But what must art be in order to produce truth? "The strictest imitation of nature." By this word Shaftesbury does not understand what we understand by the word "nature"; not, in the first instance, so much the nature surrounding us, in its outward manifestations, but, above all, an intimate human reality. Let the painter represent the reality of human _inwardness_. Still life, the animal world, landscape,--all that, Shaftesbury explains, is most valuable. But another and a higher life exists in man than in the beasts and the woods, and there is the true object of art. In no case should the artist proceed from external vision; for then he will obtain fashionable attitudes, theatrical unreality, or, in the most favourable instance, a formal, decorative embellishment. Of what value is that in comparison with a single real presentation of character? How insignificant would every external form seem in contrast to each single feature of this intimate manner! Here is the second characteristic of English painting. It proceeds neither, like that of the sixteenth century, from formulas, nor, like the Dutch, from the picturesque, but, like to the English novel of character, from an intellectual impulse; it strives not after beauty of form and physical, sensuous grace, but, in the first place, after intellectual expression. And from this there follows immediately a third trait. If art is to make the inwardness of man its subject, the artist cannot remain an indifferent portrayer. He will make great distinctions, will bring into prominence what is meritorious or censurable in every character--he will become a moralist. Only so can he conform to that last and highest function which Shaftesbury assigns to the painter. The liberty which the English nation had fought for in the "glorious Revolution" brought forth, in the course of years, while Shaftesbury was writing, a fruitful crop of dissoluteness and licence. The mortification of the flesh of the Puritans was followed by so violent a recrudescence of sensuality that it was as though the whole menagerie of the passions had been unchained. London swarmed with criminals; drunkenness was an epidemic. The moral idea awoke amongst the cultivated classes. Might it not be possible, with the help of education, for that to be overcome? And so Shaftesbury's view of art comprised a third, and very dangerous, element; namely, that to fulfil the most serious mission of that culture which had ensued from the free and natural conditions in England--even in the realm of æsthetics--the painter, like the poet, must appear as the moral teacher of his age. Imagine an artist who fulfils these conditions and you have, as a result, _Hogarth_, with all his qualities and defects. [Illustration: HOGARTH. PORTRAIT OF HIMSELF.]