rcise develops a cultivated moral taste or tact. And when,
further, the reason, by means of this faculty of judgment, gains control
over the passions, man becomes an ethical artist, a moral virtuoso.

Virtue pleases by its own worth and beauty, not because of any external
advantage. We must not corrupt the love of the good for its own sake by
mixing with it the hope of future reward, which at the best is admissible
only as a counter-weight against evil passions. When Shaftesbury speaks of
future bliss, his highest conception of the heavenly life is uninterrupted
friendship, magnanimity, and nobility, as a continual rewarding of virtue
by new virtue.

The good is the beautiful, and the beautiful is the harmonious, the
symmetrical; hence the essence of virtue consists in the balance of the
affections and passions. Of the three classes into which Shaftesbury
divides the passions, one, including the "unnatural" or unsocial
affections, as malevolence, envy, and cruelty, which aim neither at the
good of the individual nor that of others, is always and entirely evil.

The two other classes, the social (or "natural") affections and the
"self-affections," may be virtuous or vicious, according to their degree,
_i. e_., according to the relation of their strength to that of the other
affections. In itself a benevolent impulse is never too strong; it
can become so only in comparison with self-love, or in respect to the
constitution of the individual in question, and conversely. Commonly the
social impulses do not attain the normal standard, while the selfish exceed
it; but the opposite case also occurs. Excessive parental tenderness, the
pity which enervates and makes useless for aid, religious zeal for making
converts, passionate partisanship, are examples of too violent social
affections which interfere with the activity of the other inclinations.
Just as erroneous, on the other side, is the neglect of one's own good.
For although the possession of selfish inclinations does not make a
man virtuous, yet the lack of them is a moral defect, since they are
indispensable to the general good. No one can be useful to others who
does not keep himself in a condition for service. The impulse to care for
private welfare is good and necessary in so far as it comports with the
general welfare or contributes to this. The due proportion between the
social passions, which constitute the direct source of good, and those of
self-love, consists in