Even the most refined of these distinctions, those that have the most philosophic appearance, do not resist criticism; as, for instance, when works of art are divided into the subjective and the objective styles, into lyric and epic, into works of feeling and works of design. It is impossible to separate in aesthetic analysis, the subjective from the objective side, the lyric from the epic, the image of feeling from that of things. [Sidenote] _Errors derived from this theory appearing in judgments on art._ From the theory of the artistic and literary classes derive those erroneous modes of judgment and of criticism, thanks to which, instead of asking before a work of art if it be expressive, and what it expresses, whether it speak or stammer, or be silent altogether, it is asked if it be obedient to the _laws_ of the epic poem, or to those of tragedy, to those of historical portraiture, or to those of landscape painting. Artists, however, while making a verbal pretence of agreeing, or yielding a feigned obedience to them, have really always disregarded these _laws of styles_. Every true work of art has violated some established class and upset the ideas of the critics, who have thus been obliged to enlarge the number of classes, until finally even this enlargement has proved too narrow, owing to the appearance of new works of art, which are naturally followed by new scandals, new upsettings, and-new enlargements. From the same theory come the prejudices, owing to which at one time (and is it really passed?) people used to lament that Italy had no tragedy (until a poet arose who gave to Italy that wreath which was the only thing wanting to her glorious hair), nor France the epic poem (until the _Henriade_, which slaked the thirsty throats of the critics). Eulogies accorded to the inventors of new styles are connected with these prejudices, so much so, that in the seventeenth century the invention of the _mock-heroic_ poem seemed an important event, and the honour of it was disputed, as though it were the discovery of America. But the works adorned with this name (the _Secchia rapita_ and the _Scherno degli Dei_) were still-born, because their authors (a slight draw-back) had nothing new or original to say. Mediocrities racked their brains to invent, artificially, new styles. The _piscatorial_ eclogue was added to the _pastoral_, and then, finally, the _military_ eclogue. The _Aminta_ was bathed and became the _Alceo_. Finally, there have been historians of art and literature, so much fascinated with these ideas of classes, that they claimed to write the history, not of single and effective literary and artistic works, but of their classes, those empty phantoms. They have claimed to portray, not the evolution of the _artistic spirit_, but the _evolution of classes_.