120 REALISM AND IDEALISM 



and conditioned by circumstance, but what is permanent and 

 freed from limitations in it. 



The figurative arts are thus led to what is after all their 

 highest function, the presentation of thought and feeling in 

 beautiful form. Statues and pictures must fall short of life 

 in flesh and blood reality. But these same works of human 

 industry can transfigure particular realities by infusing into 

 them the elements of generalisation, selection, interpretative 

 insight. These elements, in the language of discredited 

 schools, are expression and idealisation. According to the 

 demonstration I have attempted in this essay, they may be 

 better described as the final outcome of those qualities 

 partly defect of mechanical accuracy, partly addition of 

 mental sensibility which distinguish a drawing from a cast 

 or photograph. They are the deliberate elaboration of the 

 subjective ingredient which is found in every imitation by 

 the hand of man. 



IV 



Figurative art, in its most vital epochs, lent itself to 

 the expression of religious ideas. The artist had to find 

 corporeal investiture for the generalised and divinised 

 qualities of human nature. Such exact corporeal investiture 

 for a spiritual type of human energy or passion is rarely, if 

 ever, offered by a single living person. Who, for example, 

 has seen a man or woman of whom he could say, ' There 

 goes Zeus,' or, ' There goes Aphrodite ' ? What we do say is 

 rather, ' Majestic as Zeus, beautiful as Aphrodite.' In other 

 words, the living person suggests hints to the artist for work- 

 ing out ' that type of perfect in his mind.' The artist, then, 

 is compelled to create a body for the idea he has to express ; 

 more majestic or more beautiful than any single body he 

 has ever seen ; more completely adequate to the idea ; more 

 thoroughly penetrated with the specific qualities of the 

 spiritual type in all its parts. At the same time this form 

 must not, at any point, be discordant with the structure of 

 the human body as he learns to know it from his models. 

 It must, on the contrary, be most faithful to those models, 



