hended as a particular, but as a something that is common and universal. Seneca[1] explains this subtlety, according to Plato's views, in very elegant terms: "An idea," he says, "is an eternal copy of the things that have place in nature. I add an explanation of this definition, that the matter may be made plainer to you. I desire to take your portrait; I have you as the prototype of the picture, from which my mind takes a certain impression which it transfers to the canvass. The countenance, therefore, which teaches and directs me, and from which the imitation is sought, is the idea." A little farther on he proceeds: "I have but just made use of the image which a painter forms in his mind, by way of illustration. Now, if he would paint a likeness of Virgil, he forms an intuitive image of his subject: the idea is the face of Virgil, the type of his future work; and this which the artist conveys and transfers to his work is the resemblance or portrait. What difference is there? you ask: the one is the pattern or prototype, the other the form taken from the pattern and fixed in the work; the artist imitates the one, he creates the other. A statue has a certain expression of face; this is the Eidos, the species or representation; the prototype himself has a certain expression, which the statuary conceiving, transfers to his statue: this is the idea. Do you desire yet another illustration of the distinction? The Eidos is in the work; the idea without the work, and not only without the work, but it even existed before the work was begun." For the things that have formerly been noted, and that by use or wont have become firmly fixed in the mind of the artist, do, in fact, constitute art and the artistic faculty; art, indeed, is the reason of the work in the mind of the artist. On the same terms, therefore, as art is attained to, is all knowledge and science acquired; for as art is a habit with reference to things to be done, so is science a habit in respect of things
- ↑ Epist. 58.
