Since this is the case, it can only benefit you to recognise in them magnificent models, by whose means we artists, if we imitate, perfect, and model them, will create works far more sublime and beautiful than anything visible to our senses which we meet here beneath the sun." "It is this very superiority in sublimity and beauty which I, and those who pursue the same path with me, oppose," replied Hermon.

"Nature is sufficient for us.

To take anything from her, mutilates; to add anything, disfigures her." "But not," replied Myrtilus firmly, "when it is done only in a special sense, and within the limits of Nature, to which the gods also belong.
The final task of art, fiercely as you and your few followers contend against it, lies in the disentanglement, enhancing, and ennobling of Nature.

You, too, ought not to overlook it when you undertake to model a Demeter; for she is a goddess, no mortal like yourself.

The rest or I ought rather to say the alteration which converts the mortal woman into the immortal one, the goddess--I miss, and with special regret, because you do not even deem it worth consideration." "That I shall never do," retorted Hermon irritably, "so long as it is a changing chimera which presents itself differently to every mind." "Yet, should it really be a chimera, it is at any rate a sublime one," Myrtilus protested, "and whoever among us artists wanders through Nature with open eyes and heart, and then examines his own soul, will find it worth while to attempt to give his ideal form." "Whatever stirs my breast during such walks, unless it is some unusual human being, I leave to the poet," replied Hermon.