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102 light, it is also the most weak and imperfect. While it represents its objects less vividly than painting and sculpture, it does not address itself so impressively to sensation as song and music. But, not to speak of that many-sidedness which so especially characterizes poetry, we are ready to overlook this imperfection when we perceive that it is nearest to the true internal nature of man, since it clothes not only thought, but sensation, with the most delicate veil.

But to continue, the energizing sensuous impressions (for I only refer to the arts by way of illustrating these) act in different ways; this is partly owing to the fact that their progression is more rhythmically proportional, and partly that the elements of the impressions themselves, or their substance, as it were, more violently affects the soul. Thus it is that the human voice, of equal melodiousness and quality, affects us more powerfully than a lifeless instrument. For nothing is ever so near to us as the personal, physical feeling; and where this feeling is itself called into play, the effect produced is the greatest. But here, as always, the disproportionate power of the substance suppresses, as it were, the delicacy of the form; and there must always exist a just relation between these. Wherever there is such a misproportion, the proper equilibrium can be restored by increasing the power of the weaker, or diminishing that of the stronger element. But it is always wrong to effect anything by weakening or diminution, unless the power reduced be not natural, but artificial; only when this is the case should any limitation be imposed. It is better that it should destroy itself than slowly die away. But I may not dwell longer on this subject. I hope to have sufficiently elucidated my idea, although I would fain avow the embarrassment under which I necessarily labour in this inquiry; for, as the interesting nature of the subject, and the impossibility of borrowing from other writers just those results