" Indeed, for
a short time, and in a provisional sense, this is true. For if,
resolutely, people do what is right, in time they come to like doing
it. But they only are in a right moral state when they _have_ come to
like doing it; and as long as they don't like it, they are still in a
vicious state. The man is not in health of body who is always thinking
of the bottle in the cupboard, though he bravely bears his thirst; but
the man who heartily enjoys water in the morning, and wine in the
evening, each in its proper quantity and time. And the entire object
of true education is to make people not merely _do_ the right things,
but _enjoy_ the right things:--not merely industrious, but to love
industry--not merely learned, but to love knowledge--not merely pure,
but to love purity--not merely just, but to hunger and thirst after
justice.[203]
But you may answer or think, "Is the liking for outside
ornaments,--for pictures, or statues, or furniture, or
architecture,--a moral quality?" Yes, most surely, if a rightly set
liking. Taste for _any_ pictures or statues is not a moral quality,
but taste for good ones is. Only here again we have to define the word
"good." I don't mean by "good," clever--or learned--or difficult in
the doing. Take a picture by Teniers, of sots quarrelling over their
dice; it is an entirely clever picture; so clever that nothing in its
kind has ever been done equal to it; but it is also an entirely base
and evil picture.
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