The bulk of this post is a summary of the chapter on art in Collingwood’s Speculum Mentis: or The Map of Knowledge (1924). The motto of the book is the first clause of I Corinthians 13:12:
Βλέπομεν γὰρ ἄρτι δι’ ἐσόπτρου ἐν αἰνίγματι
For now we see through a glass, darkly
The chapter “Art” has eight sections:
At the end of Collingwood’s New Leviathan (1942), we reach a chapter whose theme is that of my more recent articles on grammar.
By August Macke – The Yorck Project (2002) 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei (DVD-ROM), distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH. ISBN: 3936122202., Public Domain, Link
As history, Collingwood’s last chapter is difficult, for the reasons that trouble Herbert Read at the beginning of his Concise History of Modern Painting (revised 1968, augmented 1974). Read opens his first chapter with a passage from Collingwood’s Speculum Mentis (1924):
This is about Thales of Miletus and what it means to study him. I am moved to ask what history is in the first place. It is a study of the freedom in which we face our conditions. Thales had his way of understanding the world, and we may benefit from trying to learn it.
“The Thaleses of the future are meeting in Didim,
September 24, 2016”
Polytropy 