human
Just a confused mass of rubbish. It was as if an animal painter should compose a group and you could not tell whether it was made up of sheep or rabbits or dogs or foxes or griffins.
gpt
So you want things picked out like a photograph?
human
I beg your pardon, I want nature. You cannot give character to a bit of ground in a landscape unless you know the characters of its details. A man is no more fit to paint a landscape than a cage of monkeys, unless he knows the language of the nature he is dealing with down to the alphabet. The Japanese know it so well that they are not bothered with minutia, but give you character.
gpt
And you think that science is an aid to art?
human
Yes, if there is genius to transform it into art. You must know the intimate habits of anything you paint or write about. You cannot even caricature without that. They talk now about Dickens being just a caricaturist. He couldn't have been that if he hadn't known the things he caricatured. That is the reason there is so little good caricature.
gpt
Isn't your idea of painting rather anatomical?
human
Do you think that if Raphael had known nothing of anatomy the world would have accepted his Sistine Madonna for the woman she is?
gpt
I see it is interesting, said Philip, shifting his ground again,
human
Well, you must put things in order. You studied philology in Germany? The chief end of that is to trace the development, migration, civilization of the human race. To trace the distribution of plants is another way to find out about the race. But let that go. Don't you think that I get more pleasure in looking at all the growing things we see, as we sit here, than you do in seeing them and knowing as little about them as you pretend to?