78 Vransacttons.—Miscellaneous, 
Here, however, let me pause awhile to explain clearly, yet briefiy, what 
I mean by the term Ideality : I mean that superior faculty—that conception 
of the natural and beautiful, the truthful and symmetrical, which has ever 
been found to pertain to the higher races, or varieties of men, and in par- 
ticular to the more gifted among them. As Cousin says (On the uni ee 
—'* The Ideal appears as an original conception of the mind. * * 
Nature or experience gives me the occasion for conceiving the ideal, but the 
ideal is something entirely different from experience or nature, so that if we 
apply it to natural, or even to artificial figures, they cannot fill up the con- 
dition of the ideal conception, and we are obliged to imagine them exact.” 
Kant lays it down—* By ideal, I understand the idea, not in concreto but in 
individuo, as an individual thing, determinable or determined by the idea 
alone." * On this subject, also, Emerson impressively writes :—“ I 
hasten to state the principle which prescribes, through different means, 
its firm law to the useful and beautiful arts. The law is this: The 
universal soul is the alone creator of the useful and the beautiful; 
therefore, to make anything useful or beautiful, the individual must be sub- 
mitted to the universal mind. *  *  * Beneath a necessity thus 
almighty, what is artificial in man's life seems insignifieant. He seems to 
take his task so minutely from intimations of Nature, that his works become, 
as it were, hers, and he is nolonger free. * *  * There is but one 
Reason. The mind that made the world is not one mind, but the mind. 
Every man is an inlet to the same, and to all of the same. And every work 
of art is a more or less sure manifestation of the same. * * * We feel, 
in seeing a noble building, much as we do in hearing a perfect song, that it 
is spiritually organic; that is, had a necessity in nature for being; was 
one of the possible forms in the Divine mind, and is now only discovered 
and executed by the artist, not arbitrarily composed by him. * * * The 
highest praise we can attribute to any writer, painter, sculptor, builder, is, 
that he actually possessed the thought or feeling with which he has inspired 
us."t  Thatdelightful writer on Art, J. Ruskin—whether considered as artist 
or art eritie—always in love with the Beautiful, and possessing the wonder- 
ful power of telling it in such charming language, says :—‘‘I call an idea 
great in proportion as it is received by a higher faculty of the mind, and as 
it more fully occupies, and in occupying, exercises and exalts, the faculty by 
which it is received. * * * He is the greatest artist who has embodied 
in the sum of his works the greatest number of the greatest ideas.” Then 
Ruskin contrasts the old Venetian worker in glass, with his profusion of 
design, his personality of purpose, and his love of his art, with the British 
* Crit. Pure Reason. 
1 Essay on Art. 
