The dance of life / Havelock Ellis.

  • Ellis, Havelock, 1859-1939.
Date:
1923
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The dance of life / Havelock Ellis. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    town have their interest. But so have those of a Casa¬ nova. And the moral maxims of a Goethe may possibly have more interest than either. There is the rigid cate¬ gorical imperative of Kant; and there is also that other dictum, less rigid but more reminiscent of Greece, which some well-inspired person has put into the mouth of Walt Whitman : “ Whatever tastes sweet to the most perfect person, that is finally right.” Ill Fundamentally considered, there are two roads by which we may travel towards the moral ends of life : the road of Tradition, which is ultimately that of Instinct, pursued by the many, and the road of what seems to be reason sought out by the few. And ultimately these two roads are but the same road, for reason also is an instinct. It is true that the ingenuity of analytic investi¬ gators like Hemy Sidgwick has succeeded in enumerating various “ methods of ethics.” But, roughly speaking, there can only be two main roads of life, and only one has proved supremely important. It has been by following the path of tradition moulded by instinct that man reached the threshold of civilisation : whatever may have been the benefits he derived from the guidance of reason he never consciously allowed reason to control his moral life. Tables of commandments have ever been “ given by God”; they represented, that is to say, obscure impulses of the organism striving to respond to prac¬ tical needs. No one dreamed of commending them by declaring that they were reasonable.