 

 as an indispensable quality. Nobody again wants the image 

 of a god or saint which is not as accurately adequate to the 

 human form in which that godhead or that sanctity might 

 have resided, as knowledge and skill can make it. Whatever 

 else we desire of the image, we shall not think the better 



