THE ART-PRINCIPLE IN POETRY 197 



all being defines himself, now to our capacity for 

 joy, now to our power to know, and now to our 

 power to act. We cannot define the three without 

 God — without the Ideal of the Reason. And we 

 cannot define them without man — without the in- 

 divisible threefold of human life. They have their 

 indissoluble unity in an organic correlation between 

 God and man, and their distinguishing variety in 

 the threefold distinction expressive of the unity in 

 variety characteristic of human nature. 



So runs the answer to our question, WJiat unity 

 of wJiat variety do beauty, truth, and good each 

 severally present } The unity is the unity of God, 

 the Sovereign Ideal ; or, indifferently, the unity of 

 man, who in his reason images that Ideal ; and its 

 changeless identity rests in the organic harmony 

 subsisting between God and man. The variety is 

 the diversity in things ; but dissolved in the unity 

 of the Ideal, which is varied into a specific princi- 

 ple of unity, now for beauty, now for truth, now for 

 good, by its permanent correlation to our delight, 

 to our insight, to our devotion. While beauty, truth, 

 and good, then, each and all derive their distinct 

 quality from their relation to human nature, and 

 not from anything intrinsic in a fancied being of 

 their own, we find the specific trait of beauty in 

 its setting the Supreme Ideal into living relation 

 with our faculty of delight, TJie Ideal is bcauti- 



