The
treatment grows out of the subject as the family from the parents and
the race from the family--each new-born member being the same and yet
not the same with those that have preceded him. So it is with all
the arts and all the sciences--they flourish best by the addition of
but little new at a time in comparison with the old.
And so, lastly, it is with the ars artium itself, that art of arts
and science of sciences, that guild of arts and crafts which is
comprised within each one of us, I mean our bodies. In the detail
they are nourished from day to day by food which must not be too
alien from past food or from the body itself, nor yet too germane to
either; and in the gross, that is to say, in the history of the
development of a race or species, the evolution is admittedly for the
most part exceedingly gradual, by means of many generations, as it
were, of episodes that are kindred to and yet not identical with the
subject.
And when we come to think of it, we find in the evolution of bodily
form (which along with modification involves persistence of type) the
explanation why persistence of type in subjects chosen for treatment
in works of art should be so universal. It is because we are so
averse to great changes and at the same time so averse to no change
at all, that we have a bodily form, in the main, persistent and yet,
at the same time, capable of modifications.
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