Now, how should he who
stands in no other relation to Nature than that of servile imitation,
distinguish the one from the other? It is the way of imitators to
appropriate the faults of their model sooner and easier than its
excellences, since the former offer handles and tokens more easily
grasped; and thus we see that imitators of Nature in this sense have
imitated oftener, and even more affectionately, the ugly than the
beautiful.
If we regard in things, not their principle, but the empty abstract
form, neither will they say anything to our soul; our own heart, our
own spirit we must put to it, that they answer us.
But what is the perfection of a thing? Nothing else than the creative
life in it, its power to exist. Never, therefore, will he, who fancies
that Nature is altogether dead, be successful in that profound process
(analogous to the chemical) whence proceeds, purified as by fire, the
pure gold of Beauty and Truth.
Nor was there any change in the main view of the relation of Art to
Nature, even when the unsatisfactoriness of the principle began to
be more generally felt; no change, even by the new views and new
knowledge so nobly established by John Winckelmann. He indeed restored
to the soul its full efficiency in Art, and raised it from its
unworthy dependence into the realm of spiritual freedom. Powerfully
moved by the beauty of form in the works of antiquity, he taught that
the production of ideal Nature, of Nature elevated above the Actual,
together with the expression of spiritual conceptions, is the highest
aim of Art.
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