set
together, and so the ideal of the features, as the good and perfect soul
is seen in them, is not to be reached by imagination, but by the seeing
and reaching forth of the better part of the soul to that of which it
must first know the sweetness and goodness in itself, before it can much
desire, or rightly find, the signs of it in others.

I say much desire and rightly find, because there is not any soul so
sunk but that it shall in some measure feel the impression of mental
beauty in the human features, and detest in others its own likeness, and
in itself despise that which of itself it has made.

Sec. 3. How the conception of the bodily ideal is reached.

Now, of the ordinary process by which the realization of ideal bodily
form is reached, there is explanation enough in all treatises on art,
and it is so far well comprehended that I need not stay long to consider
it. So far as the sight and knowledge of the human form, of the purest
race, exercised from infancy constantly, but not excessively in all
exercises of dignity, not in twists and straining dexterities, but in
natural exercises of running, casting, or riding; practised in
endurance, not of extraordinary hardship, for that hardens and degrades
the body, but of natural hardship, vicissitudes of winter and summer,
and cold and heat, yet in a climate where none of these are severe;
surrounded also by a certain degree of right luxury, so as to soften and
refine the forms of strength; so far as the sight of all this could
render the mental intelligence of what is right in human form so acute
as to be able to abstract and combine from the best examples so
produced, that which was most perfect in each, so far the Greek
conceived and attained the ideal of bodily form: and on the Greek modes
of attaining it, as well as on what he produced, as a perfect example of
it, chiefly dwell those writers whose opinions on this subject I have
collected; wholly losing sight of what seems to me the most important
branch of the inquiry, namely, the influence for good or evil of the
mind upon the bodily shape, the wreck of the mind itself, and the modes
by which we may conceive of its restoration.

Sec. 4. Modifications of the bodily ideal owing to influence of mind.
First, of intellect.

Now, the operation of the mind upon the body, and evidence of it
thereon, may be considered under the following three general heads.

First, the operation of the intellectual pow