but because that
sense is too slow in their minds to prevent their being caught and
carried away by that which touches them at lower points. Yet that
sense is generally strong enough to keep them from standing to the
objects of their present election; so that it is ever drawing them
back one by one to the old truth from which the new falsehood withdrew
them. Thus, however the popular current of the day may set, the
judgment of the wise and good will ultimately give the law in this
matter; and in that judgment the aesthetic and the moral conscience
will ever be found to coincide. So that he who truly works upon the
principle, "Fit audience let me find, though few," will in the long
run have the multitude too: he will not indeed be their first choice,
but he will be their last: their first will be ever shifting its
objects, but their last will stand firm. For here we may justly apply
the aphoristic saying of Burke: "Man is a most unwise and most wise
being: the individual is foolish; the multitude is foolish for the
moment, when they act without deliberation; but the species is wise."

I have said that in the legislation of Art the moral sense and reason
must not only have a voice, but a prerogative voice: I have also said
that a poet must not be required to teach better morals than those of
Nature and Providence. Now the law of moral proportion in Art may be
defeated as well by overworking the moral element as by leaving it out
or by making too little of it. In other words, redundancy of
conscience is quite as bad here as deficiency; in some respects it is
even worse, because its natural effect is to set us on our guard
against the subtle invasions of pious fraud: besides, the deficiency
we can make up for ourselves, but the evil of such suspicions is not
so easily cured. For of all the things that enter into human thought,
I suppose morality is the one wherein we are naturally least tolerant
of special-pleading; and any thing savouring of this is apt to awaken
our jealousy at once; probably from a sort of instinct, that, the
better the cause, the less need there is, and the more danger there is
too, of acting as its attorney or advocate. And the temptation to "lie
for God" is one to which professed moral teachers are so exposed, that
their lessons seldom have much effect: I even suspect that, in many
cases, if not in most, their moralizing is of so obtrusive a kind,
that it rather repels than wins the confidence of the