Experience is all in all; but it is not every one who profits by
experience; and most people err, not so much from want of capacity to
find their object, as from not knowing what object to pursue. This great
ideal perfection and beauty are not to be sought in the heavens, but upon
the earth. They are about us, and upon every side of us. But the power
of discovering what is deformed in nature, or in other words, what is
particular and uncommon, can be acquired only by experience; and the
whole beauty and grandeur of the art consists, in my opinion, in being
able to get above all singular forms, local customs, particularities, and
details of every kind.

All the objects which are exhibited to our view by nature, upon close
examination will be found to have their blemishes and defects. The most
beautiful forms have something about them like weakness, minuteness, or
imperfection. But it is not every eye that perceives these blemishes. It
must be an eye long used to the contemplation and comparison of these
forms; and which, by a long habit of observing what any set of objects of
the same kind have in common, that alone can acquire the power of
discerning what each wants in particular. This long laborious comparison
should be the first study of the painter who aims at the greatest style.
By this means, he acquires a just idea of beautiful forms; he corrects
nature by herself, her imperfect state by her more perfect. His eye
being enabled to distinguish the accidental deficiencies, excrescences,
and deformities of things from their general figures, he makes out an
abstract idea of their forms more perfect than any one original; and what
may seem a paradox, he learns to design naturally by drawing his figures
unlike to any one object. This idea of the perfect state of nature,
which the artist calls the ideal beauty, is the great leading principle
by which works of genius are conducted. By this Phidias acquired his
fame. He wrought upon a sober principle what has so much excited the