§ VIII. Science and art are commonly distinguished by the nature of
their actions; the one as knowing, the other as changing, producing, or
creating. But there is a still more important distinction in the nature
of the things they deal with. Science deals exclusively with things as
they are in themselves; and art exclusively with things as they affect
the human senses and human soul.[8] Her work is to portray the
appearance of things, and to deepen the natural impressions which they
produce upon living creatures. The work of science is to substitute
facts for appearances, and demonstrations for impressions. Both,
observe, are equally concerned with truth; the one with truth of aspect,
the other with truth of essence. Art does not represent things falsely,
but truly as they appear to mankind. Science studies the relations of
things to each other: but art studies only their relations to man; and
it requires of everything which is submitted to it imperatively this,
and only this,--what that thing is to the human eyes and human heart,
what it has to say to men, and what it can become to them: a field of
question just as much vaster than that of science, as the soul is larger
than the material creation.
§ IX. Take a single instance. Science informs us that the sun is
ninety-five millions of miles distant from, and 111 times broader than,
the earth; that we and all the planets revolve round it; and that it
revolves on its own axis in 25 days, 14 hours and 4 minutes. With all
this, art has nothing whatsoever to do. It has no care to know anything
of this kind. But the things which it does care to know, are these: that
in the heavens God hath set a tabernacle for the sun, "which is as a
bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoiceth as a strong man to
run a race. His going forth is from the end of the heaven, and his
circuit unto the ends of it, and there is nothing hid from the heat
thereof."
§ X. This, then, being the kind of truth with which art is exclusively
concerned, how is such truth as this to be ascertained and accumulated?
Evidently, and only, by perception and feeling. Never either by
reasoning, or report. Nothing must come between Nature and the artist's
sight; nothing between God and the artist's soul. Neither calculation
nor hearsay,--be it the most subtle of calculations, or the wisest of
sayings,--may be allowed to come between the universe, and the witness
which art bears to its visible nature. The whole value of that witness
depends on its being _eye_-witness; the whole genuineness,
acceptableness, and dominion of it depend on the personal assurance of
the man who utters it. All its victory depends on the veracity of the
one preceding word, "Vidi."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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