also the kinds of
morbid condition into which the two higher (for the last has no other
than a morbid condition) are liable to fall. For, since the function of
the Naturalists is to represent, as far as may be, the whole of nature,
and the Purists to represent what is absolutely good for some special
purpose or time, it is evident that both are liable to error from
shortness of sight, and the last also from weakness of judgment. I say,
in the first place, both may err from shortness of sight, from not
seeing all that there is in nature; seeing only the outsides of things,
or those points of them which bear least on the matter in hand. For
instance, a modern continental Naturalist sees the anatomy of a limb
thoroughly, but does not see its color against the sky, which latter
fact is to a painter far the more important of the two. And because it
is always easier to see the surface than the depth of things, the full
sight of them requiring the highest powers of penetration, sympathy, and
imagination, the world is full of vulgar Naturalists: not Sensualists,
observe, not men who delight in evil; but men who never see the deepest
good, and who bring discredit on all painting of Nature by the little
that they discover in her. And the Purist, besides being liable to this
same shortsightedness, is liable also to fatal errors of judgment; for
he may think that good which is not so, and that the highest good which
is the least. And thus the world is full of vulgar Purists,[64] who
bring discredit on all selection by the silliness of their choice; and
this the more, because the very becoming a Purist is commonly indicative
of some slight degree of weakness, readiness to be offended, or
narrowness of understanding of the ends of things: the greatest men
being, in all times of art, Naturalists, without any exception; and the
greatest Purists being those who approach nearest to the Naturalists, as
Benozzo Gozzoli and Perugino. Hence there is a tendency in the
Naturalists to despise the Purists, and in the Purists to be offended
with the Naturalists (not understanding them, and confounding them with
the Sensualists); and this is grievously harmful to both.

Sec. LXIII. Of the various forms of resultant mischief it is not here
the place to speak: the reader may already be somewhat wearied with a
statement which has led us apparently so far from our immediate subject.
But the digression was necessary, in order that I might clearly define