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Lectures on Art by Washington Allston
page 105 of 189 (55%)
of experience? We have already shown (as we think) that no _unmodified
copy_ of actual objects, whether single or multifarious, ever satisfies
the imagination,--which imperatively demands a something more, or at least
different. And yet we often find that the very objects from which these
copies are made _do_ satisfy us. How and why is this? A question more
easily put than answered. We may suggest, however, what appears to us a
clew, that in abler hands may possibly lead to its solution; namely, the
fact, that, among the innumerable emotions of a pleasurable kind derived
from the actual, there is not one, perhaps, which is strictly confined to
the objects before us, and which we do not, either directly or indirectly,
refer to something beyond and not present. Now have we at all times a
distinct consciousness of the things referred to? Are they not rather more
often vague, and only indicated in some _undefined_ feeling? Nay, is its
source more intelligible where the feeling is more definite, when taking
the form of a sense of harmony, as from something that diffuses, yet
deepens, unbroken in its progress through endless variations, the melody
as it were of the pleasurable object? Who has never felt, under certain
circumstances, an expansion of the heart, an elevation of mind, nay, a
striving of the whole being to pass its limited bounds, for which he could
find no adequate solution in the objects around him,--the apparent cause?
Or who can account for every mood that thralls him,--at times like one
entranced in a dream by airs from Paradise,--at other times steeped in
darkness, when the spirit of discord seems to marshal his every thought,
one against another?

Whether it be that the Living Principle, which permeates all things
throughout the physical world, cannot be touched in a single point
without conducting to its centre, its source, and confluence, thus
giving by a part, though obscurely and indefinitely, a sense of the
whole,--we know not. But this we may venture to assert, and on no
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