imal
passion of sex may rise Dante's beatific vision of Beatrice.
Conduct, consciously controlled, finds not only ways by which
animal desires may be fulfilled without catastrophe; it
transmutes animal desires into ideal values.

REFLECTION TRANSFORMS CUSTOMS INTO PRINCIPLES. In
reflective behavior, as contrasted with that which is controlled by
instinct and custom, there are established standards of action
to which the individual consciously conforms. That is, instead
of merely conforming to custom, an individual comes to
act upon principles, consciously avowed and maintained. A
man who sets up a standard of action in his professional or
business relations is not conforming to an arbitrary code; he is
living according to a way of life which he has deliberately and
consciously chosen. When a man acts upon principles because
he has consciously adopted them in view of the consequences
which he believes to be associated with them, he will
not make his standard an idol. Reflection establishes standards,
but it is not mastered by them. It is persistently critical.
Standards are tools, instruments toward the achievement
of the good. They are merely general rules, derived from
experience and retained so long as they bear desirable fruits
in experience. Moral laws are not regarded as arbitrary and
eternal, but as good only in so far as they produce good. A
virtue is a virtue because it is conducive to human well-being.
Standards are not absolute, but relative--relative to their
fruits in practice.

REFLECTIVE ACTION GENUINELY MORAL. Action is most genuinely
moral when it is reflective. It is only then that the
individual is a conscious and controlling agent. It is only
then that he knows what he is doing. When a machine performs
actions that happen to have useful results, we do not
speak of the action as moral or virtuous. And action in
conformity with custom is purely mechanical and arbitrary. An
individual who is merely conforming to the customary is no
more moral than an automaton. Given a certain situation,
he makes a certain response. It makes no difference that the
act happens to have fruitful consequences. It is not a matter
of individual choice, of conscious volition. Aristotle long ago
stated the indispensable conditions of moral actions:

It is necessary that the agent at the time of performing them
should satisfy certain conditions, _i.e._ in the first place that he should
know what he is doing, secondly that