th of impression and thought is a
thousand times the more important of the two. Hence, truth is a term of
universal application, but imitation is limited to that narrow field of
art which takes cognizance only of material things.

Sec. 3. Second difference.

Secondly,--Truth may be stated by any signs or symbols which have a
definite signification in the minds of those to whom they are addressed,
although such signs be themselves no image nor likeness of anything.
Whatever can excite in the mind the conception of certain facts, can
give ideas of truth, though it be in no degree the imitation or
resemblance of those facts. If there be--we do not say there is--but if
there be in painting anything which operates, as words do, not by
resembling anything, but by being taken as a symbol and substitute for
it, and thus inducing the effect of it, then this channel of
communication can convey uncorrupted truth, though it do not in any
degree resemble the facts whose conception it induces. But ideas of
imitation, of course, require the likeness of the object. They speak to
the perceptive faculties only: truth to the conceptive.

Sec. 4. Third difference.

Thirdly,--And in consequence of what is above stated, an idea of truth
exists in the statement of _one_ attribute of anything, but an idea of
imitation requires the resemblance of as many attributes as we are
usually cognizant of in its real presence. A pencil outline of the bough
of a tree on white paper is a statement of a certain number of facts of
form. It does not yet amount to the imitation of anything. The idea of
that form is not given in nature by lines at all, still less by black
lines with a white space between them. But those lines convey to the
mind a distinct impression of a certain number of facts, which it
recognizes as agreeable with its previous impressions of the bough of a
tree; and it receives, therefore, an idea of truth. If, instead of two
lines, we give a dark form with the brush, we convey information of a
certain relation of shade between the bough and sky, recognizable for
another idea of truth; but we have still no imitation, for the white
paper is not the least like air, nor the black shadow like wood. It is
not until after a certain number of ideas of truth have been collected
together, that we arrive at an idea of imitation.

Sec. 5. No accurate truths necessary to imitation.

Hence it might at first sight appear, that an idea of imitat