calling sympathies and antipathies into healthy play. The effect is far greater when the representation, passing the limits of strict accuracy, is suitably idealized. This indeed is the characteristic mission of Art. Its function is to construct types of the noblest kind, by the contemplation of which our feelings and thoughts may be elevated. That the portraiture should be exaggerated follows from the definition of Art; it should surpass realities so as to stimulate us to amend them. Great as the influence is of these poetic emotions on individuals, they are far more efficacious when brought to bear upon public life: not only from the greater importance of the subject matter, but because each individual impression is rendered more intense by combination. [Poetry is intermediate between Philosophy and Polity] Thus Positivism explains and confirms the view ordinarily taken of Poetry, by placing it midway between Philosophy and Polity; issuing from the first, and preparing the way for the second. Even Feeling itself, the highest principle of our existence, accepts the objective dogma of Philosophy, that Humanity is subject to the order of the external world. And Imagination on still stronger grounds must accept the same law. The ideal must always be subordinate to the real; otherwise feebleness as well as extravagance is the consequence. The statesman who endeavours to improve the existing order, must first study it as it exists. And the poet, although his improvements are but imagined, and are not supposed capable of realization, must do likewise. True in his fictions he will transcend the limits of the possible, while the statesman will keep within those limits; but both have the same point of departure; both begin by studying the actual facts with which they deal. In our artificial improvements we should never aim at anything more than wise modification of the natural order; we should never attempt to subvert it. And though Imagination has a wider range for its pictures, they are yet subject to the same fundamental law, imposed by Philosophy upon Polity and Poetry alike. Even in the most poetic ages this law has always been recognized, only the external world was interpreted then in a way very differently from now. We see the same thing every day in the mental growth of the child. As his notions of fact change, his fictions are modified in conformity with these changes.