t does not fail us. The figure of Christ, for
instance, remains the supreme incarnation of the idea of goodness
in the world; and few will deny that the figure of Christ represents
not only the idea of goodness but the ideas of truth and beauty
also. If one contemplates many another famous "good man" of
history, such as easily may be called to mind, one is at once
conscious that the "goodness" of these admirable persons is a thing
not altogether pleasing to the aesthetic taste, and a thing which in
some curious way seems to obscure our vision of the real truth of
life.

A great work of art, such as Leonardo's "Virgin of the Rocks," or
Dostoievsky's "Idiot," is intuitively recognized as being not only
entirely satisfying to the aesthetic sense but also entirely satisfying
to our craving for truth and our longing for the inmost secret of
goodness. Every great work of art is the concentrated essence of a
man's ultimate reaction to the universe. It has an undertone of
immense tragedy; but in the depths of this tragedy there is no
despair, because an infinite pity accompanies the infinite sorrow,
and in such pity love finds itself stronger than fate. No work of art,
however appealing or magical, can carry the full weight of what it
means to be an inheritor of human tradition, of what it means to be
a living soul, until it has arrived at that rhythm of the apex-thought
which is a fusion of what we call the "good" with what we call the
"beautiful" and the "true."

It is only when our notion of what _is_ good and what is true falls
short of the austere demands of the aesthetic sense that a certain
uneasiness and suspicion enters into a discussion of this kind. And
such an uneasiness is justified by reason of the fact that the
popular notion both of goodness and truth does so often fall
lamentably short of such demands. The moral conscience of
average humanity is a thing of such dull sensibility, of such
narrow and limited vision, that it is inevitable that its "goodness"
should clash with so exacting a censor as the aesthetic sense.

The rational conscience of average humanity is a thing of such
dense and rigid and unimaginative vision that it is inevitable that
its "truth" should clash with the secrets revealed by the aesthetic
sense. The cause, why the aesthetic sense seems to come on the
scene with an apparatus of valuation so much more advanced and
refined than that possessed by the conscience or by the reason, is
that