HANDSOME ACTION.
THE sense of beauty is far more widely spread than esoteric worshippers of the beautiful would have us believe, but it takes varied forms and is not always easily recognised.
Net the least common form among Englishmen is the moral form. There are a good many men and women whose moral ambition is summed up in the desire for handsome action. They have a perfect eye for moral appearances, but they are not in the least hypocritical. Like all genuine artists, they hate shams. In all the relations of life, be they serious and permanent, or momentary and of no con- sequence, they strive always to do the handsome thing. It is their highest pleasure to act always a little more a
generously than could reasonably have been expected of them, whether they are transacting matters of lifelong moment or rewarding a porter or an errand-boy. They are people of whom all their friends and relations have always reason to be proud. It is from their earliest years an absolute certainty that they will never disgrace. themselves or others. Handsome action is an end of which they never lose sight, but all their lives it is an end which requires sacrifices both slight and serious. They never attain to the liberty of those to whom the look of their actions in the mirror of public opinion is a matter of indifference. They are for ever in bondage to their sense of moral beauty. For them a whole field of harmless and ordinarily successful action is cut off. It is difficult for them to be economical, and if circum- stances render economy imperative, offering no alternative but the more sordid one of debt, their economy is rendered more severe by its secrecy. They must economise in large matters, an economy which will impress their neighbours simply as poverty, not in those small things where care looks like meanness. They cannot bear to show any petty solicitude, and it is not easy for them to deny a request. There is something so ugly about a blank refusal, and its ugliness is always reflected—and so doubled—in the face of the man who receives it. They do not like to seem to look closely after their own interest; indeed, to do them justice, they do not like to be seen doing so, even by themselves. Whatever be their station in life, they have good manners, because bad manners are invari- ably ugly, and considerable social trustworthiness, because they wish always that the handsome side of social life should be uppermost, and hospitality is, as a rule, an instinct with them. Often they are described by their friends as being very "
lordly" in their notions, though we do not think that the peculiarly refined and transfigured form of self-consciousness by which they are actuated is at all typical of aristocracies. Neither is it confined to the highly cultivated. The moral sense of beauty is a primitive sense, and though not likely to exist below the line of civilisation, because below that we get outside self-consciousness, it is sometimes found in perfection among those the aesthetic side of whose nature owes nothing to the study of literature, music, or art. One thing the lovers of handsome action have, however, in common with the typical aristocrat, and with the hyper- cultivated scholar of the upper middle clash. They are almost invariably looked up to by their social inferiors, who approve of this form of lordliness, and like the man who will not descend to much consideration of details, and who would rather be robbed than seem to suspect. The man who cares for handsome action seldom resents a small injury. It is an ugly thing, and he tries to forget it, or to remember it only as something beneath his notice, for, whatever the lowliness or the altitude of his social position, he looks in some sense down upon the world, that world which has so little discrimination, so little regard for its own dignity. Yet for all this he cannot disregard its opinion, make up his mind to suffer its misapprehension, or
forego its nod of approval. Oddly enough, these moral connoisseurs, though they desire and get their weed of praise from the majority, are not often exactly popular. Their sympathies are somewhat limited by the too great thought they give to their own deportment, and they are not easy to know. Indeed, without ever descending into the ugly ways of censorious severity, they not infrequently inspire a good deal of fear. They do not easily commit themselves to any one as they are. They are too anxious about what they would like to be, and like to be thought to be. It is impossible not to respect this attitude of mind, though it is not the best. The man whose moral standard is primarily an aesthetic standard is the most excellent of all servants, but be will hardly rule well. He cannot be quite thorough or quite independent. He will always be prone to small derelictions of duty, and will never give justice a high enough place in the hierarchy of virtue. Mercy is so much more beautiful in the performance. There is something of art for art's sake about his morality, and he misses thus the finest aim of all art. The highest types of men and women are not occupied with thinking about their own moral dignity at all. They are un- selfish because they see clearly the extent of other men's rights and the limits of their own. They are generous, not because generosity is beautiful, but because others are in want ; and kind, not because the beauty of kindness appeals to them, but because the reality of suffering has taken hold upon their minds.
Between these two sets of excellent people—those who are indifferent to moral appearances, and those for whom they are of supreme importance—stand a small third party. They take a certain pleasure in being misunderstood. They have a natural predilection for doing right and seem rather ashamed of it, and if they can induce—without violence to their good instincts—the outside world to give them a bad character they feel a very real pleasure. To those who love handsome action and its reward of acknowledgment their position is almost inconceivable. Yet we believe they are, after all, nearer in mind to these than they are to the opposite type. They have a very strong sense of the aesthetic side of conduct, but their moral vision is slightly distorted. They have an exaggerated admiration for certain virtues, and a great repulsion towards certain vices. Their desire for apparent independence constrains them to avoid every effort to placate the world. They are always afraid lest they should see themselves as time-servers, and, in terror of their own con- demnation, they will risk, and even court, that of the stranger. On the other hand, they do wish, just as those who seek after handsome actions wish, to be understood and appreciated by the few. Their worst-looking actions, their sham meannesses and harshnesses, are mostly done before an audience, and they value the reproaches of their friends who would defend them against themselves as they would value their indignation in the presence of a detractor front the outside. The likeness between these two types is analogous to that which exists between those who crave and those who abhor conspicuousness. In that they are both self-conscious they are both alike. The gulf is fixed, not between these two, but between them and the man who does not care either way, whose goodness is spontaneous, or, if you will, inspired, but, anyhow, not the result of a fine critical faculty applied in the region of ethics.
These types which we have been describing are both of them good—different varieties nprely of the salt which keeps
the world from corruption—but they do not stand upon the same ethical level, any more than the critic and the originator stand on the same intellectual level. No critic, though he turn the whole armoury of his criticism to his own correction, can hope to rival the man who can create.
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