Except among people with almost no brains or imagination
at all, it will be popular." [Footnote: Gerald Stanley Lee. Cf. also G.
Lowes Dickinson, The Meaning of Good, p. 141. Of morality he
says: "Its specific quality consists in the refusal to seize some
immediate and inferior good with a view to the attainment of one
that is remoter but higher".] The difference between the moral and
the immoral man is not that the latter allows himself to enjoy pleasant
and exciting phases of experience which the former denies himself
for the sake of some good lying outside of experience, but that the
latter indulges himself in any agreeable sensation that he chances
to desire, while the former conflict with greater, being content not
with any goods that may come to hand, but only with the attainable
best. [Footnote: Cf. G. Santayana, Reason in Science, pp. 252-53:
"Happiness is hidden from a free and casual will; it belongs rather
to one chastened by a long education and unfolded in an
atmosphere of sacred and perfected institutions. It is discipline that
renders men rational and capable of happiness, by suppressing without
hatred what needs to be suppressed to attain a beautiful naturalness."]
What are the inadequacies of instinct and impulse that necessitate
morality? It would seem as if the best way to live should be obvious
and irresistible in its appeal. But in truth we are commonly very blind
and foolish about this business of living; we lack wisdom, and we
lack motive-power at the right place.
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