Blackwood's Edinburgh magazine, Vol. 93, No. 571, May, 1863 — John Shaqi
Blackwood's Edinburgh magazine, Vol. 93, No. 571, May, 1863Various
History
Blackwood's Edinburgh magazine, Vol. 93, No. 571, May, 1863
Various
England -- Periodicals; Scotland -- Periodicals
And though Kant applies the word _genius_ (_ingenium_) strictly to the
cultivators of Art, refusing to extend it to the cultivators of Science,
yet the more we examine the highest orders of intellect, whether devoted
to science, to art, or even to action, the more clearly we shall observe
the presence of a faculty common to all such orders of intellect,
because essential to completion in each—a faculty which seems so far
intuitive or innate (_ingenium_) that, though study and practice perfect
it, they do not suffice to bestow—viz., the faculty of grouping into
order and symmetrical form, ideas in themselves scattered and
dissimilar. This is the faculty of Method; and though every one who
possesses it is not necessarily a great man, yet every great man must
possess it in a very superior degree, whether he be a poet, a
philosopher, a statesman, a general; for every great man exhibits the
talent of organisation or construction, whether it be in a poem, a
philosophical system, a policy, or a strategy. And without method there
is no organisation nor construction. But in art, method is less
perceptible than in science, and in familiar language usually receives
some other name. Nevertheless, we include the meaning when we speak of
the composition of a picture, the arrangement of an oration, the plan of
a poem. Art employing method for the symmetrical formation of beauty, as
science employs it for the logical exposition of truth: but the
mechanical process is, in the last, ever kept visibly distinct; while,
in the first, it escapes from sight amid the shows of colour and the
curves of grace.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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