must be poverty to all; and where all would govern, and none are willing to obey, the State must come to an end. This descent from a social into an individual region of experience may be seen to be necessary, first, upon the ground that the mind must become developed from within outwards, and, next, upon the ground that the destructive side of the human constitution must be developed and manifested from an external point of view, in order that its quality may be made to appear, and that the tree may be known by its fruits; for it is evident, that, so long as the individual is conscious and becomes manifested through the legitimate forms of the mind, this destructive manifestation cannot take place, and that full natural development of the individual, which is necessary as a preparation for his birth into the Spiritual, cannot be realized. In order that a complete natural development of the human consciousness may be obtained, it is necessary that the Personal Principle should be asserted in opposition to the Universal, and should become incarnated and manifested as the "Man of Sin, who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he, as God, sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God." In realizing this incarnation, however, all the legitimate institutions of Society, which are founded in the supremacy of the Universal, must be sacrificed, and a return to Chaos from a social point of view must result. Although this seems like a simple retrogression, it is in fact, with regard to the individual, an advance, because it secures to him experiences which are indispensable as a preparation for the realization by him of a spiritual consciousness. This destruction of the State is perfectly analogous to the destruction of the Church, and the same reason exists for both; it being only the natural representative form that is destroyed, and this is done that the spiritual reality may finally be reached and realized. ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE LAW OF CIRCULARITY IN THE HISTORY OF ART. It is perhaps difficult to recognize the fact, that the wonderful creations of Art, which have come down to us so replete with material perfection, and so truly representative of spiritual life, are to be classed with the religions, the philosophies, and the societies of the ancient times, and are finally to be replaced by productions which are real and spiritual; and it is more difficult to do this, for the reason that Art, in the natural, is to a great extent representative of things which cannot be conceived by the mind in the form of thought, and must therefore be realized in an unconscious and spontaneous manner. Even Art, however, is subject to the universal law of natural development from within outwards; and the internal correspondences, the vital supernatural symbolism, and the unity of design so truly artistic, which were realized by it at its commencement, must be succeeded by the discordant diversities, the crude experiments, and the external imperfections, of a simply natural experience, which includes a worship of Nature, and a literal representation of her phenomena; and finally, this natural experience must be succeeded by a false or inverted supernatural symbolism, which, though externally more perfect and internally more ideal, is representative of spiritual death. This development is not, however, simply destructive, because this degradation is accompanied by an elevation, arising in a more internal and self-conscious life, which compensates, in some measure, for its loss of character; for although a great degradation in the form of Art must be acknowledged, extending to the Sublime, to Beauty, and to the Beautiful, new characteristics are developed, which, although they belong either to externalism, to affectionalism, to naturalism, or to an inverted supernaturalism, are necessary to the full natural development of Art, as a prepa ration for its resurrection into the spiritual. Although, in this process, the - its ideal being supidea of Art becomes lost, very posed to be derived from Nature, and the perfect imitation of Nature to be its only true vocation,-a variety in the illustration of natural condition, position, and relationship, incidental to the selfconscious development of the soul, is obtained, that will be useful as suggestive material in its spiritual incarnation, and without which, Art would be confined to the illustration of a simply religious condition of the soul. The true artist of our time, therefore, does not attempt a reproduction of the forms of ancient art, which can be nothing but an absurd and lifeless imitation, but aims to develop Modern Art, because he believes this also to be real; and he believes this, because the true artist works from the highest point of his own consciousness, in illustrating the internal by means of the external, which is the legitimate province of Art. We see, then, that the condition of Art must keep pace with the condition of the human consciousness, and that, as the forms of this become developed from within outwards, passing from vital supernatural to natural, and from these to destructive supernatural forms, Art must represent these changes, and become antagonized to the forms of ancient art; and this is necessary, not only because these cannot now be appreciated, reproduced, understood, or even felt to be true, but because an opposite ideal has been conceived as the life of Art. It is this change in the human consciousness— which includes a change in the incarnating power through which the conceptions of Art become realized that constitutes the difference between ancient and modern art. At its commencement, Art was the unconscious, spontaneous production of the Imagination; because this is the highest intellectual incarnating power of the mind, and must therefore become the agent in the development of Art from within outwards; and its productions corresponded with the highest forms and recognitions of the consciousness, from vital rational and supernatural points of view: and although the Imagination must always make use of the Fancy, as a subordinate agent which must construct the body of Art, this lower incarnating power, as well as the Imagination, was then governed by its vital law, and manifested under the influence of the vital laws of the Reason and of the Sentiment; so that the harmonious relations of contrast, which constitute the true picturesque in Art, were realized through the Fancy as the most external element in all its constructions. In the Fine Arts, to which our attention will be particularly directed, because they - offer the best illustrations of the changes of consciousness to which we have referred, the natural element in Art, which is the Beautiful, was realized in its legitimate form in subjection to its spiritual element, which is the Sublime; and the legitimate correspondences which represent the relationships between internal and external, and between spiritual and natural things, were combined in ideal forms of truth, of good, and of beauty. With regard to its external form, it obtained a perfection that cannot be realized at any other time; because the physical was then in its greatest external perfection, and the artist therefore possessed an intuitive knowledge of physical substance, and of his own physical structure and functions, or muscular states, combined with the greatest power of physical perception and conception, and also with the greatest perfection of muscular development, and power of external manifestation. These causes gave to him that astonishing rapidity and precision of manipulation,-that intimate knowledge of forms, substances, and colors, and that facility in combining them, for which he was so celebrated; a knowledge of physical life that cannot be supplied by the greatest amount of external observation, to which modern artists are confined; and a power of the hand that cannot be acquired by any amount of study and practice, upon which modern artists must rely. With regard to its Ideal, it had two distinct ideals, which were antagonized as external and internal, and as natural and supernatural, — one that was peculiar to Grecian, and the other to Roman Art. These were both legitimate, because they were derived from the Imagination as representatives of the vital religious law, and both the Sublime and the Beautiful were combined by them in legitimate representations of truth, good, and beauty; but as Greek Art became realized before the supernatural birth of the soul, while Roman Art was realized through the experience of Christianity, the Grecian ideal was obtained by the Imagination from those analogies which represent the Spiritual from a natural point of view, while the Roman ideal was obtained by the Imagination from those analogies which represent the Spiritual from a supernatural point of view; and thus, while Greek Art demanded natural perfection, and the Incarnation of the Divine in the Human, Roman Art demanded the repudiation of the natural as a preparation for resurrection into spiritual life, and represented Divine-Humanity, which produces the union of the human with the divine through voluntary sacrifice. When, however, the development of human nature from a self conscious point of view commenced by the establishment of Protestantism, and it was demanded that every thing of a supernatural character should be connected with self-conscious individual experiences, the apparent, or what seemed to be real, was set up as a substitute for the ideal, and all the symbolic correspondences by which Christianity had been represented from an external and physical point of view were consequently repudiated and warred against as idolatrous; or were, as Mr. Ruskin says, "trampled under foot at once by every believing and advancing Christian ;" and preparation was thus made for the construction of Art upon an opposite ground, and with opposite ideals, as the representative of Anti-Christianity, and as the exponent of "Naturalism," and "Sympathy," which are the destructive sentimental laws. Now, as these laws are incarnated from external and from internal points of view by Unitarianism and Transcendentalism, which succeed each other, Modern Art comes to include two separate ideals, which are successively realized: the first being simply Natural, as the production of the Fancy under the influence of its destructive law, and therefore confined to physical and natural phenomena realized through external intellectual and affectional states of the consciousness; and the second being Supernatural, as the production of the Imagination under the influence of its destructive law, and therefore aiming to illustrate the supernatural ideas, and conceptions of supernatural law, which have been realized through intuition from the principles of "Naturalism" and "Sympathy." These schools, therefore, produce a complete inversion of Ancient Art, and are characterized by diversity instead of unity, by action instead of repose, by affectionalism instead of intellectualism, and by sensualism and individualism instead of idealism and universalism; the picturesque and poetical aspects of physical and natural life being conceived, combined, and represented by these schools from a superficial and disorderly point of view, so far as a limited knowledge of form and of color and a diminished power of manipulation will allow. It is true, that in the Fine Arts, but especially in Painting, modern artists excel in the imitation of physical phenomena, and can use these in a fanciful manner, or according to the deceptive similitudes of the Fancy, in illustrating an external-natural, and even an internal-natural, order of experiences; and, as the Natural is the great domain of Unitarian Art, a vast amount of individual character can be represented under the greatest variety of circumstances, and natural life can be represented in all the variety of |