“INDIVIDUALITY, DISTINGUISHING THE PROSAIC FROM THE POETIC.

One difference between the prosaic and the poetic, as respectively illustrated in these passages, lies in the fact that the former is devoid of any formative influence upon the details mentioned produced by the intervening human mind through which it has come to us, whereas of the latter the contrary is true. The same should be true of all products purporting to be those of art. No men are great painters merely because they accurately reproduce the shapes or hues of nature; or great sculptors, merely because they remould some ancient masterpiece, or merely imitate in marble some modern living model. It is the individuality of the effect characterizing the new product that gives it artistic soul and life. In what consists the difference between the artists living in Rome today and the artisans who do their chiselling for them? Is it not in this? — that the artists give form to their own conceptions, while the artisans give form to the conceptions of their employers?”

— George Lansing Raymond, The Representative Significance of Form, xiv.