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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Essays & Lectures by Oscar Wilde: only one high law, the law of form or harmony - yet between the
classical and romantic spirit we may say that there lies this
difference at least, that the one deals with the type and the other
with the exception. In the work produced under the modern romantic
spirit it is no longer the permanent, the essential truths of life
that are treated of; it is the momentary situation of the one, the
momentary aspect of the other that art seeks to render. In
sculpture, which is the type of one spirit, the subject
predominates over the situation; in painting, which is the type of
the other, the situation predominates over the subject.
There are two spirits, then: the Hellenic spirit and the spirit of
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