Shaftesbury held that human actions should have a beauty of symmetry and proportion and harmony, which appeal to us, not because they accord with any rule or maxim (although they may conceivably be susceptible of measurement), but because they satisfy our instinctive feelings, evoking an approval which is strictly an æsthetic judgment of moral action. This instinctive judgment was not, as Shaftesbury understood it, a guide to action. He held, rightly enough, that the impulse to action is fundamental and primary, that fine action is the outcome of finely tempered natures. It is a feeling for the just time and measure of human passion, and maxims are useless to him whose nature is ill-balanced. “Virtue is no other than the love of order and beauty in society.” Æsthetic appreciation of the act, and even an ecstatic pleasure in it, are part of our æsthetic delight in Nature generally, which includes Man. Nature, it is clear, plays a large part in this conception of the moral life. To lack balance on any plane of moral conduct is to be unnatural; “Nature is not mocked,” said Shaftesbury. She is a miracle, for miracles are not things that are performed, but things that are perceived, and to fail here is to fail in perception of the divinity of Nature, to do violence to her, and to court moral destruction. A return to Nature is not a return to ignorance or savagery, but to the first instinctive feeling for the beauty of well-proportioned affections. “The most natural beauty in the world is honesty and moral truth,” he asserts, and he recurs again and again to “the beauty of honesty.” “_Dulce et decorum est_ was his sole reason,” he says of the classical pagan, adding: “And this is still a good reason.” In learning how to act, he thought, we are “learning to become artists.” It seems natural to him to refer to the magistrate as an artist; “the magistrate, if he be an artist,” he incidentally says. We must not make morality depend on authority. The true artist, in any art, will never act below his character. “Let who will make it for you as you fancy,” the artist declares; “I know it to be wrong. Whatever I have made hitherto has been true work. And neither for your sake or anybody’s else shall I put my hand to any other.” “This is virtue!” exclaims Shaftesbury. “This disposition transferred to the whole of life perfects a character. For there is a workmanship and a truth in actions.”