The common statement that all knowledge comes from sense experience is neither true nor false; it is symply muddled. The senses are organs of the mind, therefore all knowledge comes from mental experience. mental experience is a union of a perceiving subject and a perceived object; it is something in which the barrier between "inside" and "outside" dissolves. But the power to unite comes from the subject. The work of art is the product of this creative perception, hece it is not an escape from reality but a systematic training in comprehending it. It is difficult to see things that move quickly an are far away: in the world of times and space, therefore, all thigs are more or less blurred. Art sees its images as permanent living forms outside time and space. This is the only way in which we can stabilize the world of experience ad still retain all its reality: |  | All that we See is Vision, from Generated Organs gone as soons as come, Permanent in The Imagination, Consider'd as Nothing by the Natural Man. |  | To Plato, whose Muses were daughters of Memory, knowledge was recollection and art imitation: to Blake, both knowledge and art are recreation. |  | ... |  | Christ brought o new doctrines: he brought new stories. he did not save souls; he saved bodies, healing the blind and deaf that they might hear his parables and see his imagery. he stands outside the history of deneral thought; he stands in the center of individual wisdom. |  | ... |  | A Poet, a Painter, a Musician, an Architect: the Man or Woman who is not one of these is not a Christian. |  | You must leave Fathers & Mothers and Houses & Lands if they stand in the way of Art. |  | Prayer is the Study of Art. |  | Fasting &c., all relate to Art. |  | The outward Ceremony is Antichrist. |  | ... |  | Inspiration is the artist's empirical proof of the divinity of his imagination; and all inspiration is divine in origin, whether used, perverted, hidden or frittered away in reverie. All imaginative and creative acts, being eternal, go to build up a permanent structure... |  |  | ... |  | Here again is precisely the same dichotomy which we have met so often already, between subjective and objective separations of subject and object. The antitheses between the navel-gazer and the atomist in thought, the hermit and antinomian in religion, the victim and tyrant in society, correspond in art to that of the sublime and the beautiful. It i sall too consistent with Lockian reasoning to make works of art, which are concrete things, fit a general classification of qualities, and to make genius subservient to aspects and trends. Duality of this kind is a cautious and dubious derogation of art; it establishes a dogmatic axiom that there is no such thing as positive perfection, no absolutely great genius, no possibility of real inspiration or fully integrated vision. Because Michelangelo and Raphael had great minds, Reynolds must say that they neglected the smaller beauties of art; because Milton had a great mind, Johnson must say that his genius could not carve cherry-stones and therefore produced bad sonnets. |  | ... |  | I have heard many People say, "Give me the Ideas. It is no matter what Words you put them into," & others say, "Give me the Design, it is no matter for the Execution," These people know Enough of Artifice, but Nothing of Art. Ideas cannot be Given but in their minutely Appropriate Words, nor Can a Design be made without its minutely Appropriate Execution.... Execution is only the result of Invention |  | ... |  | Without Unceasing Practise nothing can be done. Practise is Art. If you leave off you are Lost. |  | ... |  | This principle is not confined to painting. The first imaginative effort in music is also the striking-out of the melodic line, whether singly or in a pattern of counterpoint. Harmony is an inference from counterpoint, and music seen as a pattern of harmonies will vanish at once into cacophonous geometry: |  | Demonstration, SImilitude & Harmony are Objects of Reasoning. Invention, Identity & Melody or Objects of Intuition. |  | ... |  | I assert for My Self that I do not behold the outward Creation |  |