What has reasoning to do with the art of painting?’
Characteristic opinions are the following:—
‘Knowledge of ideal beauty is not to be acquired. It is born with us. Innate ideas are in every man, born with him ; they are truly himself. The man who says that we have no innate ideas must be a fool and knave ; having no conscience, or
innate science.’ And yet it is a question metaphysicians have been discussing since metaphysics began.
Again: ‘One central form composed of all other forms being granted, it does not therefore follow that all other forms are deformity. All forms are perfect in the poet's mind : but these are not abstracted or compounded from nature; they are from imagination.’