96 ON THE RELATION OF ART 



and capable of demonstration ; or subjectively, that is the 

 exact apprehension by our mind of facts as they really are, 

 whether these be good or bad, beautiful or ugly. It is a 

 quality, not of aspect, but of essence. 



Still we know that there is no beauty worthy of the name 

 without truth and without a certain sort of goodness. We 

 feel that goodness is the highest kind of truth, and that 

 truth is good. We recognise that every truth, once demon- 

 strated has a right to be called beautiful. It is only needful 

 to fix attention on the contrary ideas of badness, ugliness, 

 falsity, in order to perceive that their intrusion into the 

 sphere of the good, the beautiful, the true, vitiates our radical 

 conception of those virtues. Beauty cannot be bad ; goodness 

 cannot be false ; truth cannot be ugly and so on, ringing all 

 the changes on their combinations. 



From the most abstract point of view, goodness, beauty, 

 truth are in reality inseparable. Religion presents us with an 

 ideal of the universal Being, in whom they co-exist without 

 one flaw or note of difference. This is religion's way of 

 presenting to our minds the ideal unity of our own nature, 

 the type of self to which humanity aspires. 



But we immediately divide them in our understanding. 

 It is the function of the intelligence to decompose abstrac- 

 tions. Intelligence deals with concrete things ; and the 

 concrete is always the differentiated. Thus we use the word 

 good in different senses. We speak, for instance, of good iron, 

 a good horse, good beef ; but we reserve the name goodness 

 for the dominant excellence of human beings, moral virtue. 

 To this quality we assign ethics ; to truth, science ; to beauty, 

 aesthetics. 



In ethics, right conduct is good in itself, beautiful to the 

 imagination, true to our apprehension of permanent relations. 

 In aesthetics, a fine work of art is beautiful to the percipient 

 sense, good by its thoroughness of execution, true by 

 exactitude of delineation. In science, a theory is true because 

 it accounts for the facts and is capable of demonstration, 

 beautiful by reason of its lucidity, good because it can be 

 depended on and fulfils its purpose. 



