ourselves. Indeed, we learn wisdom, not only from the lucubrations of
the serene and calm, or from Hamlet, magnificent in thought, acute and
playful, but also from Hamlet in his mortal struggles, in his deep
questionings, and his melancholy.

For wisdom "dwells not in the light alone
But in the darkness and the cloud."




IV.



AN IMPOSSIBLE PHILOSOPHY.


Philosophers talk of a philosophy of art, ancient and modern. But this
is unnecessary. Art is always art, or never art, as the case may be;
whether it is art in the days of Pheidias and Praxitiles, of Rafael,
or of Turner, or whether it is not art as in the days of its
degeneration in Greece and Italy. The outward expression of course,
changes, but it changes through individual and national aptitudes, not
from Chronology. That indispensable and indescribable thing which is
of the essence of art, is the same in all times and countries; for art
is ever young, there is no old, no new, and here is its essential
difference from science. In its essence, art is neither ancient or
modern, because it is incapable of progress, it is the expression of
an illimitable idea. We find before the Christian Era more beautiful