Excerpt from The Representative Significance of Form: An Essay in Comparative Aesthetics This book contains no records of preparatory processes; but the conclusions reached in it, and the views implied in them would have little value, were they not conformable to results obtained by the broadest feasible outlook over the whole field of phenomena with which they are connected. There are very evident reasons for the importance of the subject thus studied as applied to art. The transcendentalists of New England who, fifty years ago, were exercising the most pronounced of any effect upon the art and literature of our country were constantly confounding artistic inspiration with religious inspiration. The tendency of this mistake was not only to minimize in religion the importance of the spiritual, because this was conceived to be the same in kind as the distinctively human in art; but to minimize in art also the importance of the material, - i. e., of the material product as given form through skill in technique, - because the whole desired effect was conceived to be attained, as in religion, by merely giving adequate and accurate expression to the results of inspiration. Emerson himself, not only in his practice but in his theory, almost always goes astray when he approaches this subject of art-form. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.