He means just the same thing as was
meant when I spoke above "of the noble and profound application of ideas
to life"; and he means the application of these ideas under the
conditions fixed for us by the laws of poetic beauty and poetic truth.
If it is said that to call these ideas _moral_ ideas is to introduce a
strong and injurious limitation, I answer that it is to do nothing of
the kind, because moral ideas are really so main a part of human life.
The question, _how to live_, is itself a moral idea; and it is the
question which most interests every man, and with which, in some way or
other, he is perpetually occupied. A large sense is of course to be
given to the term _moral_. Whatever bears upon the question, "how to
live," comes under it.
"Nor love thy life, nor hate; but, what thou liv'st, Live well; how long
or short, permit to heaven."[369]
In those fine lines Milton utters, as every one at once perceives, a
moral idea. Yes, but so too, when Keats consoles the forward-bending
lover on the Grecian Urn, the lover arrested and presented in immortal
relief by the sculptor's hand before he can kiss, with the line,
"Forever wilt thou love, and she be fair--"
he utters a moral idea.
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