THE MEANING OF THE ESTHETIC IMPULSE. 



237 



Persons of the Trinity is so imperfect that it is rash to assert that 

 their mutual internal relation of love is selfishness raised to its 

 highest power. Yet it is on this assumption that the proposition 

 " Love is necessarily externally creative," which is vital to Mr. 

 McDowall's thesis, is based. 



Remarks communicated by Mr. W. Hoste (Hon. Sec. to the Council 

 of the Victoria Institute) : — Plato, somewhere in the Phcudrus, 

 foretells for those who on earth have philosophized much on the 

 Beautiful, a rebate of seven thousand years of a sort of purgatorial 

 existence, out of the ten thousand to be endured by more ordinary 

 folk, before they get their wings. I suppose as the result of this 

 paper there is a prospect of an earlier sprouting of wings for any 

 present to-day, who may nourish platonic ideals. Such will be 

 grateful, but I am afraid the majority, though recognizing the 

 literary charm of the paper, will be disposed rather to be critical. 



On page 221 " Evolution "is surely a singularly unfortunate illustra- 

 tionofa "pureconcept "; defined on page 220 as something " universal 

 and expressive, belonging to all individuals ; concrete, and therefore 

 real." Evolution is certainly a " comfortable word," as the late 

 Lord Salisbury remarked on a famous occasion, but means half-a- 

 dozen different things, according to the school discussing it, and is 

 even denied altogether as a true concept by not a few. I should 

 have thought the solid " chair " on which the Evolutionist discusses 

 his theory, the more " concrete " of the two. 



The reader of the paper makes Beauty one of the, I will not say 

 rival, but alternative routes, which lead to God. It and Goodness 

 and Truth will all meet some day in a point. But is " beauty " 

 really " beauty " if it has never met with goodness and truth ? Can 

 it stand alone ? Can you divorce it from " moral considerations "? 

 " Handsome is that handsome does," is not bad philosophy. The 

 Phrynes, the Cleopatras, the Salomes of ancient and modern times 

 to whom the accident of physical beauty is not denied, leave " foot- 

 prints on the sands of time," but do such lead to God ? On page 227, 

 the lecturer " would exclude no technical mode of external ex- 

 pression," The " ballet " to him is a means of grace. The producers 

 of modern " revue " would not go as far as that ; though I am sure 

 they would all agree with him on page 227 that " art ought not to be 

 trammelled by moral considerations," i.e., that the censor is a 

 nuisance. 



