"Nature," as Leonardo says, "is the mistress of the higher
intelligences"; and Goethe, in his most oracular utterances, recalls
us to the same truth. What imagination does, and what the personal
vision of the individual artist does, is to deal successfully and
masterfully with this "given," this basic element. And this basic
element, this permanent common ground, this universal human
assumption, is just precisely what, in popular language, we call
"Nature"; that substratum of objective reality in the appearances of
things, which makes it possible for diversely constructed temperaments
to make their differences effective and intelligible.
There could be no recognizable differences, no conversation, in fact,
if, in the impossible hypothesis of the absence of any such common
language, we all shouted at one another "in vacuo" and out of pure
darkness. It is from their refusal to recognize the necessity for
something at least relatively objective in what the individual
imagination works upon, that certain among modern artists, if not
among modern poets, bewilder and puzzle us. They have a right to make
endless experiments--every original mind has that--but they cannot let
go their hold on some sort of objective solidity without becoming
inarticulate, without giving vent to such unrelated and incoherent
cries as overtake one in the corridors of Bedlam.
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