reams. And even we painters, who dare not call ourselves capable of
thought, are capable of choice in more or less salutary vision. In the
degree in which we lose such power of choice in vision, so that the
spectral phenomena which are the materials of our industry present
themselves under forms beyond our control, we become insane; and
although for all our best work a certain degree of this insanity is
necessary, and the first occurring conceptions are uncommanded, as in
dreams, we have, when in health, always instantaneous power of accepting
some, refusing others, perfecting the outlines and colors of those we
wish to keep, and arranging them in such relations as we choose.

304. And unquestionably the forms of the body which painters
instinctively recognize as best, and call "beautiful," are so far under
the command of the plastic force of voluntary thought, that the
original and future authority of such a plastic force over the whole of
creation cannot but seem to painters a direct, though not a certain
influence; and they would at once give their adherence to the statement
made many years since in his opening lectures in Oxford by the present
Regius Professor of Medicine (as far as I can recollect approximately,
in these terms)--that "it is quite as logical, and far more easy, to
conceive of original anima as adapting itself to forms of substance,
than of original substance as adapting to itself modes of mind."

305. It is surely, therefore, not too much to expect of future schools
of metaphysicians that they will direct mankind into methods of thought
which will be at once happy, unerring, and medicinal, and therefore
entirely wise; that they will mark the limits beyond which uniformity
must be dangerous, and speculation vain; and that they will at no
distant period terminate the acrimony of theologians, and the
insolences, as well as the sorrows, of groundless faith, by showing that
it is appointed for us, in common with the rest of the animal creation,
to live in the midst of an universe the nature of which is as much
better than we can believe, as it is greater than we can understand.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 36: Contemporary Review, June, 1871.--ED.]

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LITERATURE.

FICTION--FAIR AND FOUL.

(_Nineteenth Century, June, August, Sept., Nov. 1880, and Oct. 1881._)

FAIRY STORIES.

(_Preface to "German Popular Stories," 1868._)

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