her rectitude of soul
only, but by its "fairness"--by those quite different qualities [61]
which commend themselves to the poet and the artist.

Yet, for most of us, the conception of means and ends covers the whole
of life, and is the exclusive type or figure under which we represent
our lives to ourselves. Such a figure, reducing all things to
machinery, though it has on its side the authority of that old Greek
moralist who has fixed for succeeding generations the outline of the
theory of right living, is too like a mere picture or description of
men's lives as we actually find them, to be the basis of the higher
ethics. It covers the meanness of men's daily lives, and much of the
dexterity with which they pursue what may seem to them the good of
themselves or of others; but not the intangible perfection of those
whose ideal is rather in being than in doing--not those manners which
are, in the deepest as in the simplest sense, morals, and without which
one cannot so much as offer a cup of water to a poor man without
offence--not the part of "antique Rachel," sitting in the company of
Beatrice; and even the moralist might well endeavour rather to withdraw
men from the too exclusive consideration of means and ends, in life.

Against this predominance of machinery in our existence, Wordsworth's
poetry, like all great art and poetry, is a continual protest. Justify
rather the end by the means, it seems to say: whatever may become of
the fruit, make sure of [62] the flowers and the leaves. It was justly
said, therefore, by one who had meditated very profoundly on the true
relation of means to ends in life, and on the distinction between what
is desirable in itself and what is desirable only as machinery, that
when the battle which he and his friends were waging had been won, the
world would need more than ever those qualities which Wordsworth was
keeping alive and nourishing.*

That the end of life is not action but contemplation--being as distinct
from doing--a certain disposition of the mind: is, in some shape or
other, the principle of all the higher morality. In poetry, in art, if
you enter into their true spirit at all; you touch this principle, in a
measure: these, by their very sterility, are a type of beholding for
the mere joy of beholding. To treat life in the spirit of art, is to
make life a thing in which means and ends are identified: to encourage
such treatment, the true moral significance of art and