"in default of purely agreeable sensations!" As though the incapacity or the momentary embarrassment of the artist, and the inadequacy of a chosen subject, could do away with a law of art once recognized as supreme. It is just as though the political law-giver should modify the prohibition of stealing by the clause: "if, namely, thou canst earn something in an honest manner." Striking it is, that even Lessing should cling to such definitions and employ all his ingenuity to prove their tenableness. It goes to show that the taste of a nation never--as may very well be imagined--precedes the genius, but always limps along behind him. Still more striking it is that they could feel the inadequacy of the accepted definition, that they could come so near to the real remedy, and yet could overlook it. It seems to me, namely, that everything could have been adjusted, if they had made the same demands on the artist's work that they made on the subject chosen by him. This is so plain that it needs no demonstration. If I should be asked to state my conception of art--it is understood that here, as elsewhere, that only the art of poetry is in question--I would base it on the unconditional freedom of the artist, and say: Art should seize upon life in all its various forms, and represent it. It is obvious that this cannot be accomplished by mere copying. The artist must afford life something more than a morgue, where it is prepared for burial. We wish to see the point from which life starts and the one where it loses itself, as a single wave, in the great sea of infinite, effect. That this effect is a twofold one, and that it can turn inward as well as outward, is of course self-evident. For the rest--be it said incidentally--here is the point from which a parallel can be drawn between the phenomena of real life and those of life embodied in art.