114 REALISM AND IDEALISM 



part of art-production, are symbols, much in the same sense 

 as words are symbols, for externalising a mental conception 

 of the object. They differ, indeed, from words, inasmuch as 

 the object to be represented is itself solid, and marble is solid ; 

 or is coloured, and the pigments on the painter's palette are 

 coloured; or has a defined outline, Vith appreciable relations 

 of light to darkness, and an etching presents this outline with 

 similar relations of light to darkness. In fact, the symbols of 

 the figurative arts differ from the symbols used by poetry, in 

 this : that they are able to match or imitate certain salient 

 qualities in the object. Yet it is clear that they are recog- 

 nised as symbols, and that an exact copy of the object is 

 not the end of figurative art. If this were the end, the most 

 artistic portrait of a lady would be a carefully modelled wax- 

 figure, coloured to imitate her complexion, with glass eyes of 

 the right shade, artificial teeth, and a wig of real hair, the 

 whole attired in a suit of her own clothes. And even then 

 we should not have got rid of symbolism ; for wax and colour 

 are not flesh, glass eyes cannot contract their iris, nor does 

 any wig, however deftly made, spring from the forehead or 

 curl about the nape like living hair. Having then admitted 

 that all art, however apparently imitative, is symbolic, and 

 that it symbolises a conception formed of some external 

 object in the artist's mind, we are able to perceive that the 

 result will be more idealistic, or more realistic, according 

 to the bent of the man's sympathy with nature, according 

 to his choice of materials and processes, and, lastly, accord 

 ing to his method of employing these technical symbols. If 

 like the pedlar in Wordsworth's ' Peter Bell,' 



A primrose by a river's brim, 

 A yellow primrose was to him, 

 And it was nothing more, 



then his picture of the primrose will be prosaically accurate. 

 It will be a botanical diagram, and its artistic value will 

 consist in the delicacy of draughtsmanship, the accuracy of 

 colouring, whereby some particular primrose has been repre- 



