when the creature is either
unfaithful to itself, or is afflicted by circumstances unnatural and
malignant to its being, and for the contending with which it was neither
fitted nor ordained. Hence that rest which is indeed glorious is of the
chamois couched breathless on his granite bed, not of the stalled ox
over his fodder, and that happiness which is indeed beautiful is in the
bearing of those trial tests which are appointed for the proving of
every creature, whether it be good, or whether it be evil; and in the
fulfilment to the uttermost of every command it has received, and the
out-carrying to the uttermost of every power and gift it has gotten from
its God.

Sec. 13. The ideality of Art.

Therefore the task of the painter in his pursuit of ideal form is to
attain accurate knowledge, so far as may be in his power, of the
character, habits, and peculiar virtues and duties of every species of
being; down even to the stone, for there is an ideality of stones
according to their kind, an ideality of granite and slate and marble,
and it is in the utmost and most exalted exhibition of such individual
character, order, and use, that all ideality of art consists. The more
cautious he is in assigning the right species of moss to its favorite
trunk, and the right kind of weed to its necessary stone, in marking the
definite and characteristic leaf, blossom, seed, fracture, color, and
inward anatomy of everything, the more truly ideal his work becomes. All
confusion of species, all careless rendering of character, all unnatural
and arbitrary association, is vulgar and unideal in proportion to its
degree.

Sec. 14. How connected with the imaginative faculties.

It is to be noted, however, that nature sometimes in a measure herself
conceals these generic differences, and that when she displays them it
is commonly on a scale too small for human hand to follow.

The pursuit and seizure of the generic differences in their concealment,
and the display of them on a larger and more palpable scale, is one of
the wholesome and healthy operations of the imagination of which we are
presently to speak.[37]

Generic differences being commonly exhibited by art in different manner
and way from that of their natural occurrence, are in this respect more
strictly and truly ideal in art than in reality.

Sec. 15. Ideality, how belonging to ages and conditions.

This only remains to be noted, that, of all creatures whose existence