Thus the principle of the highest ideal in art, as conceived by the Greeks, and unsurpassed in its purity and beauty, lay in considering well the characteristics which distinguish the _human_ form from the brute form; and then, in rendering the human form, the first aim was to soften down, or, if possible, throw out wholly, those characteristics which belong to the brute nature, or are common to the brute and the man; and the next, to bring into prominence and even enlarge the proportions of those manifestations of forms which distinguish humanity; till, at last, the _human_ merged into the _divine_, and the God in look, in limb, in feature, stood revealed.
Let us now suppose this broad principle which the Greeks applied to form, ethically carried out, and made the basis of all education—the training of men as a race. Suppose we started with the general axiom that all propensities which we have in common with the lower animals are to be kept subordinate, and so far as is consistent with the truth of nature refined away; and that all the qualities which elevate, all the aspirations which ally us with the spiritual, are to be cultivated and rendered more and more prominent, till at last the human being, in faculties as well as form, approaches the God-like—I only say—suppose?——
Again: it has been said of natural philosophy (Zoology) that in order to make any real progress in the science, as such, we must more and more disregard _differences_, and more and more attend to the obscured but essential conditions which are revealed in _resemblances_, in the constant and similar relations of primitive structure. Now if the same principle were carried out in theology, in morals, in art, as well as in science, should we not come nearer to the essential truth in _all_?
“There is an instinctive sense of propriety and reality in every mind; and it is not true, as some great authority has said, that in art we are satisfied with contemplating the work without thinking of the artist. On the contrary, the artist himself is one great object in the work. It is as embodying the energies and excellences of the human mind, as exhibiting the efforts of genius, as symbolising high feeling, that we most value the creations of art; without design the representations of art are merely fantastical, and without the thought of a design acting upon fixed principles in accordance with a high standard of goodness and truth, half the charm of design is lost.”