Evil is committed without effort, naturally, fatally goodness is always the product of some art.

The line contrasts the ease with which humans slip into wrongdoing with the deliberate discipline required for virtue. “Evil” is portrayed as spontaneous and almost automatic—something that happens when appetites, vanity, cruelty, or indifference are left unchecked. “Goodness,” by contrast, is not presented as naïve innocence but as an achievement: it requires cultivation, self-command, and conscious technique (“art”)—a shaping of character against the grain of impulse. In a Baudelairean frame, this reflects a modern, anti-Rousseau view of human nature: moral beauty is crafted, not given, and ethical life resembles aesthetic labor—an ongoing work of composition rather than a natural state.