ines of others instead of giving us your own.' Can
I say what I do not know? 'You may offer an opinion.' And will the
blindness and crookedness of opinion content you when you might have
the light and certainty of science? 'I will only ask you to give such
an explanation of the good as you have given already of temperance and
justice.' I wish that I could, but in my present mood I cannot reach to
the height of the knowledge of the good. To the parent or principal I
cannot introduce you, but to the child begotten in his image, which
I may compare with the interest on the principal, I will. (Audit the
account, and do not let me give you a false statement of the debt.)
You remember our old distinction of the many beautiful and the one
beautiful, the particular and the universal, the objects of sight and
the objects of thought? Did you ever consider that the objects of sight
imply a faculty of sight which is the most complex and costly of our
senses, requiring not only objects of sense, but also a medium, which is
light; without which the sight will not distinguish between colours and
all will be a blank? For light is the noble bond between the perceiving
faculty and the thing perceived, and the god who gives us light is the
sun, who is the eye of the day, but is not to be confounded with the eye
of man. This eye of the day or sun is what I call the child of the good,
standing in the same relation to the visible world as the good to the
intellectual. When the sun shines the eye sees, and in the intellectual
world where truth is, there is sight and light. Now that which is the
sun of intelligent natures, is the idea of good, the cause of knowledge
and truth, yet other and fairer than they are, and standing in the
same relation to them in which the sun stands to light. O inconceivable
height of beauty, which is above knowledge and above truth! ('You cannot
surely mean pleasure,' he said. Peace, I replied.) And this idea of
good, like the sun, is also the cause of growth, and the author not of
knowledge only, but of being, yet greater far than either in dignity
and power. 'That is a reach of thought more than human; but, pray, go
on with the image, for I suspect that there is more behind.' There is,
I said; and bearing in mind our two suns or principles, imagine further
their corresponding worlds--one of the visible, the other of the
intelligible; you may assist your fancy by figuring the distinction
under the image of a line di