Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 9.djvu/393

 THE DOCTBINK OF Till) SI'MMl M BONUM. 379 ii with self is not a sin against the Decalogue, but it is the sin of all others which the world has least patience with. Irreproachable morals, great usefulness, high position, learn- m;,', genius, even wit are swamped and overwhelmed by this fatal defect. It is easy to be sarcastic about this social fact. "Little people are always affronted by a genius who does not think them interesting ". But the world is right and the epigrammatist wrong. Self-centredness may be vice refined of all its grossness, but it is vice still. 19. In the other departments of human life, in art or science, we find no less that it is a spirit of self-forgetfulness which wins our highest approval. The artist must not labour at his art that he may cultivate himself, but cultivate himself that he may excel in his art. Here is a phrase from Browning's preface to his Selected Poems : " Having hitherto done my utmost in the art to which my life is a devotion ". This is the spirit in an artist which the world admires ; and it is doubtful whether any other is ever conjoined with a high pitch of artistic production or even acquirement. So also it is with the man of science. Here is an illus- trative quotation: "When one turns to the magnificent edifice of the physical sciences, and sees how it was reared, what thousands of disinterested moral lives of men lie buried in its mere foundations ; what patience and postponement, what choking down of preference what submission to the icy laws of outer fact are wrought into its very stones and mortar ; how absolutely impersonal it stands in its vast augustness, then how besotted and contemptible seems every little sentimentalist," ] and so on. An edifice of this kind was never reared by men of the self-realising breed. '20. An attack upon eudaemonism is rendered difficult by its long and in many ways glorious history. The appeal to self-observation which must always be the mainstay of its critics seems inadequate against a theory which has held the field so long and has the backing of so many eminent names. Thus in addition to the direct attack a few his- torical remarks are needed to explain in some degree its prevalence and power. No doubt it was the first theory to make its appearance because of the practical bent of early speculation. Aristotle states the object of his Ethics in blunt language. " Our present inquiry has not, like the rest, a merely speculative aim ; we are not inquiring merely in order to know what excellence or virtue is, but in order to become good ; for 1 Win. .1. vines. Will to Helieiv, p. 7.