as been once well done,
constantly leads to something better. What is mechanical, reducible to
rule, or capable of demonstration, is progressive, and admits of gradual
improvement: what is not mechanical, or definite, but depends on
feeling, taste, and genius, very soon becomes stationary, or retrograde,
and loses more than it gains by transfusion. The contrary opinion is a
vulgar error, which has grown up, like many others, from transferring an
analogy of one kind to something quite distinct, without taking into the
account the difference in the nature of the things, or attending to the
difference of the results. For most persons, finding what wonderful
advances have been made in biblical criticism, in chemistry, in
mechanics, in geometry, astronomy, &c. _i.e._ in things depending on
mere inquiry and experiment, or on absolute demonstration, have been led
hastily to conclude, that there was a general tendency in the efforts of
the human intellect to improve by repetition, and, in all other arts and
institutions, to grow perfect and mature by time. We look back upon the
theological creed of our ancestors, and their discoveries in natural
philosophy, with a smile of pity: science, and the arts connected with
it, have all had their infancy, their youth, and manhood, and seem to
contain in them no principle of limitation or decay: and, inquiring no
farther about the matter, we infer, in the intoxication of our pride,
and the height of our self-congratulation, that the same progress has
been made, and will continue to be made, in all other things which are
the work of man. The fact, however, stares us so plainly in the face,
that one would think the smallest reflection must suggest the truth, and
overturn our sanguine theories. The greatest poets, the ablest orators,
the best painters, and the finest sculptors that the world ever saw,
appeared soon after the birth of these arts, and lived in a state of
society which was, in other respects, comparatively barbarous. Those
arts, which depend on individual genius and incommunicable power, have
always leaped at once from infancy to manhood, from the first rude dawn
of invention to their meridian height and dazzling lustre, and have in
general declined ever after. This is the peculiar distinction and
privilege of each, of science and of art:--of the one, never to attain
its utmost limit of perfection; and of the other, to arrive at it almost
at once. Homer, Chaucer, Spense