=1. It so Maims and Distorts Human Nature as to Narrow the Conception of the Good.=--In its legitimate antagonism to pleasure-seeking, it becomes a foe to happiness, and an implacable enemy of all its elements. Art is suspected, for beauty appeals to the lust of the eye. Family life roots in sexual impulses, and property in love of power, gratification, and luxury. Science springs from the pride of the intellect; the State from the pride of will. _Asceticism_ is the logical result; a purely negative conception of virtue. But it surely does dishonor, not honor, to the moral life to conceive it as mere negative subjection of the flesh, mere holding under control the lust of desire and the temptations of appetite. All positive content, all liberal achievement, is cut out and morality is reduced to a mere struggle _against_ solicitations to sin. While asceticism is in no danger of becoming a popular doctrine, there is a common tendency to conceive self-control in this negative fashion; to fail to see that the important thing is some positive good _for_ which a desire is controlled. In general we overemphasize that side of morality which consists in abstinence and _not_ doing wrong. =2. To Make so Much of Conflict with the "Flesh," is to Honor the Latter too Much.=--It is to fix too much attention on it. It is an open lesson of psychology that to oppose doing an act by mere injunction not to do it, is to increase the power of the thing _not_ to be done, and to weaken the spring and effectiveness of the other motives, which, if positively attended to, might keep the obnoxious motive from gaining supremacy. The "expulsive power" of a generous affection is more to be relied upon than effort to suppress, which keeps alive the very thing to be suppressed. The history of monks and Puritan saints alike is full of testimony to the fact that withdrawal from positive generous and wholesome aims reënforces the vitality of the lower appetites and stimulates the imagination to play about them. Flagellation and fasting work as long as the body is exhausted; but the brave organism reasserts itself, and its capacities for science, art, the life of the family and the State not having been cultivated, sheer ineradicable physical instinct is most likely to come to the front.