f the
slave, on the contrary, are not so when his feelings are not servile.
Far from this, a base condition, when joined to elevated feelings, can
become a source of the sublime. The master of Epictetus, who beat him,
acted basely, and the slave beaten by him showed a sublime soul. True
greatness, when it is met in a base condition, is only the more brilliant
and splendid on that account: and the artist must not fear to show us his
heroes even under a contemptible exterior as soon as he is sure of being
able to give them, when he wishes, the expression of moral dignity.

But what can be granted to the poet is not always allowed in the artist.
The poet only addresses the imagination; the painter addresses the senses
directly. It follows not only that the impression of the picture is more
lively than that of the poem, but also that the painter, if he employ
only his natural signs, cannot make the minds of his personages as
visible as the poet can with the arbitrary signs at his command: yet it
is only the sight of the mind that can reconcile us to certain exteriors.
When Homer causes his Ulysses to appear in the rags of a beggar
["Odyssey," book xiii. v. 397], we are at liberty to represent his image
to our mind more or less fully, and to dwell on it as long as we like.
But in no case will it be sufficiently vivid to excite our repugnance or
disgust. But if a painter, or even a tragedian, try to reproduce
faithfully the Ulysses of Homer, we turn away from the picture with
repugnance. It is because in this case the greater or less vividness of
the impression no longer depends on our will: we cannot help seeing what
the painter places under our eyes; and it is not easy for us to remove
the accessory repugnant ideas which the picture recalls to our mind.

DETACHED REFLECTIONS ON DIFFERENT QUESTIONS OF AESTHETICS.

All the properties by which an object can become aesthetic, can be
referred to four classes, which, as well according to their objective
differences as according to their different relation with the subject,
produce on our passive and active faculties pleasures unequal not only in
intensity but also in worth; classes which also are of an unequal use for
the end of the fine arts: they are the agreeable, the good, the sublime,
and the beautiful.

Of these four categories, the sublime and the beautiful only belong
properly to art. The agreeable is not worthy of art, and the good is at
least not its end; for