APPENDIX 417 



certain element of inadequacy, a certain admixture of illusion, in 

 all subjective perceptions and in all subjective renderings of reality, 

 we are well aware that some are nearer to the truth than others. 

 Dante's and Shakespeare's, Eaphael's and Pheidias's impressions 

 of reality, though tinctured with subjective colours, appeal to our 

 sense of truth more forcibly than Marino's and Cyril Tourneur's, 

 than Fuseli's and Bernini's. If it were not so, criticism would be 

 impossible, and humanity would have to renounce its claim to 

 common sense. The pursuit of knowledge, even of such relative 

 knowledge as mankind can hope for, would have to be abandoned 

 as absurd. We should not be able to communicate with one 

 another in the expectation of being understood. We should be 

 precluded from legislating for the common benefit of society. The 

 human race would be reduced to an aggregation of isolated world- 

 making monads. 



Truth lies in the avoidance of paradoxical extremes. Full 

 recognition of the play of subjectivity in individuals must not 

 blind us to the fact that, over and above and independent of this 

 subjectivity, we are conscious of a standard relation to reality, by 

 reference to which we are enabled to form judgments. The race 

 is larger than the individuals which compose it ; and constant 

 appeal must be made to the common from the personal 

 perception. 



This being the case, criticism finds, when it surveys the several 

 products of any marked historical epoch, that they present more 

 notes of similarity than of difference. The notes of difference 

 belong to individual artists ; the notes of similarity belong to the 

 period which produced them, and the tribe from which they sprang. 

 Having ascertained the specific note belonging to a particular epoch, 

 criticism compares this with the note of other equally differentiated 

 epochs. At this point the generic note emerges, that which con- 

 stitutes humanity at large. From such studies, whereby a standard 

 has been gained, criticism returns to the consideration of species 

 and particulars. The specific falls into its place of relation to the 

 generic, and the individual is inspected as subordinated to the 

 species which he helps to integrate. 



Subjectivity holds sway throughout the process. The particular 

 sees reality through the spectacles of self. The species sees it 

 through spectacles of race and period. Mankind sees it through 

 spectacles of generic human properties. Neither particular, nor 

 species, nor yet genus eliminates the subjective element or repro- 



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