414 APPENDIX 



I will conclude with a simile. The final verdict about works of 

 art and men of genius may be compared to one of those composite 

 photographs (devised by Mr. Francis Galton l ) which are obtained 

 by the superposition, one above the other, of many negatives taken 

 from different individuals. Each separate face has left its filmy 

 impress on the composite photograph; and all the faces have 

 contributed to form a type the type of a criminal, the type of a 

 consumptive person, the type of a certain family. Blurred in some 

 of its outlines and details as the ultimate result may be, such a 

 composite photograph has an unmistakable generic individuality, 

 which is even more instructive, even more convincing for the 

 student of criminal, consumptive subject, specific family, than the 

 mere aggregate of single photographs which compose it. It yields, 

 not the person, but the type. Even so the final verdict of criticism 

 is the total result of countless personal judgments, superimposed, 

 the one above the other, coalescing in their points of agreement, 

 shading off into blurred outlines at points of disagreement, but 

 combining to produce a type which is an image of fundamental 

 truth. 



NOTE ON 'REALISM AND IDEALISM' 



THE inevitable infusion of a subjective element into every attempt 

 made by men to reproduce nature, on which I have insisted with 

 reference to figurative art, may be still further illustrated. It 

 appears in all reports made by credible witnesses of events which 

 have been noticed by them. A precisely identical account cannot 

 be expected by ten witnesses of the same occurrence, though each 

 has been anxious to relate the literal truth. Furthermore, it is 

 impossible to obtain exactly similar reports of such reports from 

 every ten veracious persons who have heard one or more of them 

 from the lips of original witnesses. Thus the element of sub- 

 jectivity in the primary reports is multiplied in the secondary 

 accounts transmitted of the fact. When there exists a strong sub- 

 jective prepossession on the part of the witness, then the event 

 becomes spontaneously idealised in a definite direction. The con- 

 currence of several such subjective prepossessipns, colouring the 



1 Inquiries into Human Faculty,' p. 340. 



