men the most meticulously mannered. But their manners are not the
decorum of the humanist, they are the etiquette of the worldling.
Chesterfield had these folk in mind when he spoke with an intolerable,
if incisive, cynicism of those who know the art of combining the
useful appearances of virtue with the solid satisfactions of vice.

Such naturalism is sometimes tolerated by those who aspire to urbane
and liberal judgments because they think it can be defended on
humanistic grounds. But, as a matter of fact, it is as offensive to
the thoroughgoing humanist as it is to the sincere religionist.
They have a common quarrel with it. Take, for example, the notorious
naturalistic doctrine of art for art's sake, the defiant divorcing of
ethical and aesthetic values. Civilization no less than religion
must fight this. For it is as false in experience and as unclear in
thinking as could well be imagined. Its defense, so far as it has
any, is based upon the confusion in the pagan mind of morality with
moralizing, a confusion that no good humanist would ever permit
himself. Of course, the end of art is neither preaching nor teaching
but delighting. For that very reason, however, art, too, must
conform--hateful word!--conform to fixed standards. For the sense of
proportion, the instinct for elimination, is integral to art and this,
as Professor Babbitt points out, is attained only with the aid of
the ethical imagination.[18] Because without the ethical restraint,
the creative spirit roams among unbridled emotions; art becomes
impressionism. What it then produces may indeed be picturesque,
melodramatic, sensual, but it will not be beautiful because there
will be no imaginative wholeness in it. In other words, the artist
who divorces aesthetics from ethics does gain creative license, but
he gains it at the expense of a balanced and harmonious expression.
If you do not believe it, compare the Venus de Milo with the Venus de