314 THE WORLD AS IDEA. bk. iii.
combines them. For the Idea can only be known by perception; and knowledge of the Idea is the end of art. The skill of a master, in poetry as in chemistry, enables us always to obtain the precise precipitate we intended. This end is assisted by the numerous epithets in poetry, by means of which the universality of every concept is narrowed more and more till we reach the perceptible. Homer attaches to almost every substantive an adjective, whose concept intersects and considerably diminishes the sphere of the concept of the substantive, which is thus brought so much the nearer to perception: for example —
"(
Greek characters)"
("Occictit vero in Oceanum splendidum lumen solis, Trahens noctem nigram super almam terram.")
And —
"Where gentle winds from the blue heavens sigh, There stand the myrtles still, the laurel high," —
calls up before the imagination by means of a few concepts the whole delight of a southern clime.
Rhythm and rhyme are quite peculiar aids to poetry. I can give no other explanation of their incredibly powerful effect than that our faculties of perception have received from time, to which they are essentially bound, some quality on account of which we inwardly follow, and, as it were, consent to each regularly recurring sound. In this way rhythm and rhyme are partly a means of holding our attention, because we willingly follow the poem read, and partly they produce in us a blind consent to what is read prior to any judgment, and tins gives the poem a certain emphatic power of convincing independent of all reasons.
From the general nature of the material, that is, the concepts, which poetry uses to communicate the Ideas, the extent of its province is very great. The whole of
