" And so on.
From this comes the illusion that the artist _imitates nature_; when it
would perhaps be more exact to say that nature imitates the artist, and
obeys him. The theory that _art imitates nature_ has sometimes been
grounded upon and found sustenance in this illusion, as also its
variant, more easily to be defended, which makes art the _idealizer of
nature_. This last theory presents the process in a disorderly manner,
indeed inversely to the true order; for the artist does not proceed from
extrinsic reality, in order to modify it by approaching it to the ideal;
but he proceeds from the impression of external nature to expression,
that is to say, to his ideal, and from this he passes to the natural
fact, which he employs as the instrument of reproduction of the ideal
fact.
[Sidenote] _Critique of the theory of the elementary forms of the
beautiful._
Another consequence of the confusion between the aesthetic and the
physical fact is the theory of the _elementary forms of the beautiful_.
If expression, if the beautiful, be indivisible, the physical fact, in
which it externalizes itself, can well be divided and subdivided; for
example, a painted surface, into lines and colours, groups and curves of
lines, kinds of colours, and so on; a poem, into strophes, verses, feet,
syllables; a piece of prose, into chapters, paragraphs, headings,
periods, phrases, words, and so on.
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