The first sketch is certainly sufficiently inaccurate as a representation of the physical facts of the scene, but in the finished drawing Turner permitted himself further liberties. In it ‘the whole place is altered in scale.’ The rocks on the left which should be four or five hundred feet high are made to look ‘about a thousand feet.’ ‘Next, he raises, in a still greater degree, all the mountains beyond, putting three or four ranges instead of one.’ In this way all the parts of the scene are modified, important features are eliminated at will, and facts that the artist had seen elsewhere are freely introduced. This is what we find Mr. Ruskin means when he talks about receiving ‘a true impression from the place itself, and the accurate and faithful representation of physical facts’ (_Modern Painters_, vol iv. p. 21.) Now I am far from denying that Turner’s procedure was thoroughly justified, but from the ordinary standpoint of common-sense it does stand in need of justification, and it seems to me that it is not a proper way to justify it by passionately declaring that the imaginative vision of the artist does indeed give us ‘the real facts of the world’s outside aspect,’ or a faithful and unaltered copy of a portion of physical reality. Indeed I feel very strongly that this playing fast and loose with Nature and Mind (with physical fact and mental interpretation) is no gain to the cause Mr. Ruskin has at heart. In spite of all his passionate eloquence and transparent earnestness and good faith, the ordinary reader continues to regard nature as the hypostatised world of the physical sciences and as that part of the world which falls outside of mind. And when we regard nature in this way as a mechanical and external system, and declare that it is ‘God’s work,’ we can go on, as Mr. Ruskin does, to attack ‘idealisation,’ and heap contumely on such painters as Claude and Poussin, for daring to modify God’s works and for casting the shadow of their puny selves on the works of their Creator (_Modern Painters_, vol. i. Preface to second ed. p. xxvi.). But if we do this we must at least go on to admit that Turner and all the other great artists sinned in exactly the same way. There is only one way, I am convinced, of working our way to a firmer and more consistent point of view, and that is to get above this naïve dualism of human and physical nature. I may even say that before we can understand the nucleus of truth in Mr. Ruskin’s own work, we must get above the unreflective realism in which the theoretical parts of his writings are steeped. Again and again, in passages of the noblest wisdom and insight, he transcends the limitations of his own thought and language, but always to sink back into the confusion inevitable to all adherents of the psychological philosophy when they come to deal with mental and moral questions.