always an alien soul to which we are uniting ourselves. It is only at the stage of the Megalopolis that art, reasoned to pieces and de- spiritualized, goes over to naturalism as that term is understood nowadays; viz., imitation of the charm of visible appearances, of the stock of sensible characters that are capable of being scientifically fixed. Ornament detaches itself now from Imitation as something which does not follow the stream of life but rigidly _faces it_. Instead of physiognomic traits overheard in the alien being, we have established motives, _symbols_, which are impressed upon it. The intention is no longer to pretend but to conjure. The “I” overwhelms the “Thou.” Imitation is only a _speaking_ with means that are born of the moment and unreproduceable—but Ornament _employs a language_ emancipated from the speaking, a stock of forms that possesses duration and is not at the mercy of the individual.[212] Only the _living_ can be imitated, and it can be imitated only in movements, for it is through these that it reveals itself to the senses of artists and spectators. To that extent, imitation belongs to Time and Direction. All the dancing and drawing and describing and portraying for eye and ear is irrevocably “directional,” and hence the highest possibilities of Imitation lie in the copying of a destiny, be it in tones, verses, picture or stage-scene.[213] Ornament, on the contrary, is something taken away from Time: it is pure extension, settled and stable. Whereas an imitation expresses something by _accomplishing itself_, ornament can only do so by presenting itself to the senses as a finished thing. It is Being as such, wholly independent of origin. Every imitation possesses beginning and end, while an ornament possesses only duration, and therefore we can only imitate the destiny of an _individual_ (for instance, Antigone or Desdemona), while by an ornament or symbol only the generalized destiny-idea itself can be represented (as, for example, that of the Classical world by the Doric column). And the former presupposes a talent, while the latter calls for an acquirable knowledge as well.