But those of the race who follow
after, scorn what those before them have admired, and exactly what
those of one time have prized as progressive innovations, they who
come after reject as mere aberration. What the artist has himself
accomplished, I mean his so-called personal comprehension or his
capricious interpretation of nature, passes away; but what he simply
and honorably reproduces, as he has truly seen it, lives forever,
and the remotest age will gladly recognize in such art-work its old
acquaintance, unchanging nature."
Fraulein Ellrich hung on his words in astonishment, while her
parents calmly went on eating their fish.
"So," went on Wilhelm, speaking chiefly to his opposite neighbor,
"so, I tried when I drew or painted to reproduce nature with the
greatest truth; but at a certain point I became conscious of a
perception that a hidden meaning in an unintelligible language lay
written there. The form of things, and also every so-called accident
of form, appeared to me to be the necessary expression of something
within, which was hidden from me. The wish arose in me to penetrate
behind the visible face of nature, to know why she appears in such a
way, and not in another. I wanted to learn the language, the words
of which, with no understanding of their sense, I had been slavishly
copying; and so I turned to the study of physical science.
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