Chapter VIII (3)

But Keats, we remember, was a Pagan, a modern Greek, and men like this are quite as apt to think that Beauty is “the one thing needful” as the other stamp of man is to think that Righteousness is “the one thing needful;” whereas the real fact is that both are needful. What an advantage, then, have we over both Jews and Greeks in our appreciation of this! At the best, it is not possible to look upon either Paul or Plato as exponents of anything final. It requires two wings to soar with, and who can think that this “ugly little Jew,” as M. Renan has it, who talked nonsense about an Art which at best seemed to him mostly diabolical, was dowered with two? Nor yet can we think this of that “high Athenian gentleman,” as Carlyle retorts, with his illustrious Master who would have been so “terribly at ease in Zion.” Let us recognize it at once: the Jews are great and the Greeks are great, but neither of them by themselves can satisfy us. Nay, further; to the sense of Righteousness and Beauty must now be added that sense which Bacon first brought with any fertility to us—the sense of Science. “And we,” says Arnold,

“and we have been on many thousand lines,
and we have shown, in each, spirit and power.”

And it is just from the combination of the results of our spirit and power on these many thousand lines that this Culture of ours, this unique product of our times, springs. It was not before this possible. How could Paul understand the Greek Art? how could Plato have understood the Hebrew Righteousness? It was not till the Renascence, till Shakspere, that such a thing was possible, and it was not till Modernity, till Goethe, that it was possible to find these two senses, the sense of Beauty and of Righteousness, united to that third great sense, the sense of Science. I do not say that our age is necessarily a peculiarly great age: you may call it the dwarf on the giant’s shoulders, if you please; but what I do say is, that it is the first age which has been able to attain to anything like a really comprehensive Culture, a knowledge of the best that has been known and thought in the world. Possibly we are only on the threshold of Truth: possibly it will be left to another age to work out and complete what we have but begun; but this I think is certain: We _are_ on the threshold, and the sooner we realize it, the sooner shall we realize that we are men in whom it is incumbent to put off childish things, the sooner shall we advance into the palace and very home.

Ah, then, let us no longer content ourselves with anything less than the best article! Let us live for the Idea of Culture, for and by it—for the best that has been thought and known in the world! Let us, too, like Goethe, resolve to wean ourselves from halves, from partial and prejudiced views of things, and to live “_im Ganzen, Guten, Schönen_”—“for the Whole, the Good, the Beautiful!”

_December, 1885._

“DAWNWARDS:”

AN AUSTRALIAN DIALOGUE.