Manner
But man finds, usually, such a mode of proceeding too timid and inadequate. He perceives a harmony among many objects, which can only be brought into a picture by sacrificing the individual. He gets tired of using Nature’s letters each time to spell after her. He invents a way, devises a language for himself, so as to express in his own fashion the idea his soul has attained, and give to the object he has so many times repeated a distinctive form, without having recourse to nature itself each time he repeats it, or even without recalling exactly the individual form.
Thus a language is created, in which the mind of the speaker expresses and utters itself immediately; and as in each individual who thinks, the conceptions of spiritual objects are formed and arranged differently, so will every artist of this class see, understand, and imitate the outward world in a different manner, will seize its phenomena with a more or less observant eye, and reproduce them more accurately or loosely.
We see that this species of imitation is applied with the best effect in cases where a great whole comprehends many subordinate objects. These last must be sacrificed in order to attain the general expression of the whole, as is the case in landscapes, for instance, where the aim would be missed if we attended too closely to the details, instead of keeping in view the idea of the whole.