‘With the Renaissance, the cardinal lines of European man were laid down. All subsequent centuries, in consequence of sharing the same psychic disposition, were bound to see in the Renaissance and in its parallel phenomenon the Antique, a fulfilment, a kind of ultimate goal; this effect was uncomprehendingly attributed, since the artistic instinct simultaneously flagged, to the outward result, not to the inner experience that preceded it.
Because a hint was still felt of the powerful effect and nobility of that art, and because this art still employed reality as an artistic means in the loftiest sense, the real inevitably appeared to the later centuries, with their slackened artistic instinct, as the criterion of art; truth to nature and art gradually came to be looked upon as inseparable concepts.
Once this fallacious inference had been drawn it was a short step from regarding the real as the aim of art, to looking upon imitation of the real as art.
Thus secondary phenomena were looked upon as decisive values and criteria of judgement, and instead of pressing forward to the psychic process which gave birth to those works of art, critics stopped short at their outward appearance and derived from it a mass of incontestable truths which, however, seen from a higher standpoint, are inadequate and un-convincing.’