Definition of "higherness"

If this is sound, the pleasantness of pleasure can no longer be our guide; the higherness of the higher pleasure must have the decisive word — hedonism has committed suicide.

1929, Robert Mackintosh, Values, a Bird's Eye Survey, page 40

And because in this article and others he didn't make his obeisances to the higherness of the traditional arts, he ran into the sort of disapproval that movies get.

1973, Pauline Kael, The New Yorker