The end or object of art must therefore consist in something other than the purely formal[82] imitation of what is given to objective sense, which invariably can merely call into being technical _legerdemain_ and not _works_ of art[83]. It is no doubt an essential constituent of a work of art that it should have natural forms as a foundation, because the mode of its representation is in external form, and thereby along with it in that of natural phenomena. In painting it is obviously an important study to learn to copy with accuracy colours in their mutual relations, such as light effects and reflections, and so forth, and, with no less accuracy, the forms and shapes of objects carried into their most subtle gradations of line. It is in this respect that in modern times more particularly the principle of the imitation of Nature and naturalism generally has come into vogue. The object has been to recall an art, which has deteriorated into weakness and nebulosity, to the strength and determinate outlines of Nature, or, in yet another direction, as against the purely arbitrary caprice and convention of a studio, which is in truth as remote from Nature as it is from art, and merely indicates the path of art's declension, to assert the claim of the legitimate, direct, and independent, no less than coherent stability of natural fact. But while admitting that from a certain point of view such an effort is reasonable enough, yet for all that the naturalism which it demands, taken by itself, is neither the substantive thing, not yet of primary importance, in the true basis of art; and although the external fact in its natural appearance constitutes an element of essential value, yet the objective fact alone does not supply the _standard_ of rightness, nor is the mere imitation of external phenomena, in their external shape that is, the _end_ of art.