“Science deals exclusively with things as they are in
themselves; and art exclusively with things as they affect the human sense and
human soul. Her work is to portray the appearances of things, and to deepen the
natural impressions which they produce upon living creatures. The work of
science is to substitute facts for appearances, and demonstrations for impressions.
Both, observe, are equally concerned with truth; the one with truth of aspect,
the other with truth of essence. Art does not represent things falsely, but
truly as they appear to mankind. Science studies the relations of things to
each other: but art studies only their relations to man: and it requires of
everything which is submitted to it imperatively this, and only this,—what that
thing is to the human eyes and human heart, what it has to say to men, and what
it can become to them: a field of question just as much vaster than that of
science, as the soul is larger than the material creation.”—English art critic
and social commentator John Ruskin (1819-1900),
The Stones of Venice
(1853)
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