n and
bodily suffering, to no farther extent than that which allowed Beauty to
be completely preserved. [Sidenote: And all Design must do the same,
because] Now, that this subordination of Expression to Beauty is a
fundamental principle of art, and not a mere accidental quality of
Grecian art individually, is proved by considering the peculiar
constitution and mechanical necessities of art. Its representations are
confined to a single instant of time; and that one circumstance imposes
on it two limitations, which necessarily produce the characteristic
quality of the Grecian works. [Sidenote: 1. the expression must be
caught before the highest passion is attaind;] First, "the expression
must never be selected from what may be called the _acme_ or
transcendent point of the action;" and that because, the power of the
arts of design being confined to the arresting of a single point in the
developement of an action, it is indispensable that they should select a
point which is in the highest degree significant, and most fully excites
the imagination; a condition [83:2]which is fulfilled only by those
points in an action in which the action moves onward, and the passion
which prompts it increases; and which is not fulfilled in any degree by
the highest stage of the passion and the completion of the action.
[Sidenote: 2. because the expression must not be that of a momentary
feeling.] [Sidenote: But Poetry is not bound by the limits of the Fine
Arts.] [Sidenote: It can seize passion at its height.] Secondly, a
limitation is imposed as to the choice of the proper point in the onward
progress of the action: for art invests with a motionless and unchanging
permanence the point of action which it selects; and consequently any
appearance which essentially possesses the character of suddenness and
evanescence is unfit to be its subject, since the mind cannot readily
conceive such transitory appearances as stiffened into that monumental
stability.--Since it is by the limitation of the Fine Arts to the
representation of a single