刘熙载重视人品与艺品的紧密关系，从整体上以人品喻指艺品，把人物的三品简括为艺术的三品，并区分了高下：元分品格最上，英杰品格次之，卑猥品格则不入流。本文从四个方面阐析了刘氏元分品格论的特质：其一，元分品格论植根于思孟心性说，体现了中国传统的“由人复天”、“天人合一”理念；其二，元分品格体现为既平凡又伟大的“常道”，饱含着中华文明以中道理性制约极端思维的精神；其三，元分品格在艺术上标举和而不同的“兼美”，体现着中和之美的精髓；其四，元分品格是“品居极上”的本色美，是“无思无为”理想化审美心境的自然流淌。

Liu Xizai attaches great importance to the relationship between the character of the author and the quality of an artwork, and generally refers the former to the latter in a metaphoric way. He distinguished three levels of artistic value in artworks and equated them to three kinds of author's character. The best character of an author is to keep the primary bound ("yuan fen"), the talented ("ying jie") comes next, and the mean and banal ("bei wei") lies at the bottom. This paper analyzes the characteristics of Liu's concept of "yuan fen" in four aspects. The first is rooted in Si-Meng School's Doctrine of Mind, reflecting the traditional Chinese philosophy of Heaven and mankind. The second is embodied in the Constant Way, which conveys the spirit of moderating the extremities with the rationalism. The third is the appreciation of integrated beauties ("jian mei"), which represents harmony between identity and difference. The fourth is that being the best has a beauty in itself and it is the natural expression of "non-doing" as the ideal aesthetic state of mind.