truth, a good man is
one who obeys his conscience, and whose conscience guides him right. If,
in defect of the latter condition, we allow that a man is good or
well-meaning, it is because we suppose that his conscience is erroneous
inculpably, and that he is faithful to right order as far as he
understands it. But one who sees right and wills wrong is in no sense
good, but altogether bad. Allowing that for the solution of some
delicate moral problems a certain height of tone and keenness of insight
inseparable from habitual conscientiousness is necessary, yet mere
intellectual acumen, in the absence of any notably biassing influence,
suffices to give us as great a teacher as Aristotle, who, if exonerated
from graver charges, offers no example of astonishing elevation of heart
at all proportioned to the profundity of his genius. We do not deny that
in the case of free assent to beliefs fraught with grave practical
consequences, the moral condition of the subject has much to do with the
judgments of the intellect. But first principles and their logical
issues belong to the domain of necessary truth; while in other matters a
teacher may accept current maxims and sentiments with which he has no
personal sympathy, and weave from all these a whole system of excellent
and orthodox moral teaching. And if one may be a good moralist and a bad
man, why _a fortiori_ may one not be a good artist and a bad man? If
vice does not necessarily dim the eye to ethical beauty, why should it
blind it to aesthetic beauty? In order to get at a solution we must fix
somewhat more definitely the notion of fine art and its scope.

I think it is in a child's book called _The Back of the North Wind_,
that a poet is somewhat happily and simply defined as a person who is
glad about something and wants to make other people glad about it too.
Yet mature reflection shows two flaws in this definition. First of all,
the theme of poetry, or any other fine art, need not always be gladsome,
but can appeal to some other strong emotion, provided it be high and
noble. The tragedian is one who is thrilled with awe and sorrow, and
strives to excite a like thrill in others. Again, though the craving for
sympathy hardly ever fails to follow close on the experience of deep
feeling; and though, as we shall presently see, fine art is but an
extension of language whose chief end is intercommunion of ideas, yet
this altruist end of fine art is not of its essence, but of