And the making of that single decision is a most
momentous judgment of value. If the scientist appeals to it, as indeed
he invariably does, he too is at bottom, though he may deny it, a
humanist. He would do better to confess it, and to confess that he too
is in search of the good life. Then he might become aware that to search
for the good life is in fact impossible, unless he has an ideal of it
before his mind's eye.
An ideal of the good life, if it is to have the internal coherence and
the organic force of a true ideal, _must inevitably be aesthetic_. There
is no other power than our aesthetic intuition by which we can imagine or
conceive it; we can express it only in aesthetic terms. We say, for
instance, the good life is that in which man has achieved a harmony of
the diverse elements in his soul. For the good life, we know
instinctively, is one of our human absolutes. It is not good with
reference to any end outside itself. A man does not live the good life
because he is a good citizen; but he is a good citizen because he lives
the good life.
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