But what is ideal power? the reader may ask. He might likewise ask, What is moral power? And unless he has in his own mind some faculty of moral estimation, no answer will help him. That which comes to us through feeling cannot be intellectually defined, can only be appreciated through feeling. By describing its effects and accompaniments we approach to a knowledge of what it is. By means of a foot-rule you can make clear to every member of a crowd what is the height of the Apollo Belvedere, and the exact length of the statue's face; and each one can for himself verify the accuracy of your statement. But not with a like distinctness and vivacity of assent can you get the crowd to go along with you as to the Apollo's beauty. Acknowledgment of the beautiful in art implies a degree of culture and a native susceptibility not to be found in every accidental gathering. Full and sincere assent to your declaration that the statue is very beautiful presupposes a high ideal in the mind; that is, a lofty pre-attained idea of what is manly beauty. But after all, the want of unanimity of assent to a moral or an aesthetic position, does it not come from the difficulty and subtlety of the idea to be pre-attained? Assent even to an intellectual proposition, does not it too presuppose an ideal in the mind of him who assents? When you show by visible measurement that the statue is eight feet high, whoever understands what you mean must have already in his head the idea of what one foot is; that is, he must carry within him an ideal. No tittle of information, not the slightest accession of knowledge, will you derive from the measurement even of the area of a hall or of the cubic contents of a block, unless you bring with you in your mind an idea, an ideal, of what is a superficial or a cubic square foot.