But not with a like distinctness and vivacity of assent can
you get the crowd to go along with you as to the Apollo's beauty.
Acknowledgment of the beautiful in art implies a degree of culture and
a native susceptibility not to be found in every accidental gathering.
Full and sincere assent to your declaration that the statue is very
beautiful presupposes a high ideal in the mind; that is, a lofty
pre-attained idea of what is manly beauty. But after all, the want of
unanimity of assent to a moral or an aesthetic position, does it not
come from the difficulty and subtlety of the idea to be pre-attained?
Assent even to an intellectual proposition, does not it too presuppose
an ideal in the mind of him who assents? When you show by visible
measurement that the statue is eight feet high, whoever understands
what you mean must have already in his head the idea of what one foot
is; that is, he must carry within him an ideal. No tittle of
information, not the slightest accession of knowledge, will you derive
from the measurement even of the area of a hall or of the cubic
contents of a block, unless you bring with you in your mind an idea,
an ideal, of what is a superficial or a cubic square foot.
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