“Yes.”

“Whereas a true Good, you think, must be good in essence and substance?”

“Yes; don’t you think so too?”

“I do,” I replied, “but how about the others?”

Dennis assented, and the others did not object, not appearing, indeed, to have attended much to the argument.  So I continued, “We have then, so far, discovered in this class of Goods, two main defects, the first, that they are precarious; the second, which is closely connected with the other, and is in fact, I suppose, its explanation, that they are, shall we say, accidental, understanding the word in the sense we have just defined.  Now, let us see if we cannot find any class of Goods similar to these, but free from their defects.”

“But similar in what respect,” he asked, “if they are not to have similar defects?”

“Similar, I meant, in being direct presentations to sense.”

“But are there any such Goods?”

“I think so,” I said.  “What do you say to works of Art?  These, are they not, are direct presentations to sense?  Yet such that it is their whole nature and essence on the one hand to be beautiful, and to that extent Good—­for I suppose you will admit that the Beautiful is a kind of Good; and on the other hand, if I may dare to say so, to be, in a certain sense, eternal.”

“Eternal!” cried Ellis, “I only wish they were!  What wouldn’t we give for the works of Polygnotus and Apelles!”

“Oh yes,” I said, “of course, in that way, regarded as material objects, they are as perishable as all the works of nature.  But I was talking of them as Art, not as mere things; and from that point of view, surely, each is a moment, or a series of moments, cut away, as it were, from the contact of chance or change and set apart in a timeless world of its own, never of its own nature, to pass into something else, but only through the alien nature of the matter to which it is bound.”

“What do you mean?” cried Parry.  “I am quite at sea.”

“Perhaps,” I said, “you will understand the point better if I give it you in the words of a poet.”

And I quoted the well-known stanzas from Keats’ “Ode on a Grecian Urn”: 

  “Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
    Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
  Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear’d. 
    Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone;
  Fair youth beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
    Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
      Bold lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
  Though winning near the goal—­yet, do not grieve;
      She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
    For ever wilt thou love and she be fair!

  “Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
    Your leaves, nor ever bid the spring adieu;
  And, happy melodist, unwearied,
    For ever piping songs for ever new;
  More happy love! more happy, happy love!