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Index of the Project Gutenberg Works of John Ruskin

Chapter 161: Chapter XI.-General Inferences respecting Typical Beauty.
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About This Book

A compiled guide presenting an organized listing of the writer's major publications, each entry accompanied by tables of contents, chapter headings, and representative passages to aid navigation. Material ranges from polemical lectures and analytical essays on art and architecture—examining tone, color, chiaroscuro, space, sky, and vegetation—to poetical and shorter narrative pieces and instructional texts on drawing. Volumes and sections are grouped by title and number, offering readers a structural overview and selected extracts that illustrate key themes and methods across the corpus.

Chapter VIII.-Of Symmetry, or the Type of Divine Justice.

§  1. Symmetry, what and how found in organic nature. 72
§  2. How necessary in art. 72
§  3. To what its agreeableness is referable. Various instances. 73
§  4. Especially in religious art. 73

Chapter IX.-Of Purity, or the Type of Divine Energy.

§  1. The influence of light as a sacred symbol. 75
§  2. The idea of purity connected with it. 75
§  3. Originally derived from conditions of matter. 76
§  4. Associated ideas adding to the power of the impression. Influence of clearness. 76
§  5. Perfect beauty of surface, in what consisting. 77
§  6. Purity only metaphorically a type of sinlessness. 78
§  7. Energy, how expressed by purity of matter. 79
§  8. And of color. 79
§  9. Spirituality, how so expressed. 79

Chapter X.-Of Moderation, or the Type of Government by Law.

§  1. Meaning of the terms Chasteness and Refinement. 81
§  2. How referable to temporary fashions. 81
§  3. How to the perception of completion. 81
§  4. Finish, by great masters esteemed essential. 82
§  5. Moderation, its nature and value. 84
§  6. It is the girdle of beauty. 84
§  7. How found in natural curves and colors. 84
§  8. How difficult of attainment, yet essential to all good. 85

Chapter XI.-General Inferences respecting Typical Beauty.

§  1. The subject incompletely treated, yet admitting of general conclusions. 86
§  2. Typical beauty not created for man's sake. 87
§  3. But degrees of it for his sake admitted. 87
§  4. What encouragement hence to be received. 87

Chapter XII.-Of Vital Beauty:-First, as Relative.

§  1. Transition from typical to vital Beauty. 89
§  2. The perfection of the theoretic faculty as concerned with vital beauty, is charity. 90
§  3. Only with respect to plants, less affection than sympathy. 91
§  4. Which is proportioned to the appearance of energy in the plants. 92
§  5. This sympathy is unselfish, and does not regard utility. 93
§  6. Especially with respect to animals. 94
§  7. And it is destroyed by evidences of mechanism. 95
§  8. The second perfection of the theoretic faculty as concerned with life is justice of moral judgment. 96
§  9. How impeded. 97
§ 10. The influence of moral signs in expression. 97
§ 11. As also in plants. 99
§ 12. Recapitulation. 100

Chapter XIII.-Of Vital Beauty:-Secondly, as Generic.

§  1. The beauty of fulfilment of appointed function in every animal. 101
§  2. The two senses of the word "ideal." Either it refers to action of the imagination. 102
§  3. Or to perfection of type. 103
§  4. This last sense how inaccurate, yet to be retained. 103
§  5. Of Ideal form. First, in the lower animals. 104
§  6. In what consistent. 104
§  7. Ideal form in vegetables. 105
§  8. The difference of position between plants and animals. 105
§  9. Admits of variety in the ideal of the former. 106
§ 10. Ideal form in vegetables destroyed by cultivation. 107
§ 11. Instance in the Soldanella and Ranunculus. 108
§ 12. The beauty of repose and felicity, how consistent with such ideal. 108
§ 13. The ideality of Art. 109
§ 14. How connected with the imaginative faculties. 109
§ 15. Ideality, how belonging to ages and conditions. 110

Chapter XIV.-Of Vital Beauty:-Thirdly, in Man.

§  1. Condition of the human creature entirely different from that of the lower animals. 111
§  2. What room here for idealization. 111
§  3. How the conception of the bodily ideal is reached. 112
§  4. Modifications of the bodily ideal owing to influence of mind. First, of intellect. 113
§  5. Secondly, of the moral feelings. 113
§  6. What beauty is bestowed by them. 115
§  7. How the soul culture interferes harmfully with the bodily ideal. 115
§  8. The inconsistency among the effects of the mental virtues on the form. 116
§  9. Is a sign of God's kind purpose towards the race. 116
§ 10. Consequent separation and difference of ideals. 117
§ 11. The effects of the Adamite curse are to be distinguished from signs of its immediate activity. 118
§ 12. Which latter only are to be banished from ideal form. 118
§ 13. Ideal form is only to be obtained by portraiture. 119
§ 14. Instances among the greater of the ideal Masters. 119
§ 15. Evil results of opposite practice in modern times. 120
§ 16. The right use of the model. 121
§ 17. Ideal form to be reached only by love. 121
§ 18. Practical principles deducible. 122
§ 19. Expressions chiefly destructive of ideal character. 1st, Pride. 122
§ 20. Portraiture ancient and modern. 123
§ 21. Secondly, Sensuality. 123
§ 22. How connected with impurity of color. 124
§ 23. And prevented by its splendor. 124
§ 24. Or by severity of drawing. 125
§ 25. Degrees of descent in this respect: Rubens, Correggio, and Guido. 125
§ 26. And modern art. 126
§ 27. Thirdly, ferocity and fear. The latter how to be distinguished from awe. 126
§ 28. Holy fear, how distinct from human terror. 127
§ 29. Ferocity is joined always with fear. Its unpardonableness. 127
§ 30. Such expressions how sought by painters powerless and impious. 128
§ 31. Of passion generally. 129
§ 32. It is never to be for itself exhibited—at least on the face. 130
§ 33. Recapitulation. 131

Chapter XV.-General Conclusions respecting the Theoretic Faculty.

§  1. There are no sources of the emotion of beauty more than those found in things visible. 133
§  2. What imperfection exists in visible things. How in a sort by imagination removable. 134
§  3. Which however affects not our present conclusions. 134
§  4. The four sources from which the pleasure of beauty is derived are all divine. 134
§  5. What objections may be made to this conclusion. 135
§  6. Typical beauty may be æsthetically pursued. Instances. 135
§  7. How interrupted by false feeling. 136
§  8. Greatness and truth are sometimes by the Deity sustained and spoken in and through evil men. 137
§  9. The second objection arising from the coldness of Christian men to external beauty. 138
§ 10. Reasons for this coldness in the anxieties of the world. These anxieties overwrought and criminal. 139
§ 11. Evil consequences of such coldness. 140
§ 12. Theoria the service of Heaven. 140

SECTION II.

OF THE IMAGINATIVE FACULTY.

Chapter I.-Of the Three Forms of Imagination.

§  1. A partial examination only of the imagination is to be attempted. 142
§  2. The works of the metaphysicians how nugatory with respect to this faculty. 143
§  3. The definition of D. Stewart, how inadequate. 143
§  4. This instance nugatory. 144
§  5. Various instances. 145
§  6. The three operations of the imagination. Penetrative, associative, contemplative. 146

Chapter II.-Of Imagination Associative.

§  1. Of simple conception. 147
§  2. How connected with verbal knowledge. 148
§  3. How used in composition. 148
§  4. Characteristics of composition. 149
§  5. What powers are implied by it. The first of the three functions of fancy. 150
§  6. Imagination not yet manifested. 150
§  7. Imagination is the correlative conception of imperfect component parts. 151
§  8. Material analogy with imagination. 151
§  9. The grasp and dignity of imagination. 152
§ 10. Its limits. 153
§ 11. How manifested in treatment of uncertain relations. Its deficiency illustrated. 154
§ 12. Laws of art, the safeguard of the unimaginative. 155
§ 13. Are by the imaginative painter despised. Tests of imagination. 155
§ 14. The monotony of unimaginative treatment. 156
§ 15. Imagination never repeats itself. 157
§ 16. Relation of the imaginative faculty to the theoretic. 157
§ 17. Modification of its manifestation. 158
§ 18. Instances of absence of imagination.—Claude, Gaspar Poussin. 158
§ 19. Its presence.—Salvator, Nicolo Poussin, Titian, Tintoret. 159
§ 20. And Turner. 160
§ 21. The due function of Associative imagination with respect to nature. 161
§ 22. The sign of imaginative work is its appearance of absolute truth. 161

Chapter III.-Of Imagination Penetrative.

§  1. Imagination penetrative is concerned not with the combining but apprehending of things. 163
§  2. Milton's and Dante's description of flame. 163
§  3. The imagination seizes always by the innermost point. 164
§  4. It acts intuitively and without reasoning. 165
§  5. Signs of it in language. 165
§  6. Absence of imagination, how shown. 166
§  7. Distinction between imagination and fancy. 166
§  8. Fancy how involved with imagination. 168
§  9. Fancy is never serious. 169
§ 10. Want of seriousness the bar to high art at the present time. 169
§ 11. Imagination is quiet; fancy, restless. 170
§ 12. The detailing operation of fancy. 170
§ 13. And suggestive, of the imagination. 171
§ 14. This suggestiveness how opposed to vacancy. 172
§ 15. Imagination addresses itself to imagination. 173
     Instances from the works of Tintoret. 173
§ 16. The entombment. 174
§ 17. The Annunciation. 174
§ 18. The Baptism of Christ. Its treatment by various painters. 176
§ 19. By Tintoret. 177
§ 20. The Crucifixion. 178
§ 21. The Massacre of innocents. 179
§ 22. Various works in the Scuola di San Rocco. 181
§ 23. The Last Judgment. How treated by various painters. 181
§ 24. By Tintoret. 182
§ 25. The imaginative verity, how distinguished from realism. 183
§ 26. The imagination how manifested in sculpture. 184
§ 27. Bandinelli, Canova, Mino da Fiesole. 184
§ 28. Michael Angelo. 185
§ 29. Recapitulation. The perfect function of the imagination is the intuitive perception of ultimate truth. 188
§ 30. Imagination how vulgarly understood. 190
§ 31. How its cultivation is dependent on the moral feelings. 190
§ 32. On independence of mind. 191
§ 33. And on habitual reference to nature. 191

Chapter IV.-Of Imagination Contemplative.

§  1. Imagination contemplative is not part of the essence, but only a habit or mode of the faculty. 192
§  2. The ambiguity of conception. 192
§  3. Is not in itself capable of adding to the charm of fair things. 193
§  4. But gives to the imagination its regardant power over them. 194
§  5. The third office of fancy distinguished from imagination contemplative. 195
§  6. Various instances. 197
§  7. Morbid or nervous fancy. 200
§  8. The action of contemplative imagination is not to be expressed by art. 201
§  9. Except under narrow limits.—1st. Abstract rendering of form without color. 201
§ 10. Of color without form. 202
§ 11. Or of both without texture. 202
§ 12. Abstraction or typical representation of animal form. 203
§ 13. Either when it is symbolically used. 204
§ 14. Or in architectural decoration. 205
§ 15. Exception in delicate and superimposed ornament. 206
§ 16. Abstraction necessary from imperfection of materials. 206
§ 17. Abstractions of things capable of varied accident are not imaginative. 207
§ 18. Yet sometimes valuable. 207
§ 19. Exaggeration. Its laws and limits. First, in scale of representation. 208
§ 20. Secondly, of things capable of variety of scale. 209
§ 21. Thirdly, necessary in expression of characteristic features on diminished scale. 210
§ 22. Recapitulation. 211