Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/602

 586 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

men to each other, most frequently and evidently in erotic rela- tions, we notice how reserve, indifference, or repulse inflames the most passionate desire to conquer in spite of these obstacles, and spurs us to efforts and sacrifices which, without these obsta- cles, would surely seem to us excessive. For many people the aesthetic results of ascending the high Alps would not be con- sidered worth further notice, if it did not demand extraordinary effort and danger, and if it did not thereby acquire tone, attractiveness, and consecration. The charm of antiquities and curiosities is frequently no other. If no sort of aesthetic or histori- cal interest attaches to them, a substitute for it is furnished by the mere difficulty of acquiring them. They are worth just what they cost. This, then, appears secondarily to mean that they cost what they are worth. Furthermore, all moral merit signifies that for the sake of the morally desirable deed contrary impulses and wishes must be fought down and sacrificed. If the act occurs without any conquest, as the matter-of-course outflow of unre- strained impulse, it is not appraised so high in the scale of sub- jective moral value, however desirable objectively its content may be. In this latter case we are not moral in any other sense than the flower is beautiful ; we do not reckon the beauty of the flower as an ethical merit. Only through the sacrifice of the lower and still so seductive good is the height of moral merit attained, and a more lofty height, the more attractive the temp- tation and the deeper and more comprehensive the sacrifice. We might array illustrations, beginning with the ordinary selfishness of the day, the overcoming of which alone rewards us with the consciousness of being somewhat worthy, and rising to that force of logic whose sacrifice in favor of belief in the absurd seemed to the schoolmen an extreme religious merit. If we observe which human achievements attain to the highest honors and appraisals, we find it to be always those which betray a maximum of humility, effort, persistent concentration of the whole being, or at least seem to betray these. In other words, they seem to manifest the most self-denial, sacrifice of all that is subsidiary, and of devotion of the subjective to the objective ideal. And if, in contrast with all this, aesthetic production and