The extracts which follow are arranged approximately in order of obscurity. They rise from the most matter of fact to the most mystical uses of truth-notions in criticism. All might be taken as glosses upon the phrase ‘Truth to Nature’; they serve to show what different things may be meant by what is apparently simple language.
We may begin with Aristotle. He makes three remarks which bear upon the matter. The first is in connection with the antithesis between Tragedy and History.
“Poetry is a more philosophical and a more serious thing than History: for Poetry is chiefly conversant about general (universal) truth, History about particular. In what manner, for example, any person of a certain character would speak or act, probably or necessarily—this is universal; and this is the object of Poetry. But what Alcibiades did, or what happened to him—this is particular truth.” (Poetics, IX).
His second remark is made in connection with the requisites of Tragic Character:—
“The third requisite (in addition to goodness in a special sense, appropriateness, and consistency) of Character is that it have verisimilitude[*]”. (Poetics, XV).
Aristotle’s third observation is in the same chapter:—
“The poet when he imitates passionate or indolent men and such, should preserve the type and yet ennoble it[*]”.
Wordsworth’s interpretation carries us a definite stage nearer to the mystical:—
“Aristotle, I have been told, has said that poetry is the most philosophic of all writing. It is so. Its object is truth—not individual and local, but general and operative. Not standing upon external testimony, but carried alive into the heart by passion: truth which is its own testimony; which gives competence and confidence to the tribunal to which it appeals, and receives them from the same tribunal[†]”.
Wordsworth remains still on the hither side of the gap, as does Goethe in suggesting that “The beautiful is the manifestation of secret laws of nature which, but for this disclosure, had been for ever concealed from us[*]”. But Coleridge, from whom Wordsworth probably heard about Aristotle, takes the step into mysticism unhesitatingly:—