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goodness is truth multiplied into action. As yet our reasoning lias not involved 

 the existence of matter at all ; but no sooner does the idea of matter arise, 

 with all its sensive attributes of form, colour, sound,, and so on, than we are 

 compelled to enquire, how this new economy is affected by the omnipresent law 

 in subordination to which it must have been created. The character or quality 

 of form must be determined by the same rule. In other words, the operation of 

 truth performed upon form, is beauty ; or to use the same mathematical 

 formula, beauty is truth multiplied into form. I use the word form of course 

 as comprising every external quality of matter by which it becomes present to 

 the mind. If this be so, then, the true, the good, and the beautiful, are no 

 more than the three different manifestations of the same one law, which are 

 recognised by the three spiritual faculties in man, his pure reason, his moral 

 judgment, and his aesthetic power. Having once recognised the idea of truth 

 in the abstract, goodness is truth in action ; beauty is truth in form. 



And it is curious to observe how this identity between the three seems to 

 be witnessed by the unconscious testimony of language. In our daily commu- 

 nication of thought we are in the habit of interchanging the words by which 

 we express intellectual truth, moi'al goodness, and physical beauty ; as if we 

 were secretly conscious of a unity of idea or principle pervading these three 

 objects which operate upon our different spiritual powers. Thus for example 

 we talk of a good man, and a good picture — meaning by one moral excellence, 

 by the other beauty. Again we speak of a good bargain — meaning a bargain 

 consistent with its object, to make money ; and we should equally use the 

 word good, if the character of the transaction had been the reverse of good 

 morally. Again we speak of the truth of a painting ; and the beauty of 

 a mathemathical demonstration ; and of the beauty of holiness ; and we tell a 

 boy at school that it is wrong to tell lies, and that his sum is wrong. Now I 

 say that these unconscious witnesses of language are not unimportant, as 

 testifying that there is a real connection — a common principle, underlying our 

 ideas of truth, goodness, and beauty ; so much so, that we seem unable to 

 expi'ess our full perception of the one, without borrowing the language we have 

 already assigned to the others. At all events, should this seem to you but a 

 fanciful analogy, I jDlead that it is no unworthy object to endeavour to trace 

 out one additional thread in the complex fabric of creation, or to elucidate 

 some fresh view of the manner in which the worlds of thought, of feeling, and 

 of matter, are bound together by one common principle, and so minister to 

 the divine and eternal harmony of the whole. 



If time allowed me, it would be my task to pass under review the various 

 arts in which men have sought to gratify their perceptions of the beautiful, 

 and to show how the principles I have been endeavouring to elucidate are 

 applicable to all alike : — Arts which may be called those purely of the imagi- 

 nation, such as poetry and prose writings ; which come within the region of 

 Art, in so far as the modulation of the idea and the choice of expression 

 appeal to our sense of pleasure, and are adopted with regard to their beauty : 

 the art of oratory, in which the ideas are not only conveyed in written lan- 

 guage, but the pleasure is enhanced by the melody of speech : — music, which 

 like oratory, consists of two arts — the art of the composition, by which the 

 master developes his idea and expresses his feeling by a disposition of possible 

 musical sounds ; and the art of singing or playing, by which these possible 

 sounds receive utterance in vocal or instrumental music : — statuary, painting, 

 and architecture, which deal with matter in its form and colour : — and even 

 the arts which appeal to our touch — our taste — such as eating, drinking, and 

 smoking, which must claim their place in the realm of Art, in so far as there 

 is a greater or less degree of pleasure to be derived from the combination, 

 situation, and treatment of the materials which subserve to their uses. But 



