going to the quick and
the heart of the matter: "With _Brains_, sir."

Sir Joshua Reynolds was taken by a friend to see a picture. He was
anxious to admire it, and he looked it over with a keen and careful but
favorable eye. "Capital composition; correct drawing; the color, tone,
chiaroscuro excellent; but--but--it wants, hang it, it wants--_That!_"
snapping his fingers; and, wanting "that," though it had everything
else, it was worth nothing.

Again, Etty was appointed teacher of the students of the Royal Academy,
having been preceded by a clever, talkative, scientific expounder of
aesthetics, who delighted to tell the young men _how_ everything was
done, how to copy this, and how to express that. A student came up to
the new master, "How should I do this, sir?" "Suppose you try." Another,
"What does this mean, Mr. Etty?" "Suppose you look." "But I have
looked." "Suppose you look again." And they did try, and they did look,
and looked again; and they saw and achieved what they never could have
done, had the how or the what (supposing this possible, which it is not
in its full and highest meaning) been told them, or done for them; in
the one case, sight and action were immediate, exact, intense, and
secure; in the other mediate, feeble, and lost as soon as gained. But
what are "_Brains_"? what did Opie mean? and what is Sir Joshua's
"_That_"? What is included in it? and what is the use, or the need of
trying and trying, of missing often before you hit, when you can be told
at once and be done with it; or of looking when you may be shown?
Everything in medicine and in painting--practical arts--as means to
ends, let their scientific enlargement be ever so rapid and immense,
depends upon the right answers to these questions.

First of all, "brains," in the painter, are not diligence, knowledge,
skill, sensibility, a strong will, or a high aim,--he may have all
these, and never paint anything so truly good and effective as the
rugged woodcut we must all remember, of Apollyon bestriding the whole
breadth of the way, and Christian girding at him like a man, in the old
sixpenny _Pilgrim's Progress_; and a young medical student may have
zeal, knowledge, ingenuity, attention, a good eye and a steady hand--he
may be an accomplished anatomist, stethoscopist, histologist, and
analyst; and yet, with all this, and all the lectures, and all the
books, and all the sayings, and all the preparations, drawings, tables,
and other helps