admitting all that can be said as to the destruction for us of any moral
obligation, yet advises us still to profit by the variety of moral
distinctions. '_Each moment_,' says Mr. Pater for instance, '_some form
grows perfect in hand or face; some tone on the hills or sea is choicer
than the rest; some mood of passion or insight or intellectual
excitement, is irresistibly real and attractive for us_.' And thus, he
adds, '_while all melts under our feet, we may well catch at any
exquisite passion, or any contribution to knowledge, that seems by a
lifted horizon to set the spirit free for a moment, or any stirring of
the senses, strange dyes, strange flowers, and curious odours, or the
work of the artist's hand, or the face of one's friend_.' It is plain
that this positive teaching of culture is open to the same objections,
and is based on the same fallacy, as the positive teaching of morals. It
does not teach us, indeed, to let right and wrong guide us in the choice
of our pleasures, in the sense that we should choose the one sort and
eschew the other; but teaching us to choose the two, in one sense
indifferently, it yet teaches us to choose them as distinct and
contrasted things. It teaches us in fact to combine the two fruits
without confusing their flavours. But in the case of good and evil, as
has been seen, this is quite impossible; for good is only good as the
thing that ought to be chosen; evil is only evil as the thing that ought
not to be chosen; and the only reasons that could justify us in
combining them would altogether prevent our distinguishing them. The
teachings of positive culture, in fact, rest on the naïve supposition
that shine and shadow, as it were, are portable things; and that we can
take bright objects out of the sunshine, and dark objects out of the
shadow, and setting them both together in the diffused grey light of a
studio, make a magical mosaic out of them, of gloom and glitter. Or such
teachings, to put the matter yet more simply, are like telling us to
pick a primrose at noonday, and to set it by our bed-side for a