eisure of that ideal
existence. These are the elements of our positive happiness, the
things which, amid a thousand vexations and vanities, make the
clear profit of living.

_Aesthetic consecration of general principles._

Sec. 6. Not only are the various satisfactions which morals are meant
to secure aesthetic in the last analysis, but when the conscience is
formed, and right principles acquire an immediate authority, our
attitude to these principles becomes aesthetic also. Honour,
truthfulness, and cleanliness are obvious examples. When the
absence of these virtues causes an instinctive disgust, as it does in
well-bred people, the reaction is essentially aesthetic, because it is
not based on reflection and benevolence, but on constitutional
sensitiveness. This aesthetic sensitiveness is, however, properly
enough called moral, because it is the effect of conscientious
training and is more powerful for good in society than laborious
virtue, because it is much more constant and catching. It is
Kalokagathia, the aesthetic demand for the morally good, and
perhaps the finest flower of human nature.

But this tendency of representative principles to become
independent powers and acquire intrinsic value is sometimes
mischievous. It is the foundation of the conflicts between
sentiment and justice, between intuitive and utilitarian morals.
Every human reform is the reassertion of the primary interests of
man against the authority of general principles which have ceased
to represent those interests fairly, but which still obtain the
idolatrous veneration of mankind. Nor are chivalry and religion
alone liable to fall into this moral superstition. It arises wherever
an abstract good is substituted for its concrete equivalent. The
miser's fallacy is the typical case, and something very like it is the
ethical principle of half our respectable population. To the exercise
of certain useful habits men come to sacrifice the advantage which
was the original basis and justification of those habits. Minute
knowledge is pursued at the expense of largeness of mind, and
riches at the expense of comfort and freedom.

This error is all the more specious when the derived aim has in
itself some aesthetic charm, such as belongs to the Stoic idea of
playing one's part in a vast drama of things, irrespective of any
advantage thereby accruing to any one; somewhat as the miser's
passion is rendered a little normal when his eye is fascinated not