and appearances of morality are all included and subordinated in a higher form of being. In other words the end, sought for by morality, is above it and is super-moral. Let us gain a general view of the moral demands which call for satisfaction.
The first of these is the suppression of the divorce between morality and goodness. We have seen that every kind of human excellence, beauty, strength, and even luck, are all undeniably good. It is idle pretence if we assert that such gifts are not desired, and are not also approved of. And it is a moral instinct after all for which beauty counts as virtue. For, if we attempt to deny this and to confine virtue to what is commonly called moral conduct, our position is untenable. We are at once hurried forward by our admitted principle into further denials, and virtue recedes from the world until it ceases to be virtue. It seeks an inward centre not vitiated by any connection with the external, or, in other words, as we have seen, it pursues the unmeaning. For the excellence which barely is inner is nothing at all. We must either allow then that physical excellences are good, or we must be content to find virtue not realized anywhere.[1] Hence there will be virtues more or less outward, and less or more inward and spiritual. We must admit kinds and degrees and different levels of virtue. And morality must be distinguished as a special form of the general goodness. It will be now one excellence among others, neither including them all, nor yet capable of a divorced and independent existence. Morality has proved unreal unless it stands on, and vitally consists in, gifts naturally good. And thus we have been forced to
- ↑ If we take such a virtue as courage, and deny its moral goodness where it is only physical, we shall be forced in the end to deny its goodness everywhere. We may see, again, how there may be virtues which, in a sense, rise above mere goodness. This from the view of morality proper is of course impossible.
