ot identical, one must be in the right and the other in the wrong.
The act of comparison evokes at once our innate tendency to find fault;
and having found fault, we rarely perceive that, on better comparing,
there may be no fault at all to find.

As the result of such comparison, we shall find that Renaissance
sculpture is unrestful, huddled, lacking selection of form and harmony
of proportions; it reproduces ugliness and perpetuates effort; it is
sometimes grotesque, and frequently vulgar. Or again, that antique
sculpture is conventional, insipid, monotonous, without perception for
the charm of detail or the interest of individuality; afraid of movement
and expression, and at the same time indifferent to outline and grouping;
giving us florid nudities which never were alive, and which are doing
and thinking nothing whatever. Thus, according to which room or which
mood we enter first, we are sure to experience either irritation at
wrong-headedness or relief at right-doing; whether we pass from the
sculpture of ancient Greece to the sculpture of mediaeval Italy, or _vice
versa_.

But a more patient comparison of these two branches of sculpture, and of
the circumstances which made each what it was, will enable us to enjoy
the very different merits of both, and will teach us also something of
the vital processes of the particular spiritual organism which we call
an art.

In the early phase of the philosophy of art--a phase lingering on to our
own day in the works of certain critics--the peculiarities of a work of
art were explained by the peculiarities of character of the artist: the
paintings of Raphael and the music of Mozart partook of the gentleness
of their life; while the figures of Michelangelo and the compositions of
Beethoven were the outcome of their misanthropic ruggedness of temper.
The insufficiency, often the falseness, of such explanations became
evident when critics began to perceive that the works of one time and
country usually possessed certain common peculiarities which did not
correspond to any resemblance between the characters of their respective
artists; peculiarities so much more dominant than any others, that a
statue or a picture which was unsigned and of obscure history was
constantly attributed to half-a-dozen contemporary sculptors or painters
by half-a-dozen equally learned critics. The recognition of this fact
led to the substitution of the _environment_ (the _milieu_ of Monsieur
Taine)