field of vision than the organic laws come into that of the beast, and yet he cannot round off and complete any of his images without going back to them.  Why then should nature not do for him what she does for the beast?  You will, however, find in general—­to go still deeper—­that the processes of life have nothing to do with consciousness, and artistic generation is the highest of all processes; they differ from the logical precisely in that they absolutely cannot be traced back to definite factors.  Who has ever closely watched evolution in any of its phases, and what has the impregnation theory of physiology, in spite of the microscopic detailed description of the working apparatus, done for the solution of the fundamental mystery?  Can it explain even a humpback?  On the other hand, there can be no complex which it would not be possible to follow up in all its involutions and finally to resolve.  The structure of the universe is revealed to us, we can, if we like, play the fiddle for the dance of the heavenly bodies; but the sprouting blade of grass is a riddle and will always remain one.  You would therefore be perfectly right in laughing at Newton if he wanted to “play the naive child” and declare that the falling apple had inspired him with the idea of the system of gravitation, whereas it may very well have given him the impetus which started him to reflect upon the subject.  On the other hand, you would wrong Dante if you should doubt that Heaven and Hell had arisen in colossal outline before his soul at the mere sight of a wood, half in light and half in shadow.  For systems are not dreamed, but neither are works of art made by minute calculations, nor, what amounts to the same thing, since thinking is only a higher kind of arithmetic, thought out.  The artistic imagination is the organ which drains those depths of the world which are inaccessible to the other faculties, and in accordance herewith, my mode of viewing things puts, in place of the false realism which takes the part for the whole, only the true realism, which also comprises what does not lie on the surface.  For the rest, this false realism is not curtailed thereby, for even though one can no more prepare oneself for writing poetry than for dreaming, yet dreams will always reflect daily and yearly impressions, and no less do poems reflect the sympathies and antipathies of the author.  I believe all these propositions are simple and comprehensible.  Whoever refuses to recognize them must throw the half of literature overboard, for example Edipus at Colonus (for geography knows nothing of sacred groves), Shakespeare’s Tempest (for there is no such thing as magic), Hamlet and Macbeth (for only a fool is afraid of ghosts, etc.); nay he must also—­and this even he who might be ready to make the other sacrifices would find it hard to bring himself to do—­he must also place the French at the head of what remains; for where can one find realists like Voltaire, etc.?  This, to me, seems to demonstrate my proposition, at least the counter-test is made.