Lectures on Art by Washington Allston
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page 20 of 189 (10%)
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speak of was created, as well as conveyed, by the instrument. The
violin of Paganini may still be seen and handled; but the soul that inspired it is buried with its master. If we admit a distinction between mind and matter, and the result we speak of be purely mental, we should contradict the universal law of nature to assign such a product to mere matter, inasmuch as the natural law forbids in the lower the production of the higher. Take an example from one of the lower forms of organic life,--a common vegetable. Will any one assert that the surrounding inorganic elements of air, earth, heat, and water produce its peculiar form? Though some, or all, of these may be essential to its developement, they are so only as its predetermined correlatives, without which its existence could not be manifested; and in like manner must the peculiar form of the vegetable preƫxist in its life,--in its _idea_,--in order to evolve by these assimilants its own proper organism. No possible modification in the degrees or proportion of these elements can change the specific form of a plant,--for instance, a cabbage into a cauliflower; it must ever remain a cabbage, _small or large, good or bad. _ So, too, is the external world to the mind; which needs, also, as the condition of its manifestation, its objective correlative. Hence the presence of some outward object, predetermined to correspond to the preƫxisting idea in its living power, is essential to the evolution of its proper end,--the pleasurable emotion. We beg it may be noted that we do not say _sensation_. And hence we hold ourself justified in speaking of such presence as simply the occasion, or condition, and not, _per se_, the cause. And hence, moreover, may be inferred the absolute necessity of Dual Forces in order to the actual existence of any |
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