Page:Three Lectures on Aesthetic (1915).djvu/65

50 though it was made of gold; that was a very miracle of his craft.”

Now what was the miracle here, that made Homer cry out at it with delight? It was not, surely, that when you have one bit of ploughed land you can make another like it. That goes on all day when a man ploughs a field. Or what made Dante say of the sculptures on the marble of Purgatory, that one who saw the reality would see no better than he did, and that the representation of some smoke set his eyes and nose at variance as to whether it was real?

Surely the miracle lies in what Homer accents when he says, “Though it was made of gold.” It lies here; that without the heavy matter and whole natural process of the reality, man’s mind possesses a magic by which it can extract the soul of the actual thing or event, and confer it on any medium which is convenient to him, the wall of a cave, or a plate of gold, or a scrap of paper. And when these great poets insist on the likeness of the imitation,