THE MEANING OF THE .ESTHETIC IMPULSE. 



241 



a higher sense of honesty and purity ? Is it not the case that it is 

 precisely the reverse ? Take Athens under the hegemony of 

 Pericles ; the prevalence of nameless vice, and general venality is 

 notorious. Take Rome, under the " Twelve Caesars " ; are not things 

 even worse ? There was the same nameless vice, the same venality, 

 with the addition of organized murder in the proscriptions. Papal 

 Rome of the time of the Renaissance is no better. Yet in all these 

 periods art flourished in a way far surpassing anything in the ages 

 preceding or succeeding these periods. Do not these facts suggest 

 a limitation of our hopes from the teaching of Beauty ? While 

 in complete sympathy with the views of the Rev. Mr. McDowall, I 

 wish he had recognized and resolved this antinomy. 



Prof. H. Langhorne Orchard, proposing a vote of thanks to the 

 Author for an interesting and very thoughtful paper, said that it 

 contained much with which they found themselves in agreement. 

 The facts that the greatest of realities is God ; that God is Love — 

 Infinite Love ; that Truth, Goodness, Beauty, are aspects of Him, 

 and approaches whereby we may draw nigh ; that, Love fulfilling in 

 personal relationship reciprocal and responsive, the bounden obliga- 

 tion and high privilege of our duty to God bid us respond earnestly 

 to the Love which for our salvation withheld not His own Son ; these 

 facts command our belief as fundamental to Christian philosophy. 



But our agreement does not extent to Croce's curiously unsatis- 

 factory definition of Beauty as the expression by and to self of the 

 intuition which is our first contact with reality. What does he 

 mean by " Reality " ? On page 222 of the paper we are told that the 

 only reality is living spirit. Is not matter a real thing ? Are not 

 deformity, disease, pain, death, as well as their opposites, real ? 

 Is not ugliness real, and different from an imperfect expression of 

 the aesthetic intuition ? If " Reality " is in Croce's view a synonym 

 for living Spirit, why does he exclude from his philosophy the idea 

 of God, who is Spirit, Light, Love and is the great Reality, as is 

 beautifully insisted on in the paper we have been hearing. 



Tlie learned author of the paper has, in my judgment, immensely 

 improved upon Croce's system ; has indeed improved it almost out of 

 recognition. Yet a good definition of Beauty is lacking. 



Premising that harmony is helpful co-operation of parts of a 

 whole unto the good of each part and of the whole, I would define 



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