266 LORD GRIMTHORPE 
that our faculties of perception were sometimes exercised in the observa- 
tion of ugliness. If the mere exercise of our faculties produced a sense of 
pleasure, there would be no such thing as a difference between a sense of 
beauty and a sense of ugliness. It appeared to him that the main im- 
portance of the question turned on the inquiry, whether beauty was really an 
ideal or not ; whether it was a varying function which differed with different 
opinions and different sets of times, or whether there was such a thing as an 
ideal of beauty just as there were first principles of truth and goodness. 
That was a question which had been debated from the earliest dawn of 
serious thought among mankind. The great question raised in the time of 
Socrates was whether there was absolute goodness, absolute truth, and 
absolute beauty. It had been decided by the general verdict of the most 
earnest thought in the world that there was an absolute ideal in all those 
subjects. Precisely similar objections to those which Lord Grimthorpe 
had told them had been raised by his friend, had been raised by 
Plato’s contemporaries, and were raised now, but the only argument 
which could be produced against his views was the existence of lower 
standards of right and wrong. When they looked at the matter from 
the point of view of right and wrong, they all saw the absurdity of 
the argument. The fact that in certain nations there was an imperfect 
moral standard proved nothing against the existence of a perfect standard. 
It only proved that those nations were in a state of degradation. He remem- 
bered being struck by the statement of a missionary on this subject: he 
was asked whether, in spite of the moral degradation he came in contact 
with, he had ever met any nation that rejected the morality of the Ten 
Commandments when they came to understand them, and he said he never 
had. Custom might maintain a lower standard, but all men recognised the 
true standard of right and wrong when it was explained to them. What 
was possible in respect to man’s conscience was similarly possible in 
respect to beauty. In proportion as the faculties of men developed, they 
appreciated the one uniform and ideal standard of beauty. It was from 
this point of view only that the full force of Lord Grimthorpe’s argument 
could be discerned. What we had to consider was that there was by common 
consent of mankind, or the increasing consent of intelligent mankind, an 
absolute standard of beauty, and they found that throughout Nature there 
was a continual approximation to, and in the great majority of cases 
absolute attainment of, that standard of beauty, no matter what the work 
might be to which Nature put her hand. His lordship asked the question, 
how it came that Nature in all its forms and circumstances was continually 
approximating to this beauty ; and it certainly was a most extraordinary 
and amazing circumstance. There was only one point in his lordship’s 
paper to which he would venture to take exception, and that was an obser- 
vation he threw out once or twice that this beauty is not necessary. He should 
be rather inclined to think that that was an obiter dictum which weakened 
his case ; because it might turn out to be, and it would be, a very strong 
argument, pointing to the conclusion he is aiming at, if it were proved that 
