76 The Rice Institute Pamphlet
would be wanting without exegesis, without the removal of
the obstacles to reproductive fancy, which supply the spirit
with those presumptions of historical knowledge of which it
has need, and which are the wood to bum in the fire of fancy.
But here, before going further, it will be well to resolve a
grave doubt which has been agitated and is still agitated,
both in philosophical literature and in ordinary thought, and
which certainly, where justified, would not only compromise
the possibility of criticism, of which I am discoursing, but
also of reproductive fancy itself, or taste. Is it truly possible
to collect, as does exegesis, the materials required for repro-
ducing the work of art of others (or our own past work of
art, when we search our memory and consult our papers in
order to remember what we were when we produced it),
and to reproduce that work of art in our fancy in its genuine
features? Can the collection of the material required be ever
complete? And however complete it be, will the fancy ever
permit itself to be chained by it in its labour of reproduction?
Will it not act as a new fancy, introducing new material?
Will it not be obliged to do so, owing to its impotence truly
to reproduce the other and the past? Is the reproduction of
the individual, of the indwiduum ineffabile, conceivable,
when every sane philosophy teaches that the universal alone
is eternally reproducible? Will not the reproduction of the
works of art of others or of the past be consequently a simple
impossibility; and will not what is usually alleged as an un-
disputed fact in ordinary conversation, and is the expressed
or implied presupposition in every dispute upon art, be
perhaps (as was said of history in general) une fable con-
venue?
Truly, when we consider the problem rather from with-
out, it will seem most improbable that the firm belief which