242 



REV. STEWART A. MCDOWALL, M.A., B.D., ON 



Beauty as the efiect or expression of harmony. And the perception 

 of the beautiful as perception of harmony expressed between two 

 responsive or communing harmonies — the one in the beautiful 

 object, the other in the mind of the personal percipient. 



Author's Eeply. 



To answer the foregoing discussion in detail would involve writing 

 a paper far longer than the original one, I fear. Some of the criti- 

 cisms show an imperfect apprehension of Croce's meaning, due doubt- 

 less to the inadequacy of my brief summary — e.g., intuition is an 

 activity of spirit : so is intellection ; yet pure intuition is not an 

 intellectual process, but the basis upon which the intellect works 

 (page 232). Beauty is not a purely subjective act, but demands a 

 Reality which is intuited (page 236). Intuition is not the same as 

 perception, since intuition is awareness of Reality, perception 

 awareness of appearance (page 236). No idealist would say that 

 matter was real, in the philosophical sense of the word, though doubt- 

 less it does denote the existence of an underlying Reality. But 

 itself is probably purely derivative, being dependent on mind for 

 its very existence (page 241) — the objection to " evolution " being 

 cited as a pure concept is due to confusion between evolution and 

 theories of evolution (page 237) — and so on. 



But I take it that the chief objections He in other regions — those 

 of religion and morals. In this regard I should like to point out 

 that to say that " the reconstruction of the philosophy of Christianity 

 is well under way " is very different from saying that " the recon- 

 struction of Christianity is weU under weigh" — a thing which I 

 did not, and could not, say (page 234). 



The really fundamental point is whether art should be trammelled 

 by moral considerations or no ; and in regard to this I find a very real 

 misunderstanding of the view I have tried to put forward, as is 

 shown by the references to "revue," and other things. It must be 

 remembered that morality and religion are very different things. 

 No doubt the categorical imperative of Ethics ultimately belongs 

 to the realm of religion, but the content of a given ethical code 

 is determined largely by circumstances of time and place. It is 

 the imposition of such a code upon the activities of art to which I 

 raise objection. An artist may have a vision and do work which 



