his fortunes. This was the truth that lay in the Platonic doctrine that
all sin is ignorance; but Plato did not take account of any possible
depravity in the will. Nor is what has been illustrated above true of
the mind and the will only. In the region of emotion and of beauty,
there may be similar aberration, if these are not grasped in their vital
nature, in organic relation to the whole of life.

These several parts of our being are not independent of one another, but
are in the closest alliance. They act conjointly and with one result in
the single soul in which they find their unity as various energies of
one personal power. It cannot be that contradiction should arise among
them in their right operation, nor the error of one continue undetected
by the others; that the base should be joyful or the wicked beautiful in
reality, is impossible. In the narrow view the lust of the eye and the
pride of life may seem beautiful, but in the broad perspective of the
inward world they take on ugliness; in the moment they may seem
pleasurable, but in the backward reach of memory they take on pain; to
assert eternity against the moment, to see life in the whole, to live as
if all of life were concentrated in its instant, is the chief labour of
the mind, the eye, the heart, the enduring will, all together. To
represent a villain as attractive is an error of art, which thus
misrepresents the harmony of our nature. Satan, as conceived by Milton,
may seem to be a majestic figure, but he was not so to Milton's
imagination. "The Infernal Serpent" is the first name the poet gives
him; and though sublime imagery of gloom and terror is employed to
depict his diminished brightness and inflamed malice, Milton repeatedly
takes pains to degrade him to the eye, as when in Paradise he is
surprised at the ear of Eve "squat like a toad"; and when he springs up
in his own form there, as the "grisly king," he mourns most his beauty
lost; neither is his resolute courage long admirable. To me, at least,