re or quality in
ethics. This is surely a very curious example of that extravagant bias
against morality which makes so many ultra-modern aesthetes as morbid
and fanatical as any Eastern hermit. Unquestionably it is a very
common phrase of modern intellectualism to say that the morality of one
age can be entirely different to the morality of another. And like a
great many other phrases of modern intellectualism, it means literally
nothing at all. If the two moralities are entirely different, why do
you call them both moralities? It is as if a man said, "Camels in
various places are totally diverse; some have six legs, some have none,
some have scales, some have feathers, some have horns, some have wings,
some are green, some are triangular. There is no point which they have
in common." The ordinary man of sense would reply, "Then what makes
you call them all camels? What do you mean by a camel? How do you know
a camel when you see one?" Of course, there is a permanent substance of
morality, as much as there is a permanent substance of art; to say that
is only to say that morality is morality, and that art is art. An
ideal art critic would, no doubt, see the enduring beauty under every
school; equally an ideal moralist would see the enduring ethic under
every code. But practically some of the best Englishmen that ever lived
could see nothing but filth and idolatry in the starry piety of the
Brahmin. And it is equally true that practically the greatest group of
artists that the world has ever seen, the giants of the Renaissance,
could see nothing but barbarism in the ethereal energy of Gothic.

This bias against morality among the modern aesthetes is nothing very
much paraded. And yet it is not really a bias against morality; it is
a bias against other people's morality. It is generally founded on a
very definite moral preference for a certain sort of life, pagan,
plausible, humane. The modern aesthete, wishing us to believe that he
values beauty more than conduct, reads Mallarme, and drinks absinthe in
a tavern. But this is not only his favourite kind of beauty; it is
also his favourite kind of conduct. If he really wished us to believe
that he cared for beauty only, he ought to go to nothing but Wesleyan
school treats, and paint the sunlight in the hair of the Wesleyan
babies. He ought to read nothing but very eloquent theological sermons
by old-fashioned Presbyterian divines. Here the lack of all possible
mo