MR. ARNOLD AS A TEACHER.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR.') SIR,—In your article on "Mr. Arnold as a Moral and Religious Teacher" you (justly, as it seems to me) object to him for co- ordinating—to say the least of it—the claims which " beauty " and " righteousness " have upon mankind. The key to Mr. Arnold's doctrine appears to be contained in the saying of Goethe, "The Beautiful is higher than the Good, the Beautiful includes in it the Good." But what test have we that the Beautiful is higher, in the sense of having higher claims upon us ; and does the comprehension of one notion within another necessarily involve the inferiority—as an end—of the comprehended notion ? In cases of competition between the ideas of right and beauty, we have, from the Christian point of view, an objective—subjectively objective, if you will—guide within us as to which is to be pursued, while, from the merely human point of view, we still have a greater consensus of opinion as to what is right than what is beauty, and further, as to which is to be followed in preference.— I am, Sir, &c.,
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