to that point, in so far as it is true
to itself: for the moral consciousness is the rightful sovereign in
the soul of man, or it is nothing; it cannot accept a lower seat
without forfeiting all its rights, and disorganizing the whole
intellectual house. So that a thing cannot be morally false and
artistically true at the same time. And in so far as any workmanship
sins in the former kind, just so far, whatever other elements of the
Beautiful it may have, it still lacks the very bond of order which is
necessary, to retain them in power; nay, the effect of those other
elements is to cultivate a taste which the whole thing fails to
satisfy; what of true beauty is present tends to awaken a craving for
that part which is wanting.

Nor need we have any fear but that in the long run things will come
right in this matter. In this, however, as in most things, truth is
the daughter of time. The moral sense and reason is so strong a force
in the calm and disinterested judgments of mankind, that it must and
will prevail: its verdict may be some time in coming, but come it
will, sooner or later, and will ultimately have things all its own
way. For the aesthetic conscience is probably the most impartial and
inexorable of the human powers; and this, because it acts most apart
from any regards of self-interest or any apprehension of consequences.
The elections of taste are in a special sort exempt both from hope of
profit and from fear of punishment. And man's sense of the Beautiful
is so much in the keeping of his moral reason,--secret keeping indeed,
and all the surer for being secret,--that it cannot be bribed or
seduced to a _constant_ admiration of any beauty where the moral
element is wanting, or even where it is excluded from its rightful
place. In other words, the law of goodness or of moral rectitude is
so closely interwoven with the nature and truth of things, that the
human mind will not set up its rest with any workmanship in Art where
that law is either set at nought or discrowned. Its natural and just
prerogatives will assert themselves in spite of us; and their triumph
is assured the moment we go to resisting them. That which appeals
merely to our sense of the Beautiful, and which has nothing to
recommend it but as it touches that sense, must first of all have the
moral element of beauty, and this too in the foremost place, else it
stands no chance of a permanent hold upon us.

It is indeed true that works of art, or