EXPRESSION, CHARACTERISATION 139 



over, man is a part of the universe ; his conceptions of beauty 

 are derived from nature. He is unable to transcend the order 

 which he helps to constitute. Yet, while affirming this, we 

 are bound to acknowledge that man's mind is the most per- 

 fect of existences at present known to us. Being the most 

 perfect, whatsoever is presented to its observation in the ex- 

 ternal world lacks something in comparison with itself. This 

 something it is the proper business of the mind to supply, and 

 the power of supplying it is the justification of the figurative 

 arts. 



There is a beauty which is never found in nature, but which 

 requires a working of human thought to elicit it from nature ; 

 a beauty not of parts and single persons, but of complex 

 totalities ; a beauty not of flesh and blood, but of mind, 

 imagination, feeling. It is this beauty, where the very best 

 things that can be seen in nature have been educed, and, as it 

 were, quintessenced by human thought, expressed in form by 

 human skill, and gifted with immortal life by human genius 

 it is this synthetic, intellectual, spirit-penetrated beauty to 

 which the arts aspire. 



In sculpture Pheidias gives us the frieze of the Parthenon ; 

 in painting Tintoretto gives us the Bacchus and Ariadne of 

 the Ducal Palace. Of the youths who rode and the maidens 

 who walked in a Panathenaic procession, each may have ex- 

 hibited the vigour and the charm of actual life more perfectly 

 than their representatives on those bas-reliefs. But no proces- 

 sion could have made such music to the understanding as the 

 sculpture does. Never could the component individuals have 

 been singly so right, and so right in their relation to the total 

 rhythm. In compensation for that which art must miss when 

 matched with life, something has been added permanent, 

 enduring, tranquil, inexhaustible in harmonies. When we 

 turn to Tintoretto's picture, it is manifest that nature com- 

 monly produces more beautiful hands and feet than those 

 which satisfied the painter. Countless women surpass his 

 Aphrodite and his Ariadne in charm ; nor is the Bacchus an 

 exceptionally handsome youth. We could easily find out 

 more lovely islands and a dreamier expanse of azure sea. 



