The philosophy of “art for art's sake,” insists on art being judged by the beauty of artifice rather than that of morality or reason. Beauty is irrational and amoral, and the aestheticist who worships beauty indulges in excess and exaggeration to flout his age's standards of respectability. The artists and writers of Aesthetic style tended to profess that the Arts should provide refined sensuous pleasure, rather than convey moral or sentimental messages. Predecessors of the Aesthetics included John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelly, and some of the PreRaphaelites who themselves were a legacy of the Romantic spirit. There are a few significant continuities between the Pre-Raphaelite philosophy and that of Aesthetes: Dedication to the idea of “Art for Art's sake”; admiration of, and constant striving for, beauty; escapism through visual and literary arts; craftsmanship that is both careful and self-conscious; mutual interest merging the arts of various media. In Britain the best representatives were Oscar Wilde and Alger one Charles Swineburne.