about morality is an
effort to find a way of living which men who live it will instinctively
feel is good. No formula can express an ultimate experience; no axiom can
ever be a substitute for what really makes life worth living. Plato may
describe the objects which man rejoices over, he may guide them to good
experiences, but each man in his inward life is a last judgment on all
his values.

This amounts to saying that the goal of action is in its final analysis
aesthetic and not moral--a quality of feeling instead of conformity to
rule. Words like justice, harmony, power, democracy are simply empirical
suggestions which may produce the good life. If the practice of them does
not produce it then we are under no obligation to follow them, we should
be idolatrous fools to do so. Every abstraction, every rule of conduct,
every constitution, every law and social arrangement, is an instrument
that has no value in itself. Whatever credit it receives, whatever
reverence we give it, is derived from its utility in ministering to those
concrete experiences which are as obvious and as undefinable as color or
sound. We can celebrate the positively good things, we can live them, we
can create them, but we cannot philosophize about them. To the anaesthetic
intellect we could not convey the meaning of joy. A creature that could
reason but not feel would never know the value of life, for what is
ultimate is in itself inexplicable.

Politics is not concerned with prescribing the ultimate qualities of
life. When it tries to do so by sumptuary legislation, nothing but
mischief is invoked. Its business is to provide opportunities, not to
announce ultimate values; to remove oppressive evil and to invent new
resources for enjoyment. With the enjoyment itself it can have no
concern. That must be lived by each individual. In a sense the politician
can never know his own success, for it is registered in men's inner
lives, and is largely incommunicable. An increasing harvest of rich
personalities is the social reward for a fine statesmanship, but such
personalities are free growths in a cordial environment. They cannot be
cast in moulds or shaped by law. There is no need, therefore, to generate
dialectical disputes about the final goal of politics. No definition can
be just--too precise a one can only deceive us into thinking that our
definition is true. Call ultimate values by any convenient name, it is of
slight importance which you choose. I