Falconer resumed.
'I think this is as likely as any place,' he said, 'to be free of
such physical blots. For the moral I cannot say. But I have
learned, I hope, not to be too fastidious--I mean so as to be unjust
to the whole because of the part. The impression made by a whole is
just as true as the result of an analysis, and is greater and more
valuable in every respect. If we rejoice in the beauty of the
whole, the other is sufficiently forgotten. For moral ugliness, it
ceases to distress in proportion as we labour to remove it, and
regard it in its true relations to all that surrounds it. There is
an old legend which I dare say you know. The Saviour and his
disciples were walking along the way, when they came upon a dead
dog. The disciples did not conceal their disgust. The Saviour
said: "How white its teeth are!"'
'That is very beautiful,' I rejoined. 'Thank God for that. It is
true, whether invented or not. But,' I added, 'it does not quite
answer to the question about which we have been talking. The Lord
got rid of the pain of the ugliness by finding the beautiful in it.'
'It does correspond, however, I think, in principle,' returned
Falconer; 'only it goes much farther, making the exceptional beauty
hallow the general ugliness--which is the true way, for beauty is
life, and therefore infinitely deeper and more powerful than
ugliness which is death. "A dram of sweet," says Spenser, 'is worth
a pound of sour.
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