the end presented in it as the object of struggle is not only not the
morally right, but is also to a certain extent essentially the morally
wrong. In the case of cynical and profligate art this is obvious. For
such art does not so much depend on the substitution of some new object,
as in putting insult on the present one. It does not make right and
wrong change places; on the contrary it carefully keeps them where they
are; but it insults the former by transferring its insignia to the
latter. It is not the ignoring of the right, but the denial of it.
Cynicism and profligacy are essentially the spirits that deny, but they
must retain the existing affirmations for their denial to prey upon.
Their function is not to destroy the good, but to keep it in lingering
torture. It is a kind of spiritual bear-baiting. They hate the good, and
its existence piques them; but they must know that the good exists none
the less. '_I'd no sooner_,' says one of Congreve's characters, '_play
with a man that slighted his ill-fortune, than I'd make love to a woman
who undervalued the loss of her reputation_.' In this one sentence is
contained the whole secret of profligacy; and profligacy is the same as
cynicism, only it is cynicism sensualized. Now we have in the above
sentence the exact counterpart to the words of Antigone that I have
already quoted. For just as her life lay in conformity to '_The
unwritten, and the enduring laws of God_,' so does the life of the
profligate lie in the violation of them. To each the existence of laws
is equally essential. For profligacy is not merely the gratification of
the appetites, but the gratification of them at the expense of something
else. Beasts are not profligate. We cannot have a profligate goat.

In what I have called concupiscent art, the case might seem different,
and to a certain extent it is so. The objects of struggle that we are
there presented with are meant to be presented as pleasures, not in
defiance of right and wrong, but independently of them. The chief of