24 ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM. ,

realistic art is or has anywhere been the ideal of men whose
lives have been lived-—as in Egypt, India, Persia or
Mediaeval Europe—in the real intimacy of nature herself.
The imitation of nature, indeed, has been seen by all true
artists and philosophers to be both impossible and unneces-
sary. " For why," as Deussen says, " should the artist wish
to imitate laboriously and inadequately what nature offers
everywhere in unattainable profusion ? " viz., individual,
and in so far, limited, manifestations of Ideas ?

In the realm of nature we see the thousandfold
repeated reflections of Ideas, in these individual manifesta-
tions. It is for the artist, by yoga, that is by self-
identification with the soul of such reflections, fully to
understand them and explain their inner significance.
." Guided by an insight into the nature of things which
fathoms deeper than all abstract knowledge, he is able to
understand the c half uttered words of nature/ to infer
from what she forms that which she intends to form, to
anticipate from the direction she takes the end she is un-
able to reach." But it is further possible, by imagination,
the first and essential quality of genius, to apprehend Ideas
which, though subsisting in the cosmic consciousness, have
not yet assumed, and may never assume, a physically visible
form. Such are the forms of gods or nature spirits, and
flowers or animals or scenes in i other worlds'; personifica-
tions of abstract qualities and natural forces, and by no
means least, the imagined forms of legendary heroes, in
which the race-idea finds its most complete expression. This
race expression is most perfect when, as is so often the case,
.hero and god are one.

It is for the artist to portray the ideal world of true
ireality, the world of imagination, and not the phetiomena
fworld perceived by the senses.