down into the same soil, their branches are warmed by the same sun,
wet by the same rains, and swept by the same winds. The birch tree
is always lithe and gracious and feminine; the apple tree is always
bent and sternly gnarled like the hand of an old man. The life-force
which impels the tree to growth is distinctive to each kind. Within
all natural objects, then, a crystal, a tree, a man, there is a shaping
principle which determines their essential form. But no two
individual apple trees are precisely alike; from the essential form of
the tree there are divergences in the single manifestations. Though
subject to accident and variation, however, every tree exhibits a
characteristic, inviolate _tendency,_ and remains true to the inner
life-principle of its being. The "truth" of the apple tree is this
distinctive, essential form, by virtue of which it is an apple tree and
not some other kind, the form which underlies and allows for all
individual variations. What the painter renders on his canvas is not
the superficial accidents of some single tree, but by means of that,
he seeks to image forth in color and form the tendency of all trees.
The truth of an object presents itself to the imagination as design, for
this organic, shaping principle of things, expressed in colored
myriad forms throughout the endless pageantry of nature, is
apprehended by the spirit of man as a harmony; and in the
experience of the artist truth identifies itself with beauty.

The distinction between the accidental surface of things and the
significance that may be drawn out of them is exemplified by the
difference between accuracy and truth in representation. Accurate
drawing is the faithful record of the facts of appearance as offered to
the eye. Truth of drawing is the rendering in visible terms of the
meaning and spirit of the object, the form which the object takes not
simply for the eye but for the mind. A pencil sketch by Millet shows
a man carrying in each hand a pail of water. The arms are drawn
inaccurately, in that they are made too long. What Millet wanted to
express, however, was not the physical shape of the arms, but the
feeling of the burden under which the man was bending; and by
lengthening the arms he has succeeded in conveying, as mere
accuracy could not express it, the sensation of weight and muscular
strain. In Hals' picture of the "Jester" the left hand is sketched in
with a few swift strokes of the brush. But so, it "keep