Page:The Power of the Spirit.djvu/57

52 ', or according to Delitzsch, 'the power of recognizing the distinction of things in their appearance, διάκρισις.' We. generally talk as if there were only one activity of the spirit, the moral, and as if the aesthetic and intellectual activities were not spiritual at all—especially the aesthetic; and it was against this fallacy that Keats struggled as the prophet of beauty, of 'feeling and perception', and for 'intuition as against intellect', as we can read in Sir Sidney Colvin's Life. Consequently we have no word, except the utterly unworthy metaphor of taste, to describe the aesthetic faculty—the faculty, as the word means, of 'perceiving'. Let us call it understanding—we could have no better word—this power of vision, of comprehension, which makes poetry real to us, which makes pictures something more than paint, and music something more than noise, which is the secret of all the arts. God has cast his beauty over all the face of nature; and yet we have no word to describe our reception of that manifestation. Let us include it in the second gift. Understanding is the power of appreciating Beauty.

Knowledge, Γνῶσις, Scientia, needs no comment. To class it with reverence as the knowledge of God would make no ultimate difference to its meaning; for to know God is to know truth. The scientist, as well as the artist and the saint, owes his gift to the Spirit of God. All truth is sacred and only falsehood is secular. The obscurantist divine is