CHAPTER VI.
LIFE AS ITS OWN REWARD.
We must now examine what will be the practical result on life in general of the loss just indicated 132 To do this, we will take life as reflected in the mirror of the great dramatic art of the world 134 And this will show us how the moral judgment is the chief faculty to which all that is great or intense in this art appeals 136 We shall see this, for instance, in _Macbeth_ 137 In _Hamlet_ 137 In _Antigone_ 137 In _Measure for Measure_, and in _Faust_ 138 And also in degraded art just as well as in sublime art 139 In profligate and cynical art, such as Congreve's 140 And in concupiscent art 141 Such as _Mademoiselle de Maupin_ 141 Or such works as that of Meursius, or the worst scenes in Petronius 142 The supernatural moral judgment is the chief thing everywhere 143 Take away this judgment, and art loses all its strange interest 144 And so will it be with life 145 The moral landscape will be ruined 145 Even the mere sensuous joy of living in health will grow duller 146 Nor will culture be of the least avail without the supernatural moral element 148 Nor will the devotion to truth for its own sake, which is the last refuge of the positivists when in despair 149 For this last has no meaning whatever, except as a form of concrete theism 152 The reverence for Nature is but another form of the devotion to truth, and its only possible meaning is equally theistic 157 Thus all the higher resources of positivism fail together 161 And the highest positive value of life would be something less than its present value 161.