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conception of the ideal of goodness when presented to it, it 
can create it. This I deny. 
58. Let us illustrate this subject by means of one which 
is sufficiently obvious — the nature of our conceptions of the 
beautiful, both in nature and in art. All men have ideas 
of the beautiful, more or less perfect. It matters not for 
our argument whence they are derived, or how created. It 
is sufficient that they exist in fact. When an external object 
is presented to us, by means of these ideas we judge 
whether it is beautiful or the contrary. We are also capable 
of recognizing that it has a higher form of beauty than 
anything with which we were previously acquainted. Let 
us take as an example the beautiful or magnificent in scenery. 
A beautiful or magnificent object is presented to the eye. 
The mind recognizes it as such. The scenery may be of 
an inferior character. Still it recognizes the beauty or the 
magnificence which it contains. Out of objects of inferior 
beauty which have been presented to the eye, it is capable 
of creating conceptions of a higher perfection than can be 
found in any one individual object. It effects this by put- 
ting together the highest forms which it has seen and 
rejecting the inferior ones. This forms the art of the painter 
when he endeavours to embody on his canvas conceptions 
of ideal beauty. This process, however, can only be carried 
on within certain limits. The mind, out of the objects of 
beauty which have been presented to it, may form an ideal 
more beautiful than any one single reality which it has ever 
contemplated. But if it has never seen anything But ordinary 
scenery, it by no means follows that out of such it could 
create the realities of a Switzerland. Yet it is a fact, that if 
a Switzerland is presented to the eye it is at once capable 
of recognizing it as transcending in beauty and magnificence 
all such objects which it has either previously seen or been 
capable of conceiving. 
59. The same reasoning will hold good if we substitute 
moral and spiritual goodness for physical beauty. Between 
them, as far as I can see, the analogy is perfect. Our ability 
to recognize an object as a high ideal of moral goodness, when 
it is presented to the mind in an objective form, by no means 
proves that it is within the power of our subjective conceptions 
to have created it. The mind recognizes the idea which is 
presented to it as the realization of that which was existing 
there in an unconscious or dormant state. 
60. This is the cause of all great mental revolutions. 
Mighty changes in our moral being are caused by the 
flashing into it of some unknown or previously unrecognized 
