Note 315 — Chapter III · (continued 2)

The knowledge of this fact is as old as æsthetic science itself. It is well expressed, as by others, so by Dr. Wilh. Alex. Freund, in his Blicken ins Culturleben; Breslau, 1879, p. 9: ‘Idealization consists ... in the removal of accidental accessories disturbing the true expression of the essential;’ p. 11: ‘All [eminent artists] raise that which they see to a purified image, purged of all that is unessential, accidental, disturbing; from that image springs up in all of them the idea lying at the base of the vision;’ p. 13: ‘He [the artist] comprehends the essential ... from which the accidental disturbing accessories of the external phenomenon fall off like withered leaves, so that to his inner eye the truth appears as a living idea,’ etc.