it elevates the mind by making its feelings the object of its reflection.

So likewise, while it recalls the sights and sounds that had

accompanied the occasions of the original passions, poetry impregnates

them with an interest not their own by means of the passions, and yet

tempers the passion by the calming power which all distinct images

exert on the human soul. In this way poetry is the preparation for art,

inasmuch as it avails itself of the forms of nature to recall, to express,

and to modify the thoughts and feelings of the mind.

Still, however, poetry can only act through the intervention of

articulate speech, which is so peculiarly human that in all languages it

constitutes the ordinary phrase by which man and nature are

contradistinguished. It is the original force of the word "brute," and

even "mute" and "dumb" do not convey the absence of sound, but the

absence of articulated sounds.

As soon as the human mind is intelligibly addressed by an outward

image exclusively of articulate speech, so soon does art commence. But

please to observe that I have laid particular stress on the words "human

mind" - meaning to exclude thereby all results common to man and all

other sentient creatures, and consequently confining myself to the effect

produced by the congruity of the animal impression with the reflective

powers of the mind; so that not the thing presented, but that which is

re-presented by the thing, shall be the source of the pleasure. In this

sense nature itself is to a religious observer the art of God; and for the

same cause art itself might be defined as of a middle quality between a

thought and a thing, or as I said before, the union and reconciliation of

that which is nature with that which is exclusively human. It is the

figured language of thought, and is distinguished from nature by the

unity of all the parts in one thought or idea. Hence nature itself would

give us the impression of a work of art, if we could see the thought

which is present at once in the whole and in every part; and a work of

art will be just in proportion as it adequately conveys the thought, and

rich in proportion to the variety of parts which it holds in unity.