The Commens Dictionary

Quote from ‘Adirondack Summer School Lectures’

If we are to admit only two normative sciences, the first of these which for convenience we call ethics, relating to control of the existent, or say to actualization, and the second to thought, that first ethics must have two sections, the first one on the ultimate aim, or summum bonum, which will be the same as esthetics, if esthetics is not to be confined to sensuous beauty, but is to relate to the admirable and adorable generally while the other, which may be called critical ethics treats of the conditions of conformity to the ideal.

If a new word must be made to designate that first section, I will suggest that axiagastics be the name of the science of the worthy of adoration. For I hold that the science must consist in the analysis of that which is admirable without any ulterior reason for being admirable, or in other words the analysis of what it is that excites that feelings akin to worship that fills one’s whole life in the contemplation of an idea that excites this feeling.