With as deep a reverence for the True as ever inspired the bosom
of man, I would nevertheless limit, in some measure, its modes of
inculcation. I would limit to enforce them. I would not enfeeble
them by dissipation. The demands of Truth are severe. She has no
sympathy with the myrtles. All that which is so indispensable in
Song is precisely all that with which she has nothing whatever to
do. It is but making her a flaunting paradox to wreathe her in gems
and flowers. In enforcing a truth we need severity rather than
efflorescence of language. We must be simple, precise, terse. We
must be cool, calm, unimpassioned. In a word, we must be in that
mood which, as nearly as possible, is the exact converse of the
poetical. He must be blind indeed who does not perceive the radical
and chasmal difference between the truthful and the poetical modes
of inculcation. He must be theory-mad beyond redemption who, in
spite of these differences, shall still persist in attempting to
reconcile the obstinate oils and waters of Poetry and Truth.
Dividing the world of mind into its three most immediately obvious
distinctions, we have the Pure Intellect, Taste, and the Moral
Sense. I place Taste in the middle, because it is just this position
which in the mind it occupies. It holds intimate relations with either
extreme; but from the Moral Sense is separated by so faint a
difference that Aristotle has not hesitated to place some of its
operations among the virtues themselves.
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