For wisdom “dwells not in the light alone
    But in the darkness and the cloud.”

IV.

AN IMPOSSIBLE PHILOSOPHY.

Philosophers talk of a philosophy of art, ancient and modern.  But this is unnecessary.  Art is always art, or never art, as the case may be; whether it is art in the days of Pheidias and Praxitiles, of Rafael, or of Turner, or whether it is not art as in the days of its degeneration in Greece and Italy.  The outward expression of course, changes, but it changes through individual and national aptitudes, not from Chronology.  That indispensable and indescribable thing which is of the essence of art, is the same in all times and countries; for art is ever young, there is no old, no new, and here is its essential difference from science.  In its essence, art is neither ancient or modern, because it is incapable of progress, it is the expression of an illimitable idea.  We find before the Christian Era more beautiful sculpture than after it.  “Ah!” Victor Hugo says in his “William Shakespeare,” “You call yourself Dante, well!  But that one calls himself Homer.  The beauty of art consists in not being susceptible of improvement.  A chef d’oeuvre exists once and for ever.  The first Poet who arrives, arrives at the summit.  From Pheidias to Rembrandt there is no onward movement.  A Savant may out-lustre a Savant, a Poet never throws a Poet into the shade.  Hippocrates is outrun, Archimides, Paracelsus, Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, La Place, Pindar not; Pheidias not.  Pascal, the Savant, is out-run, Pascal, the Writer, not.  There is movement in art, but not progress.  The Frescoes of the Sistine Chapel are absolutely nothing to the Metopes of the Parthenon.  Retrace your steps as much as you like from the Palace of Versailles to the Castle of Heidelberg.  From the Castle of Heidelberg to the Notre Dame of Paris.  From the Notre Dame to the Alhambra.  From the Alhambra to St. Sophia.  From St. Sophia to the Coliseum.  From the Coliseum to the Propyleans.  You may recede with ages, you do not recede in art.  The Pyramids and the Iliad stand on a fore plan.  Masterpieces have the same level—­the Absolute.  Once the Absolute is reached, all is reached.”  And Schopenhauer says, “Only true works of art have eternal youth and enduring power like nature and life themselves.  For they belong to no age, but to humanity—­they cannot grow old, but appear to us ever fresh and new, down to the latest ages.”  Let us disclaim then any such word as Modern in relation to art, particularly in relation to a philosophy which has to do with the principle and essence of art.  Is a Philosophy of Art possible?  There must be some who will think it is impossible.  Have we a philosophy that explains such an apparently simple thing as how one knows anything—­or of simple consciousness?  Every philosopher that has attempted to explain consciousness or how we know, takes refuge