ss. The triumph of creation can give an
intimate pleasure to him who can "feel it"; errors, even slight, will
then be perceived as discords. Aesthetic education is, in short, akin
to the mathematical approximation towards the absolute average; the
more it is possible to approach to the true measure in its extreme
limits, and the closer we can get to this, the more possible does it
become to have an absolute means of comparison for the consideration
of deviations. The great artist is thus able to recognize the
beautiful in a detail even in the midst of other discordant details;
and the more capable he is of possessing an absolute sense of the
beautiful, the more readily will he perceive any disproportion of
form.

Something of the same sort may happen in the conscience in relation to
the distinction between good and evil; the more so as the good stands
for real utility in life far more directly than the beautiful, and the
evil may be roughly said to represent danger. Have not animals,
perhaps, an acute instinct of self-preservation, which dictates
infinite details of conduct to them, both for the maintenance of life
and for its protection? Dogs, horses, and cats, and generally
speaking, all domestic animals, do not await the imminent earthquake
quietly and unconsciously, as does man, but become agitated. When the
ice is about to crack, the Esquimaux dogs which draw the sleighs
detach themselves one from the other, as if to avoid falling in; while
man can only observe their amazing instinct with stupefaction. Man has
not by nature these intense instincts; it is by means of intelligence
and the sensibility of his conscience to good and evil that he
constructs his defenses and recognizes his perils. And if this
intelligence of his, which is actually capable of transforming the
world, raises him to such a supreme height above animals, to what a
lofty eminence might he raise himself by developing his moral
consciousness!

But on the contrary, man to-day is reduced to the point of asking
himself seriously whether animals are not better than he. When man
wishes to exalt himself, he says: "I am faithful as a dog, pure as a
dove, strong as a lion."

Indeed, animals have always that instinct which is admirable, for it
confers on them a mysterious power; but if man lacks sensibility of
conscience he is inferior to the animals; nothing can then save him
from excesses; he may rush upon his own ruin, upon havoc and
destruction in