ry, "Awake, thou
that sleepest." And this cry must be most loudly uttered to their
noblest faculties; first of all to the imagination, for that is the most
tender, and the soonest struck into numbness by the poisoned air; so
that one of the main functions of art in its service to man, is to
arouse the imagination from its palsy, like the angel troubling the
Bethesda pool; and the art which does not do this is false to its duty,
and degraded in its nature. It is not enough that it be well imagined,
it must task the beholder also to imagine well; and this so
imperatively, that if he does not choose to rouse himself to meet the
work, he shall not taste it, nor enjoy it in any wise. Once that he is
well awake, the guidance which the artist gives him should be full and
authoritative: the beholder's imagination must not be suffered to take
its own way, or wander hither and thither; but neither must it be left
at rest; and the right point of realization, for any given work of art,
is that which will enable the spectator to complete it for himself, in
the exact way the artist would have him, but not that which will save
him the trouble of effecting the completion. So soon as the idea is
entirely conveyed, the artist's labor should cease; and every touch
which he adds beyond the point when, with the help of the beholder's
imagination, the story ought to have been told, is a degradation to his
work. So that the art is wrong, which either realizes its subject
completely, or fails in giving such definite aid as shall enable it to
be realized by the beholding imagination.

Sec. XXII. It follows, therefore, that the quantity of finish or detail
which may rightly be bestowed upon any work, depends on the number and
kind of ideas which the artist wishes to convey, much more than on the
amount of realization necessary to enable the imagination to grasp them.
It is true that the differences of judgment formed by one or another
observer are in great degree dependent on their unequal imaginative
powers, as well as their unequal efforts in following the artist's
intention; and it constantly happens that the drawing which appears
clear to the painter in whose mind the thought is formed, is slightly
inadequate to suggest it to the spectator. These causes of false
judgment, or imperfect achievement, must always exist, but they are of
no importance. For, in nearly every mind, the imaginative power, however
unable to act independently, is so eas