227. Which of the three factors is predominant in music?
228. What is the advantage of imitation over reality?
229. What are the three aspects of the artistic problem of imitation?
230. What training does the mind receive from the enjoyment of handicraft and architecture?
231. What kind of esthetic enjoyment has developed most recently?
232. How does nature assist man in the highest development of his esthetic ability?
§ [26]. Morality
What remedy does mind discover for the third class of evils, those resulting from its own activity for other members of society, and those resulting from the restlessness, the protestation of the latter? The remedy is essentially a social phenomenon, and can be discussed here only very briefly with respect to the individual mind.
Mind learns to appreciate and to train itself for activities contributing directly to the welfare of society as a whole by actually working for the good of others rather than for its own good. When the social group increases in size, the more experienced and provident members recognize, not by logical reasoning but as the immediate result of experience, that brutally egotistic acts give rise to quarrel and distrust, weaken the ties which hold together the members, and make the group the prey of its enemies. Altruistic acts, on the other hand, are found to strengthen the group. These influential members then endeavor to further the latter and to suppress the former kind of actions. There are two possible ways of bringing this about.
First, compulsion. Acts destructive to society are punished. He who commits them thus suffers a disadvantage much greater than the immediate advantage, and the consciousness of this probability of suffering inhibits the act. The total concept of activities or inactivities enforced by punishment is the law. But the law is not far-reaching enough. A society of wholly wicked beings cannot be held together by law. Faith and loyalty cannot be enforced.