242 HUME xi 



less " innate" and "necessary" than they are.J 

 Some people cannot by any means be got to 

 understand the first book of Euclid; but the 

 truths of mathematics are no less necessary and 

 binding on the great mass of mankind. Some 

 there are who cannot feel the difference between 

 the " Sonata Appassionata " and " Cherry Eipe; " 

 or between a grave-stone-cutter's cherub and the 

 Apollo Belvidere; but the canons of art are none 

 the less acknowledged. While some there may 

 be, who, devoid of sympathy, are incapable of a 

 sense of duty; but neither does their existence 

 affect the foundations of morality. Such patho- 

 logical deviations from true manhood are merely 

 the halt, the lame, and the blind of the world of 

 consciousness; and the anatomist of the mind 

 leaves them aside, as the anatomist of the body 

 would ignore abnormal specimens. 



And as there are Pascals and Mozarts, Newtons 

 and Eaffaelles, in whom the innate faculty for 

 science or art seems to need but a touch to spring 

 into full vigour, and through whom the human 

 race obtains new possibilities of knowledge and 

 new conceptions of beauty: so there have been 

 men of moral genius, to whom we owe ideals of 

 duty and visions of moral perfection, which ordi- 

 nary mankind could never have attained: though, 

 happily for them, they can feel the beauty of a 

 vision, which lay beyond the reach of their full 

 imaginations, and count life well spent in shaping 

 some faint image of it in the actual world. 



