the same network, nor two leaves on the same tree which
could not be told one from the other, nor two waves in the sea exactly
alike. And out of this mass of various, yet agreeing beauty, it is by
long attention only that the conception of the constant character--the
ideal form--hinted at by all, yet assumed by none, is fixed upon the
imagination for its standard of truth.

It is not singular, therefore, nor in any way disgraceful, that the
majority of spectators are totally incapable of appreciating the truth
of nature, when fully set before them; but it is both singular and
disgraceful that it is so difficult to convince them of their own
incapability. Ask the connoisseur, who has scampered over all Europe,
the shape of the leaf of an elm, and the chances are ninety to one that
he cannot tell you; and yet he will be voluble of criticism on every
painted landscape from Dresden to Madrid, and pretend to tell you
whether they are like nature or not. Ask an enthusiastic chatterer in
the Sistine Chapel how many ribs he has, and you get no answer; but it
is odds that you do not get out of the door without his informing you
that he considers such and such a figure badly drawn!

Sec. 8. We recognize objects by their least important attributes. Compare
Part I., Sect. I., Chap. 4.

A few such interrogations as these might indeed convict, if not convince
the mass of spectators of incapability, were it not for the universal
reply, that they can recognize what they cannot describe, and feel what
is truthful, though they do not know what is truth. And this is, to a
certain degree, true: a man may recognize the portrait of his friend,
though he cannot, if you ask him apart, tell you the shape of his nose
or the height of his forehead; and every one could tell nature herself
from an imitation; why not then, it will be asked, what is like her from
what is not? For this simple reason, that we constantly recognize things
by their least important attributes, and by help of very few of those,
and if these attributes exist not in the imitation, though there may be
thousands of others far higher and more valuable, yet if those be
wanting, or imperfectly rendered, by which we are accustomed to
recognize the object, we deny the likeness; while if these be given,
though all the great and valuable and important attributes may be
wanting, we affirm the likeness. Recognition is no proof of real and
intrinsic resemblance. We recognize