Imperfect, that which is missing something. Thus a work is imperfect, either when one notices something missing, or when the author has not carried out the work to its end. A book is imperfect if it is missing a page. A large building is imperfect when a minister is reassigned, and when his replacement has the smallness to abandon his plans. In Music there are imperfect chords. See Chords. An imperfect cadence. See Cadence. In arithmetic, imperfect numbers. See Numbers. In Botany, imperfect plants, and very improperly named as such, because there is nothing imperfect in nature, even monsters. Everything is connected and the monster is just as necessary of an effect as a perfect animal. The causes that contributed to its production result from infinity of others, and those from an infinity of others, and thus in succession they go back to an eternity of things. There is only imperfection in art, because art has a model subsisting in nature, to which you can compare its products. We are not fit to praise or to criticize the general collection of things, of which we know neither the harmony nor the end, and good and evil are words void of meaning, when the whole exceeds the extent of our faculties and our knowledge.