Then he's optimizing for his value. Which is a really narrow-minded way of looking at the situation. One would hope for a sociologist/historian to be more broad-minded than that.

But I'm not sure to what degree Oscar Wilde was really a sociologist or historian. He was mostly an author, and he specialized in saying things that were counter to society's values. I'm not sure to what degree he believed all of the things he said.

But in the quote in question, his position essentially is "do evil so that good may come". That's a pretty dubious sense of morality.