ecause they
derive their beauty from it. This is that beauty identical with
highest good.[32]

Now I do not want to be understood as condemning this mysticism out of
hand. I mean only that while it is eloquent and purifying, it is,
nevertheless, not illuminating; and that if it be mistaken for
illumination, it does in fact hide the light. It has no meaning
whatsoever except the general idea of the superlative, and if it be not
attached to some definite content drawn from {120} experience of acts
and their consequences, it does but substitute a phrase for the proper
objects of action and an emotion for provident conduct.

There is a further moral danger in mysticism, which I need only mention
here, because I propose to discuss it more fully in the chapter on
religion. Since mysticism opposes a formal perfection to the concrete
good of experience, it tends to obscure the distinction between good
and evil. That distinction lies within experience, and if experience
as a whole be discredited, the distinction is discredited with it. If
the common, familiar good is not to be taken as valid, then finality no
longer attaches to that common, familiar evil which the moral will has
been trained to condemn and resist. If the good lie "beyond good and
evil," then neither is the good good nor the evil evil. The result is
to leave the moral will without justification, supported only by habit
and custom.

The virtue of piety lies in its completing, not in its replacing,
secular efficiency. It gives to a life that is provident and fruitful
as it goes, the stimulus of a momentous project, and reverence for a
good that shall embrace unlimited possibilities.

{121}

VII

In reviewing the several levels of life which morality defines, we may
observe two types of universal value. The lower values in relation to
the higher are indispensable. There is no health without satisfaction,
no achievement without health, no rational intercourse without
achievement, and no true religion except as the perfecting and
completing of a rational society. The higher values, on the other
hand, are more universal than the lower in that they surpass these in
validity, and are entitled to preference. Thus the lower values are
ennobled by the higher, while the higher are given body and meaning by
the lower. Satisfaction derives dignity from being controlled by the
motive of good-will, while the moral kingdom at large derives its
wealth, i