The Philosophy of Fine Art, volume 4 (of 4)

ability to display facts in their historical succession or natural process. Far profounder and more extended embrace of world of idea than in music; due to its greater power of definition in speech and its use of tone merely as a subordinate instrument. The content of poetry is the ideal envisagement of imaginative content itself. Everything made intelligible by language may form part of content, subject to the condition that it is poetical. Analysis of what this condition implies. The imagination of artist must be Contributive; distinction from mere prose consciousness and thinking. In its entire independence of the material of sense it may be defined as the universal art. The material is the imagination, and as such conjoint with all the arts. It is, however, not the only art open to philosophical review on this ground. It marks, however, the commencement of the disintegration of Art, its bridge of passage to the notion of religion and philosophical thought] Subdivision of subject-matter I. Poetical composition as distinguished from that of Prose 1. The poetical and prosaic composition (_a_) The world of natural or prosaic fact relatively excluded.…