"Ah, I see; at present your eyes are in the heart rather than the head, and I dare say that is very pleasant for the time. But what if some savage from the desert or jungle, some oily Greenlander from the icebergs, or thick-headed Serf from Siberian steppes were to meet you with this preference theory?"
"I should honour the sentiment, whatever I might think of his taste," returned Guy; "but I do not allow that preference indicates want of appreciation."
"Well, well, I can only confess for myself a delight in the beautiful and good wherever I find it," replied the stranger, with an air of self-satisfaction that rather provoked his hearer.
"An equal amount of delight?" he inquired.
"Certainly, according to the nature of the subject. Why not?"
"Then," said Guy, laughing, "you deserve to go down—
"'To the vile dust from whence you sprung.
Unwept, unhonoured, and unsung.'"
"Come now, that is a challenge," said the stranger, seating himself at the foot of the tree, "and I am sure you will not deny me the right to defend myself. I should like to convince you that this idea is altogether too narrow and mean for anything so great and wide as man's capacities of intellect and affection. We are, as it were, off-shoots of Deity; we are to emulate our origin, and our sympathies ought to be as generous and universal. Benevolence and beauty being our ideal of God, we worship Him in them wherever they exist, without regard to place or time, or other associations."
"There must be other associations in my ideal of God," said Guy, gravely. "A being all beauty and benevolence might lack wisdom, power, truth, justice, and we need not forget that this very want, with inability to comprehend the union of all such attributes in one Supreme, led to the multiplication of deities in heathen worship."
"Well, you will grant at any rate that the Supreme Being whom we worship is a fount of benevolence and beauty, results of which are spread out everywhere, and everywhere demanding equal homage and admiration?"