nd in the same way by all. But the
highest art, being based on sensations of peculiar minds, sensations
occurring to _them_ only at particular times, and to a plurality of
mankind perhaps never, and being expressive of thoughts which could only
rise out of a mass of the most extended knowledge, and of dispositions
modified in a thousand ways by peculiarity of intellect--can only be met
and understood by persons having some sort of sympathy with the high and
solitary minds which produced it--sympathy only to be felt by minds in
some degree high and solitary themselves. He alone can appreciate the
art, who could comprehend the conversation of the painter, and share in
his emotion, in moments of his most fiery passion and most original
thought. And whereas the true meaning and end of his art must thus be
sealed to thousands, or misunderstood by them; so also, as he is
sometimes obliged, in working out his own peculiar end, to set at
defiance those constant laws which have arisen out of our lower and
changeless desires, that whose purpose is unseen, is frequently in its
means and parts displeasing.

Sec. 7. The first necessary to the second.

Sec. 8. The exceeding importance of truth.

But this want of extended influence in high art, be it especially
observed, proceeds from no want of truth in the art itself, but from a
want of sympathy in the spectator with those feelings in the artist
which prompt him to the utterance of one truth rather than of another.
For (and this is what I wish at present especially to insist upon)
although it is possible to reach what I have stated to be the first end
of art, the representation of facts, without reaching the second, the
representation of thoughts, yet it is altogether impossible to reach the
second without having previously reached the first. I do not say that a
man cannot think, having false basis and material for thought; but that
a false thought is worse than the want of thought, and therefore is not
art. And this is the reason why, though I consider the second as the
real and only important end of all art, I call the representation of
facts the first end; because it is necessary to the other, and must be
attained before it. It is the foundation of all art; like real
foundations it may be little thought of when a brilliant fabric is
raised on it; but it must be there: and as few buildings are beautiful
unless every line and column of their mass have reference to their
founda