Beauty and Genius by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The old definition of beauty in the Roman school of painting was, _il più / nell' uno_ -- multitude in unity; and there is no doubt that such is the / principle of beauty. And as one of the most characteristic and infallible / criteria of the different ranks of men's intellects, observe the / instinctive habit which all superior minds have of endeavouring to bring, / and of never resting till they have brought, into unity the scattered facts / which occur in conversation, or in the statements of men of business. To / attempt to argue any great question upon facts only, is absurd; you cannot / state any fact before a mixed audience, which an opponent as clever as / yourself cannot with ease twist towards another bearing, or at least meet / by a contrary fact, as it is called. I wonder why facts were ever called / stubborn things: I am sure they have been found pliable enough lately in / the House of Commons and elsewhere. Facts, you know, are not truths; they / are not conclusions; they are not even premisses, but in the nature and / parts of premisses. The truth depends on, and is only arrived at, by a / legitimate deduction from _all_ the facts which are truly material.