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Lectures on Art by Washington Allston
page 89 of 189 (47%)
becomes no unimportant indicator as to the particular offices for
which the thing named was designed. So we find it with respect to the
Truth of which we speak; its distinctive epithet marking out to us, as
its sphere of action, the mysterious intercourse between man and man;
whether the medium consist in words or colors, in thought or form, or
in any thing else on which the human agent may impress, be it in a
sign only, his own marvellous life. As to the process or _modus
operandi_, it were a vain endeavour to seek it out: that divine
secret must ever to man be an humbling darkness. It is enough for him
to know that there is that within him which is ever answering to that
without, as life to life,--which must be life, and which must be true.

We proceed now to the third characteristic. It has already been
stated, in the general definition, what we would be understood to mean
by the term Invention, in its particular relation to Art; namely, any
unpractised mode of presenting a subject, whether by the combination
of forms already known, or by the union and modification of known
but fragmentary parts into a new and consistent whole: in both cases
tested by the two preceding characteristics.

We shall consider first that division of the subject which stands first
in order,--the Invention which consists in the new combination of known
forms. This may be said to be governed by its exclusive relation either
to _what is_, or _has been_, or, when limited by the _probable_, to what
strictly may be. It may therefore be distinguished by the term Natural.
But though we so name it, inasmuch as all its forms have their
prototypes in the Actual, it must still be remembered that these
existing forms do substantially constitute no more than mere _parts_ to
be combined into a _whole_, for which Nature has provided no original.
For examples in this, the most comprehensive class, we need not refer
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