274,

A section of our self as an artistic object. It is a sign of superior culture when men consciously remember and sketch a true picture of certain periods of their development, which lesser men live through almost without thought, wiping them off their soul's tablet; this is the higher kind of painting, which only few people understand. To do it, it is necessary to isolate those phases artificially. Historical studies develop the capacity for this form of painting, for they continually exhort us, when occasioned by a period of history, or a people-or a human life, to imagine a quite definite horizon of thoughts, a definite intensity of feelings, the predominance of some, and the withdrawal of others. Historical sense consists of being able, when there is the occasion, to reconstruct quickly such systems of thought and feeling, like impressions of a temple from some random remaining columns and pieces of wall. The immediate result is that we understand our fellow men to be such definite systems, and representatives of various cultures; that is, necessary, but changeable. And conversely, we can separate out sections of our own development and set them down as autonomous.