These two occasional arguments leave the real issue untouched. The real
ground for the poet's faith in his moral intuitions lies in his
subscription to the old Platonic doctrine of the trinity,--the
fundamental identity of the good, the true and the beautiful.
There is something in the nature of a practical joke in the facility
with which Plato's bitter enemies, the poets, have fitted to themselves
his superlative praise of the philosopher's virtue. [Footnote: See the
_Republic_, VI, 485, ff.] The moral instincts of the philosopher
are unerring, Plato declares, because the philosopher's attention is
riveted upon the unchanging idea of the good which underlies the
confusing phantasmagoria of the temporal world. The poets retort that
the moral instincts of the poet, more truly than of the philosopher, are
unerring, because the poet's attention is fixed upon the good in its
most ravishing aspect, that of beauty, and in this guise it has an
irresistible charm which it cannot hold even for the philosopher.
Poets' convictions on this point have remained essentially unchanged
throughout the history of poetry.
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