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The song of Isaiah, “He is despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him,” [108.1] had seemed to him to be a prefiguring of himself, and in him the prophecy was fulfilled. We must not be afraid of such a phrase. Every single work of art is the fulfilment of a prophecy. For every work of art is the conversion of an idea into an image[108a]. Every single human being should be the fulfilment of a prophecy. For every human being should be the realisation of some ideal, either in the mind of God or in the mind of man. Christ found the type, and fixed it[108b], and the dream of a Virgilian poet, either at Jerusalem or at Babylon, became in the long progress of the centuries incarnate[108c] in him for whom the world was waiting.[108.2] “His visage was marred more than any man’s, and his form more than the sons of men,” [108.3] are among the signs noted by Isaiah as distinguishing the new ideal, and as soon as Art understood what was meant it opened like a flower at the presence of one in whom truth in Art was set forth as it had never been before. For is not truth in Art, as I have said, “that in which the outward is expressive of the inward; in which the soul is made flesh, and the body instinct with spirit: in which Form reveals”?
以赛亚的诗“他被藐视，被人厌弃，多受痛苦，常经忧患。他被藐视，好像被人掩面不看的一样”，对于他这就像自己一生的预示，而这预言也在他身上实现了。这句话我们绝不应该害怕。每一件艺术品都是一个预言的实现，因为每一件艺术品都是理念向形象的转化[108a]。人类的每一分子都应该成为一个预言的实现，因为每一个人，无论是在上帝还是在人的心中，都应该是某个理想的实现。基督找到了预示，并成就了它[108b]；一个弗吉尔诗人的梦，不管是在耶路撒冷还是在巴比伦，历经几个世纪漫长的演进，在世人等待着的耶稣身上道成肉身[108c]。“他的面貌比别人憔悴，他的形容比世人枯槁”，这是以赛亚注意到的一些迹象，用来辨别这新的理想。只要艺术一明白其中意义，便在那个前所未有地彰显了艺术之真谛的人跟前，绽开如花。难道不像我所说的吗，艺术的真谛即是“外形表达着内涵；使灵魂获得肉身，使肉体充满精神；以形式揭示内容”？
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