s not
in health of body who is always thirsting for the bottle in the
cupboard, though he bravely bears his thirst; but the man who heartily
enjoys water in the morning and wine in the evening, each in its proper
quantity and time. And the entire object of true education is to make
people not merely _do_ the right things, but _enjoy_ the right
things--not merely industrious, but to love industry--not merely
learned, but to love knowledge--not merely pure, but to love purity--not
merely just, but to hunger and thirst after justice.

But you may answer or think, 'Is the liking for outside ornaments,--for
pictures, or statues, or furniture, or architecture,--a moral quality?'
Yes, most surely, if a rightly set liking. Taste for _any_ pictures or
statues is not a moral quality, but taste for good ones is. Only here
again we have to define the word 'good.' I don't mean by 'good,'
clever--or learned--or difficult in the doing. Take a picture by
Teniers, of sots quarrelling over their dice: it is an entirely clever
picture; so clever that nothing in its kind has ever been done equal to
it; but it is also an entirely base and evil picture. It is an
expression of delight in the prolonged contemplation of a vile thing,
and delight in that is an 'unmannered,' or 'immoral' quality. It is 'bad
taste' in the profoundest sense--it is the taste of the devils. On the
other hand, a picture of Titian's, or a Greek statue, or a Greek coin,
or a Turner landscape, expresses delight in the perpetual contemplation
of a good and perfect thing. That is an entirely moral quality--it is
the taste of the angels. And all delight in art, and all love of it,
resolve themselves into simple love of that which deserves love. That
deserving is the quality which we call 'loveliness'--(we ought to have
an opposite word, hateliness, to be said of the things which deserve to
be hated); and it is not an indifferent nor optional thing whether we
love this or that; but it is just the vital function of all our being.
What we _like_ determines what we _are_, and is the sign of what we are;
and to teach taste is inevitably to form character. As I was thinking
over this, in walking up Fleet Street the other day, my eye caught the
title of a book standing open in a bookseller's window. It was--'On the
necessity of the diffusion of taste among all classes.' 'Ah,' I thought
to myself, 'my classifying friend, when you have diffused your taste,
where will your classes be