A STUDY OF ETHICAL PEINCIPLES 
 
A STUDY 
 
 OF 
 
 ETHICAL PRINCIPLES 
 
 BY 
 
 JAMES SETH, M.A. 
 
 PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN BROWN UMVERSITV, U.S.A. 
 
 WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS 
 
 EDINBURGH AND LONDON 
 
 MDCCCXCIV 
 
 I fc 1 ^r 
 
733700? 
 
TO 
 
 MY MOTHER 
 
 f&5**> 
 
 IVJRSIIY: 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 THE present volume is the outcome of several years of 
 continuous reflection and teaching in this department of 
 philosophy. As the title indicates, it does not profess to 
 develop a system of Ethics, but rather to discuss the 
 principles which must underlie such a system ; and while 
 the treatment does not claim to be, in any strict sense, 
 original, an effort has been made to re-think the entire 
 subject, and to make the discussion throughout as funda- 
 mental as possible. My chief hope is that I may have 
 been able to throw some light upon the real course of 
 ethical thought in ancient and in modern times. I have 
 been anxious, in particular, to recover, and, in some 
 measure, to re-state the contribution of the Greeks, and 
 especially of Aristotle, to moral philosophy. For, in many 
 respects, the ancient statement of the questions seems 
 to me more instructive than the modern. 
 
 As regards the method of discussion adopted, I have 
 stated in the Introduction my reasons for the position 
 
Vlll PREFACE. 
 
 that, to be fundamental, ethical thought must be philo- 
 sophical rather than merely scientific. The intimate re- 
 lation of Ethics to Metaphysics necessitated the Third 
 Part, "Metaphysical Implications of Morality." Here 
 particularly, in the investigation of the Metaphysic of 
 Ethics, there seemed a call for further philosophic 
 effort. 
 
 The use of two terms calls for a word of explanation. 
 I have distinguished " Eudaemonism " from " Hedonism," 
 and adopted the former term to characterise my own 
 position. Though these two terms are often identified, 
 some writers have been careful to distinguish them ; and 
 it seemed to me most important, for reasons which will 
 appear, to emphasise the distinction, and to use " Eu- 
 dremonism" in its original or Aristotelian sense. The 
 second point is the distinction drawn between " the in- 
 dividual " and " the person." The distinction comes, of 
 course, from Hegel ; but, in making it a leading distinction 
 throughout the discussion, I am following the example 
 of Professor Laurie of Edinburgh in his ' Ethica, or 
 the Ethics of Eeason,' a book to which I probably 
 owe more than to the work of any other living writer 
 on Ethics. 
 
 My other obligations I have tried to acknowledge in the 
 course of the book, but it is difficult to make such acknow- 
 ledgments complete. I have especially to thank my col- 
 league, Professor Walter G. Everett, for many helpful 
 suggestions made while the work was in manuscript, and 
 
PREFACE. IX 
 
 my brother, Professor Andrew Seth, of the University of 
 Edinburgh, for his aid and advice while it was passing 
 through the press. 
 
 In the chapter on the " Problem of Freedom " (and, to 
 a less extent, in that on the " Psychological Basis ") I have 
 made use of a pamphlet entitled 'Freedom as Ethical 
 Postulate/ published in 1891, and now out of print. 
 
 JAMES SETH. 
 
 BROWN UNIVERSITY, 
 
 PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND, 
 
 August 1894. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE ETHICAL PROBLEM. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 1. Preliminary definition of Ethics. What is Morality ? What is 
 
 Conduct ? Conduct and Character .... 3 
 
 2. In what sense is Ethics practical ? Relations of moral theory 
 
 and practice . . . . . . .6 
 
 3. Relations of moral faith and ethical insight. Impossibility of 
 
 absolute moral scepticism . . . . .10 
 
 4. Business of Ethics to define the Good or the Moral Ideal, by 
 
 scrutiny of the various interpretations of it . . . 13 
 
 5. Ancient and Modern conceptions of the Moral Ideal compared. 
 
 (a) Duty and the Chief Good ; their logical connection. 
 Personality as Moral Ideal . . . . .15 
 
 6. (6) Ancient Ideal political, modern individualistic ; the in- 
 
 adequacy of each, and their reconciliation in Personality . 18 
 
 7. Resulting definition of Ethics as the investigation of the uni- 
 
 fying principle of human life . . . .20 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE ^METHOD OF ETHICS. 
 
 1. The Method of Ethics philosophical rather than scientific . 21 
 
 2. The Physical and Biological Methods . . . .22 
 
 3. The Psychological Method ..... 23 
 
Xll CONTENTS. 
 
 4. The Historical Method ...... 
 
 5. Ethics as an " inexact " science ..... 
 
 6. The Metaphysical Method 
 
 7. Eelation of Ethics to Theology ..... 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL BASIS. 
 
 1. Necessity of psychological basis ; an inadequate view of human 
 
 life rests upon an inadequate view of human nature 
 
 2. Voluntary activity presupposes involuntary ; various forms of 
 
 the latter ....... 
 
 3. Voluntary activity, how distinguished from involuntary ; voli- 
 
 tion as control of impulsive and instinctive tendencies ; con- 
 trast of animal and human life .... 
 
 4. The process of volition : its various elements, (a) pause ; (b) 
 
 deliberation ; (c) choice ..... 
 
 5. Nature and character. Effort. Second nature 
 
 6. Limitations of volition : (a) Economy, (b) Continuity, (c) 
 
 Fixity of character ...... 
 
 7. Intellectual elements in volition : (a) Conception, (b) Memory. 
 
 (c) Imagination ...... 
 
 8. Will- and Feeling. Is pleasure the object of choice ? . 
 
 PART I. i 
 
 THE MORAL IDEAlT 
 TYPES OF ETHICAL THEORY : HEDONISM, RIGORISM, EUD^MONISM 77 
 
 CHAPTER I. v 
 
 HEDONISM, OR THE ETHICS OF SENSIBILITY. 
 
 ^.-^-Development of the Theory. 
 
 1. (A) Pure Hedonism, or Cyrenaicism . . . .81 
 
 2. (B} Modified Hedonism : (a) Ancient, or Epicureanism . Sf 
 
 3. (6) Modern Hedonism, or Utilitarianism. Its cTnef variations ' 
 
 from Ancient: (1) Optimistic v. Pessimistic." (2) Altruistic 
 
 v. Egoistic. (3) Qualitative v. Quantitative ... 94 
 
 4. (c) Evolutional Utilitarianism ..... 101 
 
 5. (d) Rational Utilitarianism ... . . .110 
 
CONTENTS. Xlll 
 
 II. Critical Estimate of Hedonism. 
 
 6. (a) Its psychological inadequacy ' . . . .115 
 
 7. (b) Its inadequate interpretation of Character . . .119 
 
 8. (c) Its resolution of Virtue into Expediency . . .122 
 
 9. (fZ) Its account of Duty . . 125 
 
 10. (e) Failure of Sensibility to provide the principle of its own 
 
 distribution. (1) Within the individual life. (2) Between 
 
 the individual and society . . . . .129 
 
 11. (/) The final metaphysical alternative . .145 
 The merit and demerit of Hedonism .... 147 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 1. Rigorism : its rational and idealistic standpoint. Its two forms 
 
 extreme and moderate . . . . .152 
 
 2. (A) Extreme Rigorism, (a) Ancient : (a) Cynicism. (jB) Stoi- 
 
 cism. How it differs from Cynicism : (1) Idealism v. 
 
 Naturalism. (2) Cosmopolitanism v. Individualism. (3) 
 
 The Stoic Melancholy . . . . .155 
 
 y3. (b) Modern : (o^CJirjgtiftn Asceticism . . . .163 
 
 V4. (#) Kantian Transcendentalism . . . . .165 
 
 v5. Criticigm^of Extreme Rigorism, and transition to Moderate . 167 
 
 15. () Moderate Qigbrism. (a) Its beginnings in Greek philosophy 173 
 
 \7. (&) Its modern expi!*ons. (a) Butler's theory of Conscience 174 
 
 8. Criticism of Butler'fr4h8*y . . . . .180 
 
 9. () Intuitionism. Its divergences from Butler. Its defects . 183 
 
 10. The service of Rigorism ^.ethical theory . . .189 
 
 11. Transition to Eud unionism . . . . .191 
 
 CHAPTER III. V* 
 
 EUD^MONISM, OR THE ETHICS OF PERSONALITY. 
 
 
 
 4. The>Ethical Dualism. Its theoretical expression . .193 
 
 2. Its pracTWfaT'expre'ssion ...... 196 
 
 3. Attempts a af : reco2c'iliation . . . . 198 
 
 4. The solution aft!hTi5tiamty . . . . .199 
 
 5. The ethical problem : the meaning of Self-realisation . . 203 
 
 6. Definition of Personality : the Individual and the Person . 205 
 
XIV CONTENTS. 
 
 7. The rational or personal self : its intellectual and ethical func- 
 
 tions compared ...... 207 
 
 8. The sentient or individual self . . . . .210 
 
 9. "Be a Person" ....... 211 
 
 10. "Die to live." Meaning of " Self -sacrifice " . . .213 
 
 11. Pleasure and Happiness . . . . . .216 
 
 12. Egoism and Altruism . . . . . .217 
 
 13. The ethical significance of Law : the meaning of Duty. Animal 
 
 "innocence" and "knowledge of good and evil." Various 
 forms of Law. Its absoluteness . . . .219 
 
 14. Expressions of Eudsemonism : (a) in Philosophy. Butler. 
 
 Hegel. Plato. Aristotle . . . . .226 
 
 15. (6) In Literature ...... 237 
 
 PAKT IT. 
 THE MORAL LIFE. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. VIRTUES AND DUTIES. THE UNITY OF THE MORAL 
 
 LIFE ........ 249 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE. 
 
 I. Temperance, or Self-discipline. 
 
 1. Its fundamental importance ..... 251 
 
 2. Its negative aspect ...... 253 
 
 3. Relation of negative to positive aspect .... 255 
 
 4. Its positive aspect ...... 257 
 
 II. Culture, or Self-development. 
 
 5. Its fundamental importance . . . . 258 
 
 6. Meaning of Culture ...... 259 
 
 7. The place of physical culture . . . . .260 
 
 8. The individual nature of Self -development . . .262 
 
 9. Necessity of transcending our individuality. The ideal life . 265 
 
 10. Dangers of Moral Idealism . . . . 268 
 
 11. Ethical supremacy of the moral Ideal . . . .273 
 
 12. Culture and Philanthropy . . . . .276 
 
 13. Self -reverence. The dignity and solitude of Personality . 279 
 
CONTENTS. XV 
 
 CHAPTEK II. 
 
 THE SOCIAL LIFE. 
 
 I. The Social Virtues: Justice and Benevolence. 
 
 1. The relation of the social to the individual life . . . 283 
 
 2. Social virtue its nature and its limit .... 286 
 
 3. Its two aspects, negative and positive: Justice and Benevo- 
 
 lence. Their mutual relations and respective spheres . 288 
 
 4. Benevolence .,....'. 292 
 
 5. Benevolence and Culture ..... 295 
 
 II. The Social Organisation of Life: the Ethical Basis and 
 Functions of the State. 
 
 6. The social organisation of life : the ethical institutions : Society 
 
 and the State . . . . . .297 
 
 7. Is the State an End-in-itself ? . . . .304 
 
 8. The ethical basis of the State . . . . .307 
 
 9. The limit of State action . . . . .313 
 
 10. The ethical functions of the State : (a) Justice . . 315 
 
 11. (b) Benevolence ....... 324 
 
 Note. The Theory of Punishment . . . .333 
 
 PAKT III. 
 
 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS OF MORALITY. 
 
 THE THREE PROBLEMS OF THE METAPHYSIC OF ETHICS ; THEIR 
 
 MUTUAL RELATIONS ...... 341 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM. 
 
 1. Statement of the problem ..... 345 
 
 2. The " moral method " . . . . . . 350 
 
 3. The " reconciling project " . . . . .354' 
 
 4. Definition of moral Freedom : its limitations . . . 357 
 
 5. The resulting metaphysical problem. The problem of Freedom 
 
 is the problem of Personality. The alternative solutions 
 
 the empirical and the transcendental . . . 359 
 
 ^ 
 
XVI CONTENTS. 
 
 6. The transcendental solution ..... 363 
 
 7. Difficulties of the transcendental solution : (a) psychological 
 
 difficulty offered by the "presentational " theory of Will . 366 
 
 8. (b) metaphysical difficulty of Transcendentalism itself. (1) In 
 
 Kantianism, an empty and unreal Freedom . . .376 
 
 9. (2) In Hegelianism, a new Determinism, (i.) The Self = the 
 
 character, (ii.) The Self = God .... 379 
 10. Resulting conception of Freedom . . . .386 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE PROBLEM OF GOD. 
 
 1. The necessity of the theological question . . . 389 
 
 2. Agnosticism and Positivism ..... 393 
 
 3. Naturalism ....... 397 
 
 4. Man and Nature . . . . . . 402 
 
 5. The modern statement of the problem .... 408 
 
 6. Its ancient statement . . . . . .410 
 
 7. The Christian solution . . . . . .416 
 
 8. The Ideal and the Real . . . . . .417 
 
 9. The Personality of God . . . . . .423 
 
 10. Objections to Anthropomorphism : (a) from the standpoint of 
 
 Natural Evolution . . . . . .426 
 
 11. (lj) From the standpoint of Dialectical Evolution . . 431 
 
 12. Intellectualism and Moralism : Reason and Will . . 441 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE PROBLEM OF IMMORTALITY. 
 
 1. The alternatives of thought . ... . .447 
 
 2. Immortality as the implication of Morality . . . 448 
 
 3. Personal Immortality ...... 454 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE ETHICAL PROBLEM. 
 
 1. ETHICS, or Moral Philosophy, is the Philosophy of Preiimin- 
 Morality or Conduct. A preliminary notion of what tSn of "' 
 is meant by these terms will serve to bring out the 
 nature of the inquiry on which we are entering. 
 
 " Morality " is described by Locke as " the proper what is 
 science and business of mankind in general." In the 
 same spirit Aristotle says that the task of Ethics is the 
 investigation" of the peculiar and characteristic function 
 of man the activity (tvepyeta), with its corresponding 
 xcelleiice (aperrf), of man a^ man. And " can we sup- 
 pose that, while a carpenter and a cobbler each has a 
 function and a business of his own, man has no business 
 and no function assigned him by nature?" 1 Morality* 
 might in this sense be called the universal and character- 
 istic element in human activity, its human element par eoT| 
 cellence, as distinguished from its particular, technical, and ' 
 accidental elements. Not that the moral is a smaller and 
 sacred sphere within the wider spheres of secular interests 
 and activities. It is rather the all-inclusive sphere of human 
 
 1 Nic. Eth., i. 7, 11. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 What is 
 Conduct ? 
 Conduct 
 and 
 Character. 
 
 life, the universal form which embraces its most varied 
 contents. It is that in presence of which all differences 
 of age and country, rank and occupation, disappear, and 
 the man stands forth in all the unique and intense signi- 
 ficance of his human nature. Morality is the great level- 
 ler ; life, no less than death, makes all men equal. We may 
 be so lost in the minute details and distracting shows of 
 daily life that we cannot see the grand uniformity in out- 
 line of our human nature and our human task ; here, as 
 elsewhere, we are apt to lose the wood in the trees. But 
 at times this uniformity is brought home to us with start- 
 ling clearness, and we discover, beneath the utmost diver- 
 sity of worldly circumstance and outward calling, our 
 common nature and our common task. The delineation 
 of this common human task, of this " proper business of 
 mankind in general," is the endeavour of ethical philo- 
 sophy. 
 
 Matthew Arnold was fond of calling conduct "three- 
 fourths of life." I suppose the other fourth was the pro- 
 vince of the intellectual and aesthetic as distinguished 
 from the moral life. But when truly conceived, as expres- 
 sive of character, conduct is the whole of life. As there 
 is no action which may not be regarded as, directly or in- 
 directly, an exponent of character, so there is no most 
 secret thought or impulse of the mind but manifests itself 
 in the life of conduct. If, however, with Spencer, we ex- 
 tend the term " conduct " so as to cover merely mechanical 
 as well as reflex organic movements, then we must limit 
 the sphere of Ethics to " conduct as the expression of char- 
 acter." But, in the sense indicated, the " conduct of life " 
 may be taken as synonymous with " morality." Such con- 
 
THE ETHICAL PROBLEM. 5 
 
 duct embraces the life of intellect and emotion, as well as 
 that which is, in a narrower sense, called " practice " the 
 life of overt activity. Man's life is one, in its most diverse 
 phases ; one full moral tide runs through them all. 
 
 But let us analyse conduct a little more closely. Spen- 
 cer defines it as '* the adjustment of acts to ends," and we 
 may say it is equivalent to " purposive activity,'/ or more / 
 strictly, in conformity with what has just been said, '''con- ^ 
 sciously purposive activity." It is the element of purpose, 
 the choice of ends and of trie means towards their accom- 
 plishment, that constitutes conduct; and it is this inner 
 side of conduct that we are to study. Now, choice is an 
 act of will. But since each choice is not an isolated act of 
 will, but the several choices constitute a continuous and 
 connected series, and all together form, and in turn result 
 from, a certain settled habit or trend of will, a certain 
 type of characterise may say that ^conduct is the ex-) ^ 
 pression of character in activity. Activity which is not] 
 thus expressive is not conduct ; and since " a will that 
 wills nothing is a chimera," and a will which has not 
 acquired some tendency in its choice of activities is no less 
 chimerical, we may add that there is no character without 
 conduct. 
 
 Conduct, therefore, points to character, or settled habit * 
 of will. But will is here no mere faculty, it is a man's 
 " proper self." The will is the self in action ; and in order 
 to act, the self must also feel and know. Only thus can 
 it act as a se//. The question of Ethics, accordingly, may 
 be stated in either of two forms: What is man's chief 
 end ? or what is the true, normal, or typical form of 
 human self-hood? Man has a choice of ends: what is 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 tlmt^end which is so worthy of his choice that all else is 
 to be chosen merely as the means towards its fulfilment ? 
 And since, in the last analysis, the object of his choice is 
 a certain type of self -hood, this question resolves itself 
 into the other : Into what universal human form shall he 
 mould all the particular activities of his life ? This ques- 
 tion, in either form of it, is at once a practical and a 
 theoretical question. To man his own nature, like his 
 world, is at first a chaos, to be reduced to cosmos. As he 
 must subdue to the order and system of a world of objects 
 the varied mass of sensible presentations that crowd in 
 upon him at every moment of his waking life,' so must he 
 subdue to the order and system of a rational life the mass 
 of clamant and conflicting forces that seek to master 
 him-J-those impulses, passions, appetites, affections that 
 seem each to claim him for itself. The latter question is, 
 like the former, first a practical and then a theoretical 
 question. The first business of thought about the world 
 the business of ordinary thought is to make the world 
 orderly enough to be a world in which we can live. Its 
 second business is to understand the world for the sake of 
 understanding it, and the outcome of this is the deeper 
 scientific and philosophic unity of things. So the first 
 business of thought about the life of man is to establish 
 a certain unity and system in actual human practice. Its 
 second business is to understand that life for the sake of 
 understanding it, and the outcome of this is the deeper 
 ethical theory of life. 
 
 in what 2. Ethics is often called Practical, as opposed to 
 Theoretical Philosophy or Metaphysics. The description 
 
 sense is 
 
THE ETHICAL PROBLEM. 7 
 
 is correct, if it is meant that Ethics is the ;philo^ophj;.,.or-mhics 
 theory of Practice, and is indeed only another way of Delations 
 saying what we have just said. It suggests, however, theory and 
 the question of the relations of moral theory and practice. pra 
 Life or practice always precedes its theory or explanation ; 
 we are men before we are moralists. The moral life; 
 though it implies an intellectual element from the first, 
 is, in its beginnings, and for long, a matter of instinct, of 
 tradition, of authority. /Moral progress, whether in the 
 individual or in the race, may be largely accounted for 
 as a blind " struggle " of moral ideals in which the " fittest " 
 survive. J Human experience is a continuous and keen 
 " scrutiny " of these ideals ; history is a grand contest of 
 moral forces, in which the strongest are the victors. The 
 conceptions of good and evil, virtue and vice, duty and 
 desert, which guide the life, not merely of the child but 
 of the mass of mankind, are largely accepted, like in- 
 tellectual notions, in blind and unquestioning faith. But 
 moral, like intellectual, manhood implies emancipation 
 from such a merely instinctive life. The good man, like 
 the wise man, " puts away childish things " ; as a rational 
 being, he must seek to reduce his life, like his world, to 
 system. The words of the oracle inevitably make them- 
 selves heard, <yvw6i o-eawrov. Man must know himself, 
 come to terms with himself. The contradictions and 
 rivalries of ethical codes, the varying canons of moral 
 criticism, the apparent chaos of moral practice, force upon 
 him the need of a moral theory. The demand is made 
 for a rationale of morality, for principles which shall 
 give his life coherence ; and the transition is made from 
 the practical to the theoretical standpoint, from life to the 
 
8 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 philosophy of life. Just when this transition is made, 
 just when morality passes from the instinctive to the 
 reflective stage, whether in the life of the race or of the 
 individual, it is impossible to say. For, after all, practice 
 implies theory. "While a clear and adequate theory can 
 only be expected after long crude practice, yet every life 
 implies a certain plan, some conception, however vague 
 and ill-defined, of what life means. 1 No life is altogether 
 haphazard or " from hand to mouth." Only the animal 
 lives from moment to moment ; even the child-man and 
 the vicious man " look before and after," if they do not, 
 like the good man, " see life steadily and see it whole." 
 Every action implies a purpose, that is, a thought of 
 something to be done, and therefore worth doing. The 
 individual action does not stand alone, it connects itself 
 with others, and these again with others, in the past and 
 in the future ; nor can we stop at any point in the pro- 
 gress or in the regress. In every action there is implied' 
 a view, narrower or larger, of life as a whole, some 
 conception of its total scope and meaning for the man. 
 The individual act is never a res complcta, an indepen- 
 dent whole: to complete it you must always view it in 
 the totality of its relations, in the entire context of the 
 life of which it is a part. A man does not, in general, 
 make up his mind afresh about the particular action or 
 consider it on its own merits ; he refers it to its place in 
 the general scheme or plan of life which he has adopted 
 at some time in the past. But such a scheme or plan of 
 
 1 Cf. Professor Dewey's excellent article on "Moral Theory and Practice," 
 in 'International Journal of Ethics,' Jan. 1891. 
 
THE ETHICAL PROBLEM. 
 
 9 
 
 life is already a theory, an implicit philosophy of life. It 
 is impossible, therefore, to make an absolute distinction 
 between the loose moral reflection of ordinary life, and 
 that deeper and more systematic reflection which is 
 entitled to be called "moral philosophy." An inter- 
 mediate stage of "proverbial morality" would, in any 
 case, have to be distinguished. If every one is a meta- 
 physician, every one is, still more inevitably, a moral 
 philosopher. Moral philosophy is only a deeper, more 
 strenuous, and more systematic reflection upon life, a 
 thinking of it out to clearness and coherence. The re- 
 flection of the ordinary man, even in the proverbial form, 
 is unsystematic and discontinuous; the system of man's 
 life, the principles on which it may be reduced to system, 
 remain for the more patient and theoretical inquiry of 
 moral philosophy. 
 
 On the other hand, as it is impossible to separate prac- 
 tice from theory, so it is impossible to separate theory from 
 practice. /A.s Aristotle insisted, the abiding interest of 
 the moral philosopher is practical, as well as theoretical. 
 Wisdom has its natural outflow in goodness, as proverbial 
 morality has always declared ; the head guides the hand, 
 the intellect the will. This inseparable connection of 
 theory and practice was profoundly understood by the 
 Greek philosophers, with whom Socrates' maxim that 
 " virtue is knowledge " was always a guiding idea, as 
 well as by the Hebrews, for whom wisdom and good- 
 ness, folly and sin, were synonymous terms. It is 
 also familiar to us from the teachings of Christianity, 
 whose Founder claims to be at once the Truth and 
 
 , :T7 
 
1 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 the Life, and preaches that " life eternal " is " to know " 
 the Father and the Son. 1 A larger and deeper conception 
 of the meaning of life inevitably brings with it a larger 
 and deeper life. Intellectual superficiality is a main source 
 of moral evil ; folly and vice are largely synonymous. 
 Accordingly, the first step towards moral reformation is 
 to rouse reflection in a man or people ; to give them a 
 new insight into the significance of moral alternative. 
 The claims of morality will not be satisfied until the 
 rigour of these claims is understood. All moral awakening v 
 is primarily an intellectual awakening, a "repentance" 
 or " change of mind " (^erdvoia). Moral insight is the 
 necessary condition of moral life, and the philosophy 
 which deepens such insight is at once theoretical and 
 practical, in its interest and in its value. By fixing our 
 attention upon the ideal, Ethics tends to raise the level 
 of the actual. The very intellectual effort is itself morally 
 elevating ; such a turn of the attention is full of meaning 
 for character. A moral truth does not remain a merely, 
 intellectual apprehension ; it rouses the emotions, and de- 
 mands expression, through them, in action or in life. 
 
 Relations 3. Ethics is the effort to convert into rational insight 
 faith ami that faith in a moral Ideal or Absolute human Good which 
 sight, iiii- is a t the root of all moral life. That such a moral faith 
 otrbsoiute i s always present in morality, and is the source of all moral 
 tiism. 8Cep% inspiration, hardly needs to be proved. Moral, like in- 
 tellectual, scepticism can only be relative and partial. 
 If absolute intellectual scepticism means " speechlessness," 
 
 1 The central Johannine conception of " Light " similarly emphasises 
 the unity of the intellectual and the moral life. 
 
THE ETHICAL PROBLEM. 11 
 
 absolute moral scepticism means death, or cessation from 
 activity. Life, like thought, is the constant refutation of 
 scepticism. As the continued effort to think is the re- 
 futation of intellectual scepticism, the continued effort 
 to live is the refutation of moral scepticism. We " live 
 by faith." The effort to live, the "perseverare in esse 
 suo," implies, in a rational or reflective being, the convic- 
 tion that life is worth living, that there are objects in life, 
 that there is some supreme Object or sovereign Good for 
 man. Such a faith may be a blind illusion, as Pessimism 
 declares ; but it is none the less actual and inevitable. 
 The ordinary man, it is true, does not realise that he has 
 this faith, except in so far as he reflects upon his life. 
 His plan of life is largely implicit ; he estimates the 
 "goods" of life by reference to a silently guiding idea 
 of tlie Good. 'To press the Socratic question, Good for 
 what? and thus to substitute for a blind unthinking 
 faith the insight of reason, is to pass from ordinary 
 thought to philosophy.] 
 
 Xow when the philosophical question is pressed, there is 
 at once revealed a seemingly chaotic variety of " Goods," 
 which refuse to be reduced to any common denominator. 
 " One man's meat is another man's poison." If the meta- 
 physician is tempted to ask despairingly, in view of the 
 conflict of intellectual opinion, What is Truth ? the ethi- 
 cal philosopher is no less tempted, in face of a similar 
 conflict of moral opinion, to ask, What is Good ? What 
 seems good to me is my good, what seems good to you is 
 yours ; there is no moral criterion. Here, at any rate, we 
 seem to be reduced to absolute subjectivity. Yet the 
 philosopher cannot, any more than the ordinary man, 
 
12 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 escape from faith in an absolute Good. Like the ordinary 
 man, he may have his difficulties in defining it, and may 
 waver between different theories of its form and content. 
 But any and every theory of it implies the faith that there 
 is such a thing. This moral faith is the " matter " con- 
 stantly given to the moralist that he may endue it 
 with philosophic " form." He cannot destroy the matter, 
 he can only seek to form it; his task is the progressive 
 conversion of ordinary moral faith, of the moral "common- 
 sense" of mankind, into rational insight. It is his to 
 explain, not to explain away, this moral faith or common- 
 sense. That there is an absolute or ideal Good is the 
 assumption of every ethical theory an assumption which 
 simply means that, here as everywhere, the universe is 
 rational. Philosophy seeks to verify this assumption or 
 to reduce it to knowledge, by exhibiting its rationality. 
 Variety of opinion as to what the Good is, is always con- 
 fined within the limits of a perfect unanimity of conviction 
 that there is an absolute Good. Even the Utilitarian, 
 insisting though he does on the relativity of all moral 
 distinctions, on the merely consequential and extrinsic 
 nature of goodness, yet recognises in Happiness a good 
 which is absolute. Similarly, the Evolutionist, with his 
 Well-being or Welfare, sees in life, no less than the Per- 
 fectionist or the Theologian, " one grand far-off divine 
 event." To lose sight of this, to surrender the conviction 
 of an absolute human Good, would be fatal to all ethical 
 inquiry. Its spur and impulse would be gone. But 
 Ethics, like Metaphysics, is a tree which, though every 
 bough it has ever borne may be cut away, will always 
 spring up afresh ; for its roots are deep in the soil of 
 
THE ETHICAL PROBLEM. 13 
 
 human life. As the faith in a supreme Good must remain 
 as long as life lasts, the philosophic effort to convert that 
 faith into the rational insight of ethical theory must also 
 continue. 
 
 4. It is the business of Ethics, then, to scrutinise the Business of 
 various ideals which, in the life of the individual and of define the 
 the race, are found competing for the mastery. Life itself the Moral i 
 is such a scrutiny ; human history is one long process of scrutin/of 
 testin and the "fittest" or the best ideals "survive/ 
 
 , 
 
 But the scrutiny of history is largely, though by no means tlons of lt - 
 entirely, unconscious. The scrutiny of philosophy's 
 conscious and explicit. *TEthics, as moral reflection, in- 
 stitutes a systematic examination of human ideals, and 
 seeks to correlate them in relation to the true or ab- 
 solute Ideal of humanity. The accidental and the im- 
 perfect in them must be gradually eliminated, until, as the 
 reward of long and patient search, the absolute Good at 
 last shines through. As Logic or the theory of thought 
 seeks, beneath the apparent unreason and accident of 
 everyday thought and fact, a common reason and a common 
 truth, so does Ethics seek, beneath the apparent contra- 
 dictions of human life, a supreme and universal Good 
 the norm and criterion of all actual goodness. 
 /Or we may say, with Aristotle, that Ethics is the in- \ 
 vestigation of the final End or Purpose of human life. \ 
 The Good (TO a<ya66v) is the End (reXoc, TO ov eVe/ca), that 
 End to which all other so-called ends are really means. 
 Such a teleological view is necessary in the case of human 
 life, irrespective of the farther question whether we can, 
 with Aristotle, extend it to the universe, and include the 
 
14 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 human in the divine or universal End. Human life, 
 at any rate, is unintelligible apart from the idea of 
 Purpose ; the teleological and the ethical views are one. 
 Other views e.g., the physical are possible and com- 
 petent ; but we cannot rest in them as final. The question 
 of Ethics is, What is man's chief End ; what is the supreme 
 Purpose in the fulfilment of which he shall fulfil himself ; 
 what is the central and governing principle according tq 
 which he shall organise his life ? 
 
 It is to be remembered, moreover, that the moral life is, 
 like the psychical life generally, rather an organic growth 
 than a mechanism or fixed arrangement. Like the organ- 
 ism, it preserves its essential identity through all the vari- 
 , ations of its historical development ; it evolves continuously 
 \ in virtue of an inner principle. To discover this constant 
 <sj principle of the evolution of morality is the business of 
 Ethics. The task of the moral philosopher is not to con- 
 struct a system of rules for the conduct of life we do not 
 live by rule but to lay bare the nerve of the moral life, 
 the very essence of which is spontaneity and growth away 
 from any fixed form or type. Each age has its own moral; 
 type, which the historian of morality studies; and the 
 hero of an earlier age is not the hero of a later. Neither 
 Aristotle's ^ejaXo-^v^o^ nor the mediaeval "saint" will 
 serve as our moral type. The search of Ethics is for the 
 organising principle of morality, for a principle which 
 shall explain and co-ordinate all the changing forms of 
 its historical development. 
 
 Nor are we to commit what we may call the " moralist's 
 fallacy " of confusing the philosophic or reflective moral 
 consciousness with the ordinary or naive. The principles 
 
THE ETHICAL PROBLEM. 15 
 
 of the moral life, we must remember, are not to any great 
 extent explicit ; its ideals are not clearly realised in the 
 consciousness of the plain man. To a certain extent, of 
 course, the ethical life is a thinking life, up to a certain 
 point it must understand itself ; it is not to be pictured as 
 parallel with the physical life, which proceeds in entire 
 ignorance of its own principles. But its thought need not I 
 go far, and it is not the business of Ethics to substitute 
 its explicit theory, its rational insight and comprehension, 
 for the implicit and naive moral intelligence of ordinary 
 life. Nor is the proof of an ethical theory to be sought in 
 the discovery, in the ordinary moral consciousness of any 
 age or community, of such a theory of its life. That life 
 is conducted rather by " tact," by a practical insight of 
 which it cannot give the grounds. This was the feeling 
 even of a Socrates, who attributed such unaccountable 
 promptings to the unerring voice of the divinity that 
 guided his destiny. The moral life precipitates itself in 
 these unformulated principles of action; we acquire a 
 faculty of quick and sure moral judgment, as we acquire a 
 similar faculty of scientific or artistic judgment. This 
 ability comes with " the years that bring the philosophic 
 mind " ; it is the ripe fruit of the good life. 
 
 5. Modem moralists, it is true, prefer to raise the ques- 
 tion in another form, and to ask, not " What is man's 
 chief End ? " but " What is man's Duty ; what is the 
 supreme Law of his life ? " The " right " is the favourite 
 category of modern Ethics, as the " goojjl " is that of ancient. 
 
 But this is, truly understood, only another form of the their log- 
 ical con- 
 same question. For the Good or chief End of man does nection. 
 
1 6 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Personality not fulfil itself, as the divine Purpose in nature does ; 
 
 as Moral 
 
 ideal. man is not, or, at least, cannot regard himself as, a mere 
 instrument or vehicle of the realisation of the Purpose in 
 his life. His Good presents itself to him as an Ideal, which 
 he may or may not realise in practice ; that is what dis- 
 tinguishes the moral from the natural life. The Law of 
 man's life is not, like that of nature's, inevitable ; it may v 
 be broken as well as kept ; that is why we call it a moral 
 law. While a physical law or a " law of nature " is simply 
 a statement of that which always happens, a moral law is/ 
 that which ought to be, but perhaps never strictly is. Sol 
 that, while the ethical category has changed from the Sum- 
 mum Bonum of the ancients to the Duty and Law of the 
 moderns, the underlying conception is the same, and the 
 logic of the transition from the one category to the other 
 is easily understood. Perhaps the conception of a Moral 
 Ideal may be taken as combining the classical idea of Chief - 
 Good or End with the modern idea of Law, and its antith- 
 esis between Duty and attainment, between the Ought- 
 to-be and the Is. 
 
 For both the ancient and the modern conceptions of the 
 Moral Ideal have a tendency to imperfection ; the former 
 is apt to be an external, the latter a mechanical view. The 
 ancients were apt to regard the End as something to be' 
 acquired or got, rather than as an ideal to be attained. 
 But, as Aristotle and Kant have both insisted, man must 
 ^ejiis~aw End ; he cannot subordinate himself as a means 
 to any further end. The moral ideal is an ideal of ch$f- 
 acter. In ancient philosophy we can trace a gradual pro- 
 gress towards this more adequate view. As the conception 
 of Happiness is gradually deepened, it is seen to consist 
 
 
THE ETHICAL PROBLEM. 17 
 
 in an inner rather than an outer well-being, in a life of 
 ' activity rather than in a state of dependence on external 
 goods, in a settled condition or habit of will rather than 
 in any outward circumstances or fortune. The true for- 
 tune of the soul, it is felt, is in its own hands, both to 
 attain and to keep. The modern or Christian view is 
 more spiritual and idealistic. " Seek first the kingdom of 
 God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be 
 added unto you ; " " take no thought for the morrow." 
 The claims of righteousness become paramount. "Do 
 the right, though the heavens fall." The danger for 
 this view is the tendency so to exaggerate the notion 
 of Law as to conceive of life as mere obedience to a 
 code of rules or precepts. Such a view of morality is 
 mechanical. Life according to rule is as inadequate a con- 
 ception as the pursuit of an external end ; and it is only 
 gradually that we have regained the classical conception 
 of ethical " good," and have learned once more to think of 
 the moral life as a fulfilment rather than a negation and 
 restraint, and to place law in its true position as a means 
 rather than an end. 
 
 The ancient and the modern views of the moral ideal 
 are thus alike inadequate and mutually complementary ; 
 they must be harmonised in a deeper view. The End of 
 life is an ideal of character, to be realised by the indi- 
 vidual, and his attitude to it is one of obligation or duty 
 to realise it. It is something not to be got or to be done, 
 but to le or to become. It is not to be sought without, but 
 within ; it is the man himself, in that true or essential 
 nature, in the realisation of which is fulfilled his duty to 
 others and to God. All duty is ultimately duty to oneself. 
 
 > 
 
 I7ELJ1TY! 
 
1 8 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 (6) Ancient 6. A second characteristic difference between the stand- 
 iticai, P point of ancient and that of modern moral reflection brings 
 dividual- 111 ' out still more clearly the necessity of such a personal view 
 inadequacy ^ morality. The moral ideal of the classical world was a 
 andtheir political or social ideal, that of the modern world is indi- 
 ationh! 1 " vidualistic. To the Greek, whether he was philosopher or 
 Personal- no t ; a ll the interests of life were summed up in those of 
 citizenship ; he had no sphere of " private morality." The 
 conception of the State was so impressive, absorbing even, 
 to the Greek mind, that it seemed adequate to the inter- 
 pretation of the entire ethical life ; and when confidence 
 in its adequacy was shaken by the break-up of the State 
 itself, and recourse was had of sheer necessity to the con- 
 ception of a life of the individual apart from the State, 
 when the notion of Greek citizenship was abandoned, as 
 in Stoicism and Epicureanism, for that of " citizenship of 
 the world," the Ethics of the ancient world had already, 
 like its life and thought in general, entered upon its period 
 of decay. 
 
 The inadequacy of the classical standpoint has become 
 a commonplace to us ; we detect it in even the best pro- 
 ducts of the moral reflection of Greece, in the ethics of 
 Plato and Aristotle. If modern theory and practice are 
 defective, it is in the opposite extreme. The modern 
 ethical standpoint has been that of the individual life. 
 This change of standpoint is mainly the result of the 
 acceptance of the Christian principle of the infinite value 
 of the individual as a moral person, of what we might 
 almost call the Christian discovery of the significance of 
 personality. The isolation of the moral individual has 
 been made only too absolute ; the principle of mere 
 
THE ETHICAL PEOBLEM. 19 
 
 individualism is as inadequate as the principle of mere 
 citizenship. Hence the difficulty of reconciling the claims 
 of self with the claims of society a difficulty which can 
 hardly be said to have existed for the ancients, who had 
 not yet separated the individual from his society, and to 
 whom, accordingly, the two interests were one and the 
 same. Hence, too, the fantastic and impossible concep- 
 tion of a purely selfish life, which has caused modern 
 moralists such trouble. Hence the ignoring of the im- 
 portance of ethical institutions, especially that of the State, 
 resulting in the view of the State as having a merely 
 negative or " police " function, and the Hobbes-Eousseau 
 theory of society itself as an artificial product, the result of 
 contract between individuals who, like mutually exclusive 
 atoms, are naturally antagonists. 
 
 For, in reality, these two spheres of life are inseparable, j 
 \ The interests and claims of the social and of the indi- 
 vidual life overlap, and are reciprocally inclusive. \ These 
 are not two lives, but two sides or aspects of one undi- 
 vided life. You cannot isolate the moral individual; to 
 do so would be to de-moralise him, to annihilate his moral 
 nature. His very life as a moral being consists in a net- 
 work of relations which link his individual life with the 
 wider life of his fellows. It is literally true that "no 
 man liveth to himself," there is no retiring into the 
 privacy and solitude of a merely individual life. Man 
 is a social or political being. On the other hand, the 
 individual is more than a member of society; he is not 
 the mere organ of the body politic. He too is an organ- 
 ism, and has a life and ends of his own. The Good 
 every individual, a social or common Good, a Good 
 
 i organ- 
 )d is, for ( I 
 jrood in \ 
 
20 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 which he cannot claim such private property as to ex- 
 clude his fellows ; their good is his, and his theirs. Yet 
 the Good the only Good we know as absolute is always 
 a personal, not an impersonal good, a good of moral per- 
 sons. The person, not society, is the ultimate ethical unit 
 and reality. 
 
 7. The task of Ethics, therefore, is the discovery of the 
 of ItWcsas central principle of moral or spiritual life, as the task of 
 tigltioiiof Biology is the discovery of the central principle of physical 
 
 ingp5S r ~ ^ e - ^ ie undertaking is a hard and difficult one; and 
 cipieof L i s possible that Life, moral as well as physical, may 
 
 human me. J 
 
 " elude definition." It may be that all we can do, in the 
 one sphere as in the other, is to describe its progressive 
 outward manifestations; the life-principle itself may re- 
 main a secret. In that case, a Science of Ethics, as 
 distinguished from a Metaphysic of Ethics or a Moral 
 Philosophy, would alone be possible. But the philosophic 
 task must first be attempted, and not given up at the 
 outset. May we not reasonably hope, with Aristotle, that 
 the ova-la or essential nature will reveal itself in the 
 </>ucr:9 or TL ea-Tiv of actual morality ? 
 
21 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE METHOD OF ETHICS. 
 
 1. ETHICS being an integral part of Philosophy, its The Meth 
 method must be the method of Philosophy rather than icspwio- 
 that of Science. The general distinction between Philo- J2her than 
 sophy and Science must be applied here. If Ethics is to scientlfic - 
 provide a philosophy of life, and not merely a science of 
 it, its method cannot be the merely scientific one of 
 observation and generalisation of the " phenomena " of 
 existing or past conduct and character. Such a scientific 
 account of morality is no doubt legitimate, and, as Aris- 
 totle insisted no less strenuously than recent " scientific " 
 moralists, we must begin with " the facts." But philo- 
 sophy must attempt here as elsewhere to travel beyond 
 the scientific explanation to one that is deeper and ulti- 
 mate. Beyond the Science of Ethics, whether it be " phys- 
 ical Ethics," " psychological Ethics," or " historical Ethics," 
 is the " Metaphysic of Ethics " or ethical Philosophy. 
 The modern tendency, the tendency especially of con- 
 temporary thought, is to " naturalise the moral man," to 
 exhibit the evolulXon of human conduct and character 
 
22 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 from sub-human forms, to substitute physics for meta- 
 physics, positivism for transcendentalism, science for 
 philosophy. But we must not prejudge the ethical 
 question the question whether there is any unique 
 element in the nature and life of man by adopting the 
 method of science and excluding that of philosophy. It 
 is perfectly legitimate to attempt the resolution of man 
 into nature, but the demonstration of such an identity 
 would be itself a philosophical achievement. To adopt at 
 the outset a naturalistic interpretation of morality, or to 
 deny the possibility of an ethical philosophy, would be to 
 beg the question of Ethics. 
 
 
 The Phys- 2. The proposed " scientific " method of Ethics assumes 
 
 ical and 
 
 Biological various forms in the hands of contemporary writers. 
 With Spencer, for example, and with the Evolutionary 
 school in general, it is sometimes the method of physics 
 and mechanics, sometimes the method of biology. Con- 
 duct is regarded as a complex of movements, a series of 
 adjustments of the human being to his environment. 
 The Science of Ethics, accordingly, is the result of the 
 application to human life of the Darwinian law of evolu- 
 tion by natural selection ; the same formula of adjustment 
 of the being to its environment covers the process of the 
 physical and of the ethical life. Whether the adjustment 
 is one of mechanical movement, of life, or of conscious 
 purpose is, it is held, a matter of detail. There is a 
 difference of complexity, but the process is one and 
 continuous throughout. Even Professor Alexander, who, 
 like Mr Leslie Stephen, emphasises the inner significance 
 of conduct as the expression of character, would make 
 
THE METHOD OF ETHICS. 23 
 
 Ethics the verification of the evolutionary laws of " struggle 
 for existence " and " survival of the fittest." 1 ISTow, it is 
 obvious that conduct is a series of outward movements or 
 activities, of biological and mechanical phenomena, and 
 that it may be. interpreted as such. But the ethical inter- 
 pretation of it must be based on another view ; in the 
 view of Ethics, the outward movements and activities are 
 merely the index and expression of a certain type of 
 character. To apply biological and mechanical categories 
 to character (or to conduct as conduct) is to indulge in 
 unscientific, metaphorical, and pictorial thought. 
 
 3. Recognising this peculiarity in the subject-matter ThePsy- 
 of Ethics, other writers would have us adopt the psycho- Method? 
 logical method. The facts, it is acknowledged, are in this 
 case facts of consciousness, psychological phenomena ; but 
 we must not seek to travel beyond these facts. Let us 
 classify the motives from which men act ; let us analyse, 
 simplify, and unify this complex mass of inner activities. 
 Let us trace the genesis of conscience, and show how the 
 conception of an Ought- to-be has slowly emerged from the 
 apprehension of the Is of human life. This psychological 
 Ethics is no new thing : Ethics and Psychology have been 
 long confused. But the progress of Psychology towards 
 the position of a " natural science " has helped us to 
 understand the distinction between its province and that of 
 Ethics ; here, as elsewhere, scientific progress has come 
 with self -limitation. The task of Psychology, it is now 
 generally understood, is not to investigate the essential 
 nature of mind, but only to give a methodical account 
 
 1 Cf, Alexander's ' Moral Order and Progress,' passim. 
 
24 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 of its phases or elements. It deals with the phenomenal 
 manifestations of mind, it does not investigate the ulti- 
 mate significance of these manifestations the place 
 and function of self -consciousness in the economy of 
 the universe. The latter problem is that of Philo- 
 sophy. If we apply this distinction to morality, it 
 will mean that while Psychology is perfectly competent 
 to provide a "phenomenology" of the moral conscious- 
 ness, it remains for ethical Philosophy to interpret the 
 meaning of these phenomena. In particular, Ethics 
 must investigate the objective validity of the grand 
 moral distinction between the ideal and the actual, 
 the Ought-to-be and the Is, a distinction which, inas- 
 much as it is primarily a distinction within the sphere 
 of consciousness, is for Psychology merely phenomenal 
 and subjective. Accepting from Psychology the scientific 
 explanation of moral phenomena, on their inner or psy- 
 chical side, as it accepts from Physics and Biology the 
 scientific explanation of the same phenomena on their 
 outer or physical side, Ethics reserves to itself the task of 
 accounting for the entire body of these phenomena, of 
 giving their raison d'etre, of explaining their " morality." 
 
 The His- 4. The demand that the ethical investigation be con- 
 Method. \ ducted according to scientific method takes yet another 
 form, closely connected with the preceding viz., that 
 the true method of Ethics is the historical. The present 
 popularity of this method is largely due to the fact that 
 it is the method of evolution. To understand any pheno- 
 menon, it is said, is to know its genesis : being and becoming 
 are one and the same. And since there is an evolution of 
 
THE METHOD OF ETHICS. 25 
 
 morality, as of all else, the clue to its explanation will be 
 found in the process of its historical development. Ethics 
 assumes, therefore, the universal form of current science, 
 and becomes a " study of origins." " Here, then, at last," 
 says President Schurman, " we have an answer to the 
 question, How is ethics as a science possible ? If it is 
 ever to rise above the analytical procedure of logic, it 
 can only be by becoming one of the historical sciences. 
 Given the earliest morality of which we have any written 
 record, to trace from it through progressive stages the 
 morality of to-day, that is the problem, and the only 
 problem, which can fall to a truly scientific ethics." 1 It 
 is to the " history of moral ideals and institutions," there- 
 fore, that this writer, with many other ethical thinkers, 
 looks for " the solution of many of those vexed questions 
 which have never failed to stimulate, and have always 
 baffled, the ingenuity of all the schools of analytical philo- 
 sophers." "The observation and classification of ethical 
 facts, whether manifested in the individual or in the race, 
 constitute the business of the science of ethics; all else 
 is hypothesis, speculation, fancy. . . . Ethics, if it is to 
 become truly a science, must shun the path of specula- 
 tion, and follow closely the historical method." 2 
 
 1 ' Ethical Import of Darwinism,' 31. It should be noted that Dr 
 Schurman, unlike many who use similar language about the method of 
 Ethics, recognises the legitimacy of an ethical " philosophy " based upon 
 the historical investigation above described. 
 
 2 Cf. Leslie Stephen (' Science of Ethics,' 447, 448). " Ethical investiga- 
 tions, like others, will have some definite results when we turn to what 
 are called historical methods of inquiry. . . . The tendency of modern 
 speculation to take that form, or to look into the history of the past for 
 an answer to problems which were once attacked by looking simply into 
 our own minds, implies a recognition of this principle." 
 
26 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 But to make Ethics a merely historical science would 
 be to give up all that is historically included under the 
 term. The aim of Ethics is higher than the mere clas- 
 sification of moral " phenomena " ; its business is to 
 investigate their essential nature, to determine their 
 objective meaning, to define the End or Ideal of which 
 they are the progressive realisation. It is doubtless 
 ethically instructive to study the history of morality, but 
 just because it is the story of the gradual actualisation of 
 the Moral Ideal in character and conduct, in individual 
 and social life. The study of the history is an invaluable 
 aid to the apprehension of the Ideal itself. But this 
 ethical interest in history is quite different from the 
 historical interest. Ethics is interested in historical facts, 
 not as facts, but as containing the partial revelation of an 
 Ideal without which the history itself would be impossible. 
 It is not in the historical facts themselves, but in their 
 eternal meaning and ultimate explanation, that the ethical 
 interest centres. Ethics is, like Logic and ^Esthetics, a 
 normative or ideal science. Its business is the discovery 
 of the moral Ideal or criterion, and the appreciation of 
 actual morality in terms of this Ideal. And though it is 
 true that it is only by the study of its actual historical 
 development that we can hope to discover the essential 
 nature of the moral life, yet in practice it will too 
 often be found that the advocates of the historical method 
 are the victims of the fallacious idea that the earlier and 
 simpler contains the explanation of the later and more 
 complex, that the primitive is the primary, and the 
 simple the essential. This idea, which inspired the 
 Eousseau Ethics of " Nature," is also at the root of the 
 
THE METHOD OF ETHICS. 27 
 
 prevalent tendency to identify Ethics with Anthropology, 
 and to find the key to all the mystery of man's nature 
 in the crudities of infant and savage life. But surely the 
 principle of Evolution, truly understood, teaches us to 
 recognise the meaning of the lower forms in the higher, 
 of the earlier in the later, rather than vice versd. The 
 flower and fruit do not betray or cancel the life of the 
 seed ; rather the one is the revelation of the other, the 
 explanation of its real nature. If we are to be faithful 
 to the principle of Evolution, we must recognise an identity 
 and continuity in the changing forms of moral life. But if 
 Evolution means progress, then it is in the later rather than 
 in the earlier forms of morality, in the present rather than 
 in the past, whether historic or prehistoric, that we must 
 seek the key to the interpretation of the ethical process 
 as a whole; for the later stages are more adequate ex- 
 ponents of its meaning than the earlier, and the present 
 than the past. 
 
 5. If by " scientific method " it is simply meant that Ethics as 
 Ethics must seek to be methodical, we need not quarrel exact" 
 with the phrase. But, even so, we must guard against 
 misunderstanding. While the ideal of Science is exact or 
 accurate knowledge, yet, within the scientific sphere itself, 
 there is a distinction between the " exact sciences " and 
 those whose procedure and results cannot be so character- 
 ised. Mathematics and, to a large extent, physics are 
 exact sciences; biology, in its various subdivisions, and 
 still more obviously, psychology, are not exact. Nor is 
 this difference in scientific method due to the difference 
 in the progress of these sciences ; it is rather the result of 
 
28 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 the difference of their subject-matter. Life and thought 
 cannot be measured, as can space and time, matter and 
 motion. If, therefore, Ethics were to become a science in 
 the stricter sense of the term, it is among the inexact, not 
 among the exact sciences, that we should expect to find it. 
 Mill proposed such a " science of ethology," which, taking 
 human character as its subject-matter, should attempt the 
 reduction of moral phenomena to a uniformity like that 
 to which the physical sciences reduce the phenomena of 
 nature. And if due allowance is made for the difference 
 in the subject-matter, the same kind of allowance as the 
 biologist makes when he distinguishes his science from 
 that of physics, or the psychologist when he distinguishes 
 his from that of physiology, I do not know that we need 
 dissent from such a definition of Ethics as a science. 1 ] 
 
 6. Only I would claim for Ethics, in addition to the 
 narrower task of science, even so conceived, the larger 
 philosophic task. As already indicated, the science of 
 Ethics must have for its complement an ethical philosophy 
 or a metaphysic of Ethics. But here we are met by the 
 agnostic objection to all metaphysics. Mr Leslie Stephen, 
 the " Apologist " of Agnosticism, tells us, in his ( Science 
 of Ethics,' 2 that, in his opinion, " it is useless to look for 
 any further light from metaphysical inquiries." His 
 demand is for ethical realism, which means for him ethical 
 empiricism, positivism, or phenomenalism. Let us keep 
 to the moral facts or phenomena, to " moral reality," and 
 
 1 Cf. Aristotle's reiterated insistence that we must not demand a 
 greater scientific exactitude than the nature of the subject-matter per- 
 mits, and that the subject-matter of Ethics is inexact. 2 450. 
 
THE METHOD OF ETHICS. 29 
 
 not seek to penetrate to its transcendental background, 
 or think to find the sanctions of human conduct in the 
 divine or the ideal. If we understand the inter-relations 
 of the facts of the moral life, we shall sufficiently under- 
 stand their moral significance. Let us ascertain "the 
 meaning to be attached to morality so long as we remain 
 in the world of experience ; and if, in the transcendental 
 world, you can find a deeper foundation for morality, 
 that does not concern me. I am content to build upon 
 the solid earth. You may, if you please, go down to the 
 elephant or the tortoise." l It is not necessary " to begin 
 at the very beginning, and to solve the whole problem of 
 the universe " before you " get down to morality." " My 
 view, therefore, is that the science of Ethics deals with 
 realities ; that metaphysical speculation does not help us 
 to ascertain the relevant facts. ... This is virtually to 
 challenge the metaphysician to show that he is of any 
 use in the matter." 2 
 
 This challenge the metaphysician need have no hesita- 
 tion in accepting, and his answer to it will consist in a 
 careful definition of the ethical problem and of the possible 
 solutions of it. That problem is not, What are the facts 
 or phenomena of morality ? but, How are we to interpret 
 the facts ? What is their ultimate significance ? The 
 former question will no doubt help us to answer the 
 latter ; knowledge of the (/>u<7t9, or actual nature, will lead 
 us to the knowledge of the ovcria, or essential nature and 
 meaning, of moral as of other facts. We must admit that 
 the empirical and inductive method has its rights in the 
 ethical as in all other fields of inquiry, and that the " high 
 
 1 Op. cit., 446. 2 Ibid., 450. 
 
30 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 priori road " is a road that leads to no result in ethical 
 any more than in natural philosophy. We need always 
 the instruction of experience, knowledge lies for us in an 
 unprejudiced study of the facts. But the Baconian 
 method of pure induction, or mere observation, will not 
 serve us any better than the method of pure metaphysical 
 deduction. The low posteriori road also will bring us to 
 no goal of knowledge. It is never mere facts that we seek, 
 it is always the meaning of the facts ; and our accumula- 
 tion of facts is never more than a means towards the 
 attainment of that insight into their significance which 
 makes the facts luminous. Every fact, every element of 
 reality, carries us beyond itself for its explanation ; if we 
 would understand it we must relate it to other facts, and 
 these to others, until, to understand the meanest, slightest 
 fact or element of reality, we find that we should have to 
 relate it to all the other facts of the universe, and to see it 
 as an element of universal Eeality. In the perfect know- 
 ledge of the " little flower," " root and all, and all in all, 
 I should know what God and man is." Even so the 
 lowliest flower that grows on the soil of human life is 
 rooted in the deeper soil of universal Reality, and is fed 
 by the sap of the cosmos itself. The controversy between 
 agnosticism and metaphysics is, therefore, not a con- 
 troversy between realism and idealism, between science 
 and unscientific philosophy. It is rather a controversy 
 between a narrower and a wider view of Eeality, between 
 a more superficial and a more profound interpretation of 
 the facts. As philosophy ought to be scientific, so must 
 science be philosophic or metaphysical in its method and 
 spirit. If the over-hastiness of philosophical speculation 
 
THE METHOD OF ETHICS. 31 
 
 must be checked by the caution and patience of scientific 
 observation, the empirical observation of science must 
 also be inspired by a metaphysical speculation which is 
 always in advance of the facts observed. The distinction 
 between science and philosophy is not a distinction of 
 kind, but only of degree. Science abstracts certain 
 elements of reality from the rest, in the hope of mastering 
 these elements ; but always, as the investigation proceeds, 
 it is found that the mastery of the elements selected for 
 examination implies the mastery of others, and the mastery 
 of these the mastery of others, until even from the 
 scientific point of view it is seen that a perfect mastery 
 of any would imply the perfect mastery of all. And on 
 our journey towards this " master-light of all our seeing," 
 it is hardly possible to say where science ends and philo- 
 sophy begins. In the case now in question, the meta- 
 physician only seeks to attain a more intimate and ex- 
 haustive knowledge of moral reality than the scientific 
 moralist, to penetrate to the deeper Eeality of moral 
 phenomena, to understand what it is that thus " appears," 
 to grasp the Being of moral Seeming. The scientific 
 moralist insists on taking moral facts in abstraction from 
 their bearing on the whole theory of the cosmos. So 
 taken, they assume the character of mere facts, they lose 
 their ethical meaning. An adequate ethical view is not 
 reached, a satisfactory explanation of morality is not 
 attained, so long as we separate morality either from 
 Nature or from God. Eeality is one, and its elements 
 must be seen in their mutual relation if they are to be 
 understood as in reality they are. Ethics is therefore 
 inseparable from metaphysics, and it needs no " ingenious 
 
3 2 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 sophistry " to " force them into relation." If, even in the 
 strictly inductive stages of the inquiry, the metaphysician 
 might well claim to be of some use ; in the later 
 stages of it, at which we have now arrived, when the 
 " facts " have been perhaps sufficiently accumulated, he is 
 indispensable. If we would reach an adequate interpreta- 
 tion of human life, we must place man in his true human 
 " setting," we must discover his relation to the world and 
 to God. The meaning of human life is part of the mean- 
 ing of the universe itself, the moral order is part of the 
 universal order, the " ethical process " is part of the 
 "cosmic process." 
 
 Eelationof 7. It is customary with the Evolutionary moralists, 
 Theology, even with those who, like Mr Stephen, profess agnos- 
 ticism, to correlate man with Nature, and to seek to de- 
 monstrate the unity and continuity of his life with that of 
 the physical universe. This is, of course, a metaphysical 
 endeavour, and if its legitimacy is not open to question, I 
 do not see why the effort to correlate the life of man with 
 that of God should be pronounced illegitimate. If mo- 
 rality has natural " sanctions," why should it not have 
 divine sanctions ? Metaphysics is essentially and inevi- 
 tably theological ; if we cannot exclude metaphysics, we 
 cannot exclude theology. If we must ask, What is man's 
 relation to Nature ? we must also ask, What is his relation 
 to God ? It is probably fear of theology, rather than fear 
 of metaphysics, that inspires the agnostic and positive 
 ethics. Nor is the fear unreasonable, considering the views 
 of morality which have been inculcated in the name of 
 theology, the supernatural machinery that has been called 
 
THE METHOD OF ETHICS. 33 
 
 into play to execute the " sanctions " in question, and the 
 " terms of hell " to which theologians have often striven to 
 reduce the life of man. Such views are the expression of 
 crude thought and blind dogmatism ; they are not entitled 
 to the proud name which Aristotle claimed for his " first 
 philosophy " or metaphysics, the name of Theology. "No 
 less unworthy is it to employ the conception of God as a 
 mere " asylum ignorantise "; the deus ex machind is as un- 
 warrantable in Ethics as in the Philosophy of Nature. 
 The " Will of God " is not to be invoked as a mere exter- 
 nal authority, to spare us the trouble of discovering the 
 rationale either of nature or of morality. God must be 
 rather the goal than the starting-point of our philosophy. 
 To " see all things in God " would be to understand all 
 things perfectly ; to see anything in that Light would be 
 to see all things as they truly are. Yet we cannot rest 
 content in any lower knowledge; the world and life 
 remain dark to us until they receive that illumination. 
 To investigate the theological sanctions of morality is 
 simply to go from the outside to the inside, from the cir- 
 cumference to the centre, from a partial to a complete 
 view of the ethical problem. If all questions are, in the 
 last analysis and in the ultimate issue, theological ques- 
 tions, since all are ultimately questions of metaphysics, 
 the ethical question can least of all escape this fate. 
 Ethics is not mere Anthropology. To interpret the life of 
 man as man, we must interpret human nature, and its 
 world or sphere ; we must investigate " man's place in 
 nature," his relations to his fellows, and his relation to 
 that life of God which in some sense must include the life 
 of nature and of man. Man, with his moral life, is part 
 
 c 
 
34 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 of the universe, and it has been truly said that it is really 
 the universe that, in him, is interrogating itself as to the 
 ultimate meaning of moral experience. For, in the moral 
 world no less than in the intellectual, experience is not the 
 last word. The transcendental or " metempirical " ques- 
 tion will not be silenced : What, in Nature, Man and God, 
 in the universal Eeality, is the basis, presupposition, or 
 sanction of this experience ? We might perhaps distin- 
 guish a scientific or " relative " Ethics from such a philo- 
 sophic or " absolute " Ethics. But the scientific must in 
 the end fall within the philosophic, the relative within the 
 absolute ; and, short of a " metaphysic of ethics," there is 
 no final resting-place for the human mind. That meta- 
 physic may be either naturalistic or idealistic. On the 
 one hand, the law of human life may be reduced to terms 
 of natural law, the moral ideal may be resolved into the 
 reality of nature. Or, on the other hand, the ultimate 
 measure of human conduct and character may be found in 
 a spiritual order which transcends the natural ; the moral 
 ideal may be found to express a divine Eeality to which 
 the real world of nature would, in itself, give no clue. But, 
 be our " metaphysic of ethics " what it may, metaphysics 
 we cannot in the end escape. 
 
35 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL BASIS. 
 
 /I. ETHICS, as the philosophy of conduct and character, Necessity 
 j must be based upon Psychology, or the science of the logical 
 \moral life. Inadequacies in ethical theory will be found adequate 
 
 to be largely traceable to inadequacy in the underlying imum life 
 Psychology. Kant, indeed, seeks to separate Ethics from inadequate 
 Psychology, and to establish it as a metaphysic of the J^jf 
 pure reason. But even Kant's moral philosophy is based nature - 
 upon a Psychology. Abstracting from all the other 
 elements of man's nature, Kant conceives him as a purely 
 rational being, a Eeason energising; and it is to this 
 abstractness and inadequacy in his psychology that we 
 must trace the abstractness and inadequacy of Kant's 
 ethical theory. So impossible is it for Ethics to escape 
 Psychology ; so necessary for philosophy to take account, 
 here as elsewhere, of scientific results. As Aristotle 
 maintained in ancient times, and Butler in modern, the 
 question, What is the characteristic excellence or proper 
 life of man ? raises the previous question, What is the 
 nature and constitution of man, whose characteristic life 
 and excellence we seek to describe? 
 
 Let us look a little more closely at the connection 
 
36 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 between Ethics and Psychology, as we can trace it in the 
 history of ethical thought. In both ancient and modern 
 philosophy, we find two main types of ethical theory, which 
 affiliate themselves to two main psychological doctrines. 
 This affiliation is even more explicit in ancient than in 
 modern philosophy. Plato and Aristotle have each a 
 double representation of the virtuous life, corresponding to 
 the dualism which they discover in man's nature a lower 
 and a higher life, according as the lower or the higher 
 nature finds play. Man's nature consists, they hold, of a 
 rational and an irrational or sentient part ; and while the 
 ordinary life of virtue is represented by Plato as a har- 
 monious life of all the parts in obedience to reason the 
 city of Mansoul being like a well-ordered State in which 
 due subordination is enforced, and by Aristotle as a 
 life of all the parts (irrational included) in accordance 
 with right reason, yet both conceive his highest or ideal 
 life as a life of pure reason, or intellectual contempla- 
 tion. Thus both resolving human nature into a rational 
 and an irrational element, both give two representations 
 of virtue and goodness. The life may be good in form, 
 but bad in content a content of unreason moulded by 
 reason ; or it may be entirely good its content as well as 
 its form may be rational. 
 
 This psychological and ethical dualism is further em- 
 phasised by the Stoics and Epicureans, who had been an- 
 ticipated by the Cynics and by the Cyrenaics respectively. 
 The one school, making reason supreme, either condemns 
 or entirely subordinates the life of sensibility ; the other, 
 making sensibility supreme, either excludes or entirely 
 subordinates the life of reason. The same two types may 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL BASIS. 37 
 
 be traced in modern ethical theory the Ethics of pure 
 reason in Kant and the Intuitionists, the Ethics of sensi- 
 bility in the Utilitarian and Evolutionary schools. 
 
 The " abstractness " of both ethical theories is traceable 
 to the " abstractness " of the underlying psychology. The 
 half- view of human life rests upon a half- view of human 
 nature. The true ethical life must be the life of the 
 whole Man, of the moral Person. Conduct is the exponent 
 of character, and character of Personality. If we would 
 discover the life of man in its unity and entirety, we 
 must see the nature of man in its unity and entirety. We 
 must penetrate beneath the dualism of reason and sensi- 
 bility of reason and unreason to their underlying unity. 
 The ethical point of view must be neither that of reason 
 nor of sensibility, but of Will, as the unity of both, as the 
 true and total Self. Plato had a glimpse of this unity 
 when he spoke of Ovpos as carrying out the behests of 
 reason in the government of the passions and appetites. 
 Aristotle spoke more explicitly of Will. But both, like 
 their modern successors, insisted on construing man's life 
 in terms either of reason or of sensibility, giving us an 
 account of the intellectual or of the emotional life, but not 
 of the moral life not of the total life of man as man. In 
 Will we find the sought-for unity, the focal point of all 
 man's complex being, the characteristic and distinguishing 
 feature of his nature, which gives us the clue to his charac- 
 teristic life. Man is not a merely sentient being, nor is he 
 " pure reason energising." He is Will and his life is that 
 activity of will in which both reason and sensibility are, 
 as elements, contained, and by whose most subtle chemistry 
 they are inextricably interfused. 
 
38 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Voluntary 2. The moral life being the life of Will, we must endea- 
 
 pres^ vour to reach a psychology of Will. But we must approach 
 
 voluntary j volition gradually and from the outside. Voluntary pre- 
 
 forms 1 ^ supposes involuntary activity. Volition implies a concep- 
 
 the latter. ^ on o an en( ^ p ur p se, or intention. But we must exe- 
 ' cute movements before we can plan or intend them. The 
 original stock of movements with which the will starts on 
 its life must be acquired before the appearance of will on 
 the stage of human life. " The involuntary activity forms 
 the basis and the content of the voluntary. The will is in 
 no way creative, but only modifying and selective." 1 
 
 These primary and involuntary acts are of various 
 kinds; some are the results of the constitution of 
 the physical organism, others imply a mental reaction. 
 The most important are the following: (1) Eeflex and 
 automatic, like the beating of the heart or the moving of 
 the eyelids. These are purely physiological and un- 
 conscious. (2) Spontaneous or random movements, the 
 involuntary and partly unconscious, partly conscious, 
 discharge of animal energy, like the movements of the 
 infant. (3) Sensori-motor, the conscious but non-volun- 
 tary adaptation to environment the automatic response 
 to external stimuli, due to the irritability of the nervous 
 system. (4) Instinctive not, like (3), the mere momen- 
 tary response to a particular stimulus, but complex, hav- 
 ing their source within, in the motor centres, rather than 
 in the external stimulus, and guided by reference to a 
 " silent " or unconscious end. 
 
 Now, all these movements are, or may be, accompanied 
 by sensations, which may accordingly be called "motor- 
 
 1 Hoffding, ' Psychology,' 330 (Eng. tr.) 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL BASIS. 39 
 
 sensations." Further, of these the psychical correlates 
 of the physical movements, their "feels" we preserve 
 a memory-image, which has been called a " kimesthetic 
 idea." "We may, therefore, add to the sensori-motor (5) N 
 ideo-motor activities, which embrace the great mass of 
 the higher actions of our life. The movement here ensues 
 directly upon the idea or representation of it, or rather 
 of the sensation attending it, as in the former case it 
 follows from the sensation itself. There is still no volition. 
 "We are aware of nothing between the conception and 
 the execution. . . . We think the act, and it is done." 1 An 
 extreme case of ideo-motor action is found in the hypnotic 
 trance, but the phenomenon is of constant occurrence in 
 ordinary life. To remember an engagement at the hour 
 appointed is, in general, to execute it. The business of 
 life could never go on if we deliberated and decided about 
 each of its several actions. Instead of this, we surrender 
 ourselves to the train of ideas, and let them bear us on 
 our way. For ideas are essentially impulsive "ide'es- 
 forces." When an idea fills the mind, the corresponding 
 movement follows immediately. Even when two such 
 ideas occupy the mind, when we are attracted in two 
 different directions, the one movement may be inhibited 
 through the idea of the other. There may be a " block," 
 and a clearance of the way, without the interference of 
 any fiat of Will, a knot which unties itself, a struggle of 
 ideas in which the strongest survives, and results in its 
 appropriate movement. 
 
 3. All this provision there is for movement partly in Voluntary 
 
 activity, 
 1 James, ' Principles of Psychology,' ii. 522. how dis- 
 
40 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 tinguished the nervous system, partly in the mind itself without any 
 interposition of volition. This last is rather of the nature 
 * inhibition of the natural tendency to movement the 
 re g u ^ a ti n and organisation of movements than origina- 
 
 tendencies ^ on * ^^ e beginnings are given by nature. But these 
 contrast of primary movements and their sensational correlates are 
 
 animal and 
 
 human life, vague and diffuse; they constitute a "motor-continuum," 
 which is gradually made discrete and definite. 1 This 
 occurs largely, as we have seen, involuntarily. A move- 
 ment is determined by the idea of the movement, that is, 
 by the anticipation of the movement's sensible effects, 
 without the explicit intervention of Will. Now if there 
 be such a thing as voluntary activity, its source must 
 be found in the manipulation of the ideas of move- 
 ments already made. In this sense, all action is ideo- 
 motor; its source is in an idea which at the moment 
 fills the consciousness. The question of the nature 
 of volition, therefore, resolves itself into this : What is 
 the mind's power over its ideas ? What is the genesis 
 of the moving idea in the highest and most complex 
 activities ? 
 
 The function of Will obviously is the regulation and 
 organisation of activity through the regulation and organi- 
 sation of those impulsive tendencies to action of which 
 man is naturally the subject. We shall perhaps obtain 
 the best idea of what the life of mere impulse without 
 volition would be by considering the case of a volitional 
 life in which the will is most in abeyance. The life of 
 the habitual drunkard, for example, is a life whose notori- 
 ous defect is the absence of self-control ; the man is the 
 
 1 Cf. Ward, art. " Psychology " iu ' Encyclopaedia Britannica,' 9th ed. 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL BASIS. 41 
 
 slave of the idea of the moment, the vivid representation 
 of the pleasures of gratified appetite or of social excite- 
 ment. This idea moves him to act in the line of its guid- 
 ance, and its continual recurrence carries with it, as its 
 natural and immediate consequence, a life of debauchery. 
 Such a life is the nearest approach, in human experience, 
 to that of the animal; such a man, we say, "makes a 
 beast of himself." The tragedy of it consists in the fact 
 of the abdication of the will, in the enslavement by im- 
 pulse of him who should have been its master. The case 
 of the " fixed idea " in insanity or in hypnotism would 
 illustrate even better a life of impulse without will. Here 
 will seems to be simply eliminated, and the man becomes 
 the prey of the idea of the moment or the hour. What- 
 ever is " suggested " in the line of the dominant idea, he 
 does forthwith ; his life is a series of simple reactions to 
 such ideational stimulation. 
 
 A life guided by Will, on the contrary, is a life in 
 Which each impelling idea, as it presents itself, is dealt/ 
 with, and subdued to a larger ideal or conception of life's , 
 total meaning and purpose ; in which for " action of the ' 
 reflex type" there is substituted action which is th^ 
 result of deliberate choice ; in which, instead of the coeri 
 cive guidance of the immediately dominant idea, we have, 
 the guidance that comes from a reflective consideration' 
 of the relative claims of the several ideas which now / 
 appear on the field of consciousness and compete for the' 
 mastery. Here is the unique and characteristic element 
 of human activity, in virtue of which we attribute Will 
 to man, and call his life a moral life. Even voluntary 
 activity, in the last analvji^ belongs to the " reflex type," 
 
 ".' ' ' ~ - 
 
 j^V 07 T7T1 ^^ 
 
 JI7Er.3IT.Tl 
 
42 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 or is ideo-motor ; but such is the new complexity of the 
 process that it deserves a new name. A man does not, 
 or at any rate need not, "react," as the mere animal 
 reacts. The action of the animal, being strictly a re- 
 action, and a mere immediate reaction, can be predicted, 
 /the stimulus being given. But man is not, like the 
 ; animal, the creature of impulse, even of that organised 
 'impulse which we call instinct. He is an animal, a 
 creature of impulse, played upon by the varied influ- 
 ences of his environment. But he is also, or may be, 
 "the master of impulse as the rider is master of his 
 horse"; his life may be the product of a single cen- 
 tral purpose which governs its every act; it is his to 
 live not in the immediate present or in the immediate 
 future, but to "look before and after," to forecast the 
 remote as well as the near future, and to act in the light 
 arid under the guidance of such a far-reaching survey of 
 his life. 
 
 Volition, then, consists in the direction or guidance of 
 given impulsive tendencies or propensities to act. The 
 function of will is not to create, but to direct and control. 
 The impulsive basis of volition, like the sensational basis 
 of knowledge, is given; the former is the datum of the 
 moral life, as the latter is the datum of the intellectual 
 life. Man is, to begin with and always, a sentient being, 
 a creature of animal sensibility. Such sensibility is the 
 " matter " of which will is the " form," the " manifold " of 
 which will is the " unity." That organisation of impulse 
 which is already accomplished for the animal in the shape 
 of instinct, has to be accomplished ly man himself. The 
 animal, in following its impulses, fulfils entirely its life's 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL BASIS. 43 
 
 purpose; its impulses are just the paths that bring it 
 securely to that end. We do not criticise its life, impul- 
 sive though it is ; it is as perfect and true to its intention 
 as the growth of the plant or the revolutions of the 
 spheres. It looks not before or after: it "does not ask 
 to see the distant goal," the " whither " of the forces that 
 master it " one step enough " for it. Its life is blind, or, 
 at any rate, sadly near-sighted, but unerring. Its path is 
 narrow, but straight to the goal. But to man is given an 
 eye to see his life's path stretching before him into the 
 far spaces of the future, and to look back along all the way 
 he has come. His moral life is, like his intellectual life, 
 self -conducted. The animal is born into the world fully 
 equipped for its life's journey, everything arranged for it, 
 each step of the path marked out. Man has to do almost 
 everything for himself to learn the intellectual and the 
 moral meaning of his life, to put himself to school, above 
 all, and from the beginning even to the end, to school him- 
 self. As out of the vague, confused, "presentation-con- 
 tinuum" he has to constitute, by his own intellectual 
 activity, a world of objects, so, out of the "motor-con- 
 tinuum " of " vague desire " he has to constitute, by his 
 own moral activity, a system of ends. Each sphere is a 
 kind of chaos until he reads into it, or recognises in it, 
 the cosmos of intelligence and of will. The complete 
 determination and definition of the one would be the 
 Truth, of the other the Good. Where the animal acts 
 blindly or from immediate and uncriticised impulse, man 
 can act with reflection and from deliberate choice. Where 
 the animal's life is the outcome of forces or tendencies of 
 which it is merely " aware," man " knows " or discerns the 
 
44 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 meaning of the tendencies he experiences, and acts, or 
 may act, in the light and by the force of such rational 
 insight. Where the cause of the animal's activity is to be 
 found without itself, in the appeal made to it by its cir- 
 cumstances or environment, in the "push and pull" of 
 impulsive forces, the true cause of human activities must 
 be sought within the man himself, in his critical con- 
 sideration of the outward appeal, in the superior strength 
 of his rational spirit. 
 
 The pro- 4. But we must note more closely the nature of the 
 
 lition: Its process of volition. We may distinguish three stages. 
 
 m a e r nts, S (a) e " ( a ) There is the temporary-inhibition of all the impulsive 
 tendencies, the pause or interval during which the alter- 
 native activities are suspended. We can hardly exaggerate 
 the psychological " importance of the interval." It is this 
 \j arrest of activity that breaks the immediacy and contin- 
 uity of the merely reflex or ideo-motor life. If the 
 drunkard only paused, and did not immediately proceed 
 to realise his idea of gratification, he would probably not 
 be a drunkard ; but he rushes to his fate. He who hesi- 
 tates, he who can effect the pause, in such a case, isjzot 
 lost, but almost saved. 1 The first step towards the con- 
 trol of animal impulse, towards the subjection of a master- 
 idea, is to postpone its realisation. The pause does not 
 prejudge the question of our ultimate attitude to the 
 impulse in question ; all that it implies is that we shall 
 not follow the impulse in the meantime, or until we 
 have considered its merits, and compared them with those 
 
 (J)deiiber- of other alternative impulses. (6) There is deliberation, 
 
 ation ; 
 
 1 Cf. James, ' Principles of Psychology,' ch. 26. 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL BASIS. 45 
 
 reflection upon the various possible courses in the circum- 
 stances, comparison and criticism of the result of follow- 
 ing each competing impulse, a study of the entire situation, 
 a " self - recollection," a " gathering oneself together," a 
 " trying of our ways," a comparison of this and that pos- 
 sible future with our present and our past, a bringing 
 the course proposed to the touchstone of our prevailing 
 aspirations, our dominant aims in life, our permanent x 
 and deepest as well as our fleeting, momentary, super- 
 ficial, though clamant, self ; a swerving from one side to 
 the other, a weighing of impulse in the scales of reflec- 
 tion ; and, sooner or later, (c) a decision or choice, the (c) choice, 
 acceptance of one or other of the conflicting ideal futures, 
 the surrender to it in all the strength of its now increased 
 impulsive force, the identification of the self with it, and 
 its realisation. The ideal future thus chosen is called the 
 end or motive of the resulting activity. For, once grasped, 
 it becomes the constraining stimulus to action, thsjidea 
 which moves us. In it is now focused the energy of the 
 entire man; it and he are, in a real sense, one. It is 
 thus that ends are the exponents of character, that life 
 attains to unity and system : it is thus that we conceive 
 of the perfect life as one guided by a single all-compre- 
 hensive Purpose, which runs through its entire course, 
 and, gathering up within itself all its varied activities, 
 imparts to each its own significance f 
 
 The entire process is one of selective attention. In 
 a sense, even the animal selects; only certain stimuli 
 excite it those, namely, which find in it a corresponding 
 susceptibility. And, in man's case, the original force of 
 the momentarily clamant idea is a result of what may be 
 
46 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 called "natural selection." It is because he is the man 
 he is, that this particular idea has for him such impulsive 
 force; for another man, the same idea might have no 
 impulsive force at all. This, too, is a case of attention, 
 but it is only its rudimentary or involuntary form. The 
 animal, or the man who does not pause to deliberate and 
 choose, acts from a kind of fascination or charm. He 
 has no eyes to see other paths, no ears to hear other 
 guides ; he seems to himself to be shut up to this one 
 course. But there is another kind of selection, as there 
 is another kind of attention; and the voluntary is dis- 
 tinguished from the involuntary by the element of de- 
 liberation. The^poHfir of will is a power of attention; 
 the distinction between, involuntary and voluntary atten- 
 tion is the distinction between the life of will and a life 
 without will. The process of volition is the process of 
 the variation and oscillation of attention from one aspect 
 of the practical situation to another. It is thus that, as 
 the perspective changes, and ideas now in the foreground 
 of consciousness retreat into the background, impulsive 
 force is transferred from one idea to another, and the 
 resulting activity is the outcome of a " conjunct view of 
 the whole case." The function of will, therefore, is, by 
 such a distribution of attention, to constitute the end or 
 motive of activity. This end may at first be the weakest 
 idea of all, the least fascinating, the one which, of its own 
 original resources, would be least likely to move us ; yet 
 through the medium of deliberation, through the strong 
 intrinsic appeal it makes to the whole self, it may gather 
 strength while the others as gradually and surely lose 
 their early force, until, in the end of the day, in the final 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL BASIS. 47 
 
 deliberate choice, we find that the last is first, and the 
 first last. 
 
 And, since our several acts of choice are not isolated 
 but organically connected with one another, the process 
 may be described finally as an activity of moral apper- 
 ception or integration. The activity of will is essentially 
 an adjustment of the new to the old, and of the old to the 
 new. Just as, in the case of any real addition to our in- 
 tellectual life, the process is not one of mere addition of 
 new to old material, but rather means the grafting of the 
 new upon the old tree of knowledge, in such wise that 
 the old is- itself renewed with the fresh blood of the new 
 conception ; so, in the case of any real moral advance, any 
 fresh act of choice, the new must be assimilated to the 
 old, and the old to the new. For it is the man the self 
 that makes the choice, and, in doing so, he takes up a nevi 
 moral attitude ; the entire moral being undergoes a subtle 
 but real change. The house, whether of our intellectual 
 or of our moral nature, must be swept and garnished, and 
 made ready for its new guest; and if that guest be un- 
 worthy, the stain of his presence will be felt throughout 
 the secret chambers of the soul. Or, to drop metaphor, 
 and to state the matter more accurately, we must apper- 
 ceive the contemplated act, place it in the context of our 
 life's purposes, and, directly or indirectly, with more or 
 with less explicit consciousness, correlate it with the 
 master-purpose of our lives. It is thus that an originally 
 weak impulse may be strengthened by being brought into 
 the main-stream of our life's total purpose, ^choice 
 is therefore an organisation, which is at the same time 
 an integration or assimilation, of impulse. 
 
cnaract 
 
 48 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Nature and 5. This analysis of the process of volition prepares us 
 to understand the distinction between nature, disposi- 
 tion, or temperament, on the one hand, and character 
 on the other. The former is our original endowment or 
 equipment, the given raw material of moral life, the 
 Natural, undisciplined, unformed, unmoralised man. The 
 latter is acquired, the fruit of effort and toil, the spiritual, 
 disciplined, formed, moralised man. 
 
 From the first, the true spring of activity is rather 
 within than without, in the unformed self of the man 
 rather than in his external circumstances or environ- 
 ment. It is because the man is what he is, that any 
 particular stimulus is a stimulus to him. The " en- 
 vironment" is his environment; to another it would 
 be none. Susceptibility determines and constitutes 
 environment, rather than environment susceptibility. 
 Given a certain type of susceptibility, however, a great 
 deal depends upon the presence or absence of the corre- 
 sponding environment, to stimulate that susceptibility. 
 In the case of a merely natural or animal being a being 
 without a character or the possibility of its formation 
 everything depends upon the presence or absence of such 
 a stimulating environment ; the life of such a being is the 
 product of this action and reaction. Man himself is, at 
 first, such a merely natural being, a creature of impulse 
 and instinct, an animal rather than a man. He, too, is 
 nature's " offspring," a veritable " part of nature, which 
 moves in him and sways him hither and thither " ; l and 
 were there not in him a higher strength than nature's, he 
 would remain to the end " the slave of nature." Did his 
 
 1 Prof. Laurie, 'Ethica,' 22 (2d ed.) 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL BASIS. 49 
 
 nature remain as it originally is, his would be a merely 
 natural or animal life. If he remained in this " state of 
 nature," his life would either have no unity or order at all, 
 and be swayed by each and every impulse as it came ; 
 or it would attain merely to the unity of the animal life, 
 where the organisation of impulse is the work of instinct. 
 But for man there is the higher possibility of attaining 
 to an ethical unity, to the organisation of natural impulse 
 through self-control. The unity of moral self-hood is of a 
 different order from the natural unity of force or instinct. 
 As Professor Laurie puts it, man, as a Will or Self, " has 
 to do for his own organism what nature through neces- 
 sary laws does for all else." The " natural man," as such, 1 
 the animal nature in man, is neither good nor bad, neithei 
 moral nor immoral, but simply non-moral. It is in the 1 
 possibility of transfiguring this natural animal life, and \ 
 making it the instrument and expression of spiritual 
 purpose, that morality consists. Morality is the forma- 
 tion, out of this raw material of nature, of a character. 
 The seething and tumultuous life of natural tendency, of 
 appetite and passion, affection and desire, must be reduced 
 to some common human measure. Man may not continue 
 to live the animal life of unchecked impulse, borne ever 
 on the full tide of natural sensibility. That life of nature 
 which he too feels surging up within him, has to be 
 directed and controlled ; it must be subjected to the 
 moulding influence of reflective purpose. For man is not, 
 like the animal, merely " aware " of tendencies that sway 
 him ; he " knows " them, and whither they lead. His 
 is a life of reflection and judgment, as well as of imme- / 
 diate impulse ; and just because he can reflect upon and I 
 
 D 
 
50 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 judge his impulses, he can regulate and master them. 
 ^Where the animal is guided by primary feeling, man 
 is guided by feeling so moralised or rationalised that 
 we call it " sentiment " or " moral idea." It is only thus, 
 by taking in hand his original nature or disposition, 
 and gathering up its manifold elements into the unity 
 of a consistent character, that man becomes truly man. 
 He must thus " come to himself," however long and 
 laborious be the way. 
 
 Effort. The way from nature to character is laborious, and full 
 
 of effort. " Before virtue the gods have put toil and 
 effort." xa\7ra ra /ca\d. " Strait is the gate, and nar- 
 row the way," of the life of virtue. For the voluntary or ^ 
 moral life is, in its essence, we have seen, the inhibition of f 
 natural (impulsive and instinctive) tendencies. It is a 
 turning of attention in another than its natural direction, 
 an effort, by distributing over a wider field the conscious- 
 ness originally focused on a narrow area, to change its 
 focus from one restricted area to another. This substitu- 
 tion of voluntary for involuntary attention is difficult, and 
 most difficult at first. The present and immediate, the 
 natural or "attuent," 1 life is engrossing, clamant, fas- 
 cinating. The lines of impulse and instinct the lines of 
 nature are the "lines of least resistance"; thought and 
 " cool " self -recollection the lines of character and virtue 
 are at first the lines of greatest resistance. The child 
 has to be helped over the first steps of its moral life, just 
 as it has to be helped to walk alone both physically and 
 intellectually; its weak will, so soon wearied with the 
 
 1 We owe this term to Professor Laurie, who uses it throughout his 
 ' Metaphysica ' and ' Ethica.' 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL BASIS. 51 
 
 strange effort, has to be propped up by appeals to the 
 well-rooted instincts of its childish nature. Long after- 
 wards, the struggle still continues, arid the weariness 
 returns, and still often " old Adam is too strong for young 
 Melanchthon," and the wretched combatant cries out for 
 deliverance from the body of this death. 
 
 But gradually, and in due time, the deliverance comes. Second 
 These pains and agonies are, in reality, the birth-pangs of 
 a new nature in the man. Gradually he experiences " the 
 expulsive power of new affections." Character is itself a 
 habit of will, and habit is always easy. Virtue is not| 
 virtue until it has become pleasant. 1 Character does not 
 consist in single choices, made with difficulty, and after 
 much deliberation and weighing of the pros and cons. It 
 consists in the formation of grooves along which the 
 activity naturally and habitually runs. He is not, in the 
 highest sense, an honest man who does an honest act with 
 difficulty, and who would rather act dishonestly. The 
 honest man is the man to whom it would be difficult and 
 unnatural to act dishonestly, the man in whom honesty is 
 a " second nature." Thus we see how, since character isf 
 itself a habit a new and acquired habit which has supj 
 planted the primary habits of the mere animal nature thei 
 difference between "nature" and "character" must be a) 
 fleeting one. What was at first, and perhaps for long, the 
 hard-won fruit of moral effort, becomes later the sponta- 
 neous work of the new "nature" which has thus been 
 born within us. Effort becomes less and less characteristic 
 of the life of virtue ; self-control becomes less difficult, as 
 virtue becomes a " second nature." The storm and stress 
 
 1 Aristotle, Nic. Eth., bk. ii. ch. 3. 
 
52 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 of its earlier struggles is followed by the great calm of 
 settled and established virtue. The " great currents of our 
 lives, the habitual lines of activity, opinion, and interest," 
 carry us with them. There is no longer the inhibition, 
 the painful suspense of deliberation, and the anxious 
 choice, but the even flow of the great main-stream. The 
 energies of the will, which were formerly so dissipated, are 
 now found in splendid integration, and the whole man 
 seems to live in each individual act. If it were not that 
 the way of virtue is long, as well as difficult, we should be 
 apt to say that the element of effort which characterises 
 its beginning is destined in the end to disappear; if it 
 were not that there were always new virtues for even the 
 most virtuous to acquire, we should be inclined to say that 
 the path of virtue is steep and difficult only " at the first." 
 But the ascent reveals ever new heights of virtue yet un- 
 attained; and the effort of virtue is measured by the 
 heights of the moral ideal as well as by the heights of 
 moral attainment. Thus, what at a lower level was 
 [' character " becomes, at the higher, again mere " nature," 
 io be in turn transcended and overcome. " We rise on 
 stepping-stones of our dead selves to higher things." There 
 is no resting in the life of virtue, it is a constant growth ; 
 to stereotype it, or to arrest it at any stage, however ad- 
 vanced, would be to kill it. There is always an "old 
 man " and a " new " : the very new becomes old, and has to 
 die, and be surmounted. 
 
 Limit- 6. Certain limitations of the volitional life are suggested 
 
 volition : by what has already been said. 
 
 omy. C01 ( a ) The principle of economy of will-power implies the 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL BASIS. 53 
 
 surrender of large tracts of our life to mechanism. Such 
 a surrender is made in the case not only of purely 
 physical activities, but also generally in the case of the 
 routine of daily life. To deliberate and choose about such 
 things as which boot we shall put on first, or which side 
 of the garden-walk we shall take, is an entirely gratuitous 
 assertion of our power of volition ; it is the mark of a 
 weak or diseased, rather than of a strong and healthy will. 
 Decision and strength of character are shown in the choice 
 of certain fixed lines of conduct in such particulars, and 
 in the abiding by the choice once made. Farther, a great 
 economy of effort is secured by the choice of ends rather 
 than of means. The means may require deliberation and 
 choice, but, to a very large extent, they are already chosen 
 in the end. And in general we may say that the details of 
 an act which, taken as a whole, is strictly voluntary, may 
 be cases of merely ideo-motor activity ; the operation may 
 proceed with perfect smoothness, each step of it suggesting 
 the next in turn, without any intervention of will. 
 
 (&) The continuity of our moral life also implies a (b) Contin- 
 large surrender of its several acts to mechanism or habit. 
 The moral life is not a series of isolated choices ; it is a 
 continuous and growing whole. As it proceeds, the sur- 
 vey becomes more and more extended ; to use a con- 
 venient technical term, the individual act is more and 
 more completely " apperceived." The mature moral man 
 does not fight his battles always over again ; he brings 
 the individual act under a conception. His life, instead 
 of being a constant succession of fresh choices, becomes a 
 more or less complete system of ends, centring, implicitly 
 or explicitly, in one supreme. The deliberation is chiefly 
 
54 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 about the placing of the individual action in its true 
 relations to the context of this system, about the inter- 
 pretation of it as a part of this whole. In general, we 
 choose " sections " of life, rather than the individual details 
 which fill those sections. In other words, all men, even 
 those whom we call "unprincipled," have certain prin- 
 ciples, of which their life is the expression. 
 
 Choices are not, I have said, independent ; they inevi- 
 tably " crystallise," or rather, they are seeds which develop 
 and bear fruit in the days and years that follow. The 
 moments of our life have not all an equal moral signifi- 
 cance. Eather the significance of our lives, for good or 
 evil, seems to be determined by moments of choice in days 
 and years of even tenor. There are great moments when 
 both good and evil are set before us, and we consciously 
 and deliberately embrace a great end, or, with no less 
 deliberate consciousness, reject it for a lower and less 
 worthy. Every act is implicitly a case of such moral 
 faithfulness or unfaithfulness. But, in such moments as 
 those of which I now speak, the will gives large com- 
 missions to habit, and leaves to it their execution. The 
 commission is quickly given, its execution takes long. 
 The moral crises of our lives are few, and soon over ; 
 but it seems as if all the strength of our spirit gathered 
 itself up for such supreme efforts, and as if what follows 
 in the long-drawn years were but their consequence. 
 (c) Fixity (c) What is generally called " fixity of character " sug- 
 acter. gests a third important limitation of the will's activity. 
 The course of moral life, as it proceeds, seems to result in 
 the establishment of certain fixed lines of conduct and 
 character, whether good or evil. Its course becomes more 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL BASIS. 55 
 
 and more settled ; law and system, of one kind or another, 
 are more and more visible in it. The formation of char- 
 acter means, as we have seen, the constant handing over 
 to habit of actions which were at first done with delibera- 
 tion and effort. "Association takes over the work of in- 
 telligence " ; " we fall back under the lead of impulse " ; 
 character becomes " second nature." We are always forg- 
 ing, by our acts of deliberate choice, the iron chains of 
 habit. Otherwise, there would be no ground gained, no 
 fruit harvested from daily toil of will, no store of moral 
 acquisition laid up for future years. Our life would be a 
 Sisyphus' task, never any nearer its execution. But, as 
 we roll it up, the stone does remain, nay, tends still up- 
 wards. Of this gradual and almost imperceptible fixation 
 in evil ways, the characters of Tito in George Eliot's 
 ' Komola,' and of Markheim in Mr K. L. Stevenson's little 
 story of that name, are impressive instances. What is 
 exemplified in such cases is not, I think, loss of will-power 
 so much as " fixity " of character itself the creation of 
 will degradation of the will, a choice, apparently final 
 and irrevocable, of the lower and the evil. This is the 
 tragedy of the story in either case. Is not this, again, the 
 meaning of the weird Faust legend which has so im- 
 pressed the imagination of Europe ? Faust's " selling his 
 soul" to Mephistopheles, and signing the contract with 
 his life's blood, is no single transaction, done deliberately, 
 on one occasion ; rather that is the lurid meaning of a life 
 which consists of innumerable individual acts, the life of 
 evil means that. And, at the other extreme of the moral 
 scale, does not " holiness " mean a great and final exalta- 
 tion of will, its perfect and established union with the 
 
56 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 higher and the good, " fixity of character " once more ? 
 These infinite possibilities of evil and of goodness seem to 
 be the implicate of an infinite moral ideal ; they are the 
 moral equivalents of the heaven and hell of the religious 
 imagination. What is Will itself but just this power or 
 possibility, infinite as our nature, for each of us in the 
 direction either of goodness or of evil ? Between these 
 extremes moves the ordinary average life of the comfort- 
 able citizen. The strongest and deepest natures are the 
 saints and the sinners ; the weaker and more superficial 
 fluctuate irresolute between the poles of moral life. 
 
 On the side of goodness, at any rate, we readily admit 
 the reality of that moral experience of which " fixity of 
 character " is the natural interpretation. We have no 
 interest in proving that the saint is potentially a sinner. 
 The condition and attribute of the highest life, we readily 
 admit, is not to hold oneself aloof from good and evil, and 
 " free " to choose between them. Far rather it is found in 
 the "single mind," in the resolute identification of the 
 whole man or self with the good, in the will of the higher 
 self to live. For, as Aristotle truly said, virtue is not 
 virtue, until it has become a habit of the soul, and easy 
 and spontaneous as a habit. Moral progress is a progress 
 from nature and its bondage, through freedom and duty, 
 to that love or " second nature " which alone is the " ful- 
 filling of the law." So that, " after all, free-will is not the 
 highest freedom." Free-will implies antagonism and 
 resistance. " But the action of the perfect, so far as they 
 are perfect, is natural. . . . Only it proceeds from a 
 higher nature, in which experience has passed through 
 reason into insight, in which impulse and desire have 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL BASIS. 57 
 
 passed through free-will into love." 1 This is freedom 
 made perfect, the liberty of the children of God. 
 
 Whether the identification of the will with evil can 
 ever become, in the strict sense, fixed, is a hard and 
 perhaps unanswerable question. The Faust legend seems 
 to express such a belief, and for Tito, as for Esau, there is 
 "no place left for repentance." In the impressive little 
 story of 'Markheim,' I think I see a gleam of hope, a 
 suggestion and no more, of the final possibility, even 
 for the most debased, of moral recovery. That last act 
 of deliberate self-surrender seems like the first step away 
 from the evil past towards a better future. It was the 
 last possibility of good for the man ; but even for him it 
 was a possibility still. Arid does it not seem as if an evil 
 character, however evil, being the formation of Will, 
 might be ^formed and reformed by the same power ? 
 Is not character, after all, but a garment in which the 
 spirit clothes itself a garment which clings tightly to 
 it, but which it need not wear eternally ? 
 
 The tendency is towards such settlement or gradual 
 fixation, whether in goodness or in evil. But absolute 
 "fixity of character" is disproved by that indubitable 
 fact of moral experience which Plato, equally with the 
 Christian theologian, calls " conversion " such a complete 
 change of bent as amounts not merely to a reformation but 
 to a revolution of character " the turning round of the 
 eye of the soul and with it the whole soul, from darkness 
 to light, from the perishing to the eternal." It seems 
 as if the past and the present life were never an ex- 
 haustive expression of the possibilities of will. The man 
 
 1 G. A. Sirncox, in 'Mind,' iv. 481. 
 
58 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 is always more than the sum of his past and present 
 experience, and often he surprises us by creating a future 
 which, while it stands in relation to the past, yet does so 
 only or chiefly by antithesis. It is as if the catastrophe 
 which comes with the culmination of his evil career, by its 
 revelation of the full meaning of the life he has been 
 living, shocked him into the resolve to live a different and 
 a better life. It is as if Markheim said to himself, after 
 the tragedy of that fateful day, when he had connected it 
 with himself, and confessed that the seeds of even that 
 evil were thickly sown in the soil of his evil past : " That 
 is not the man I choose to be " ; and as if, in the strength of 
 that decision, accepting the full consequences of his deed, 
 and surrendering himself deliberately to its retribution, 
 he forthwith took the first step away from his past self 
 and towards a future self entirely different. Might not 
 even Tito, even Faust, even Esau, so choose at last the 
 better part ? Christianity calls it a " new birth," so 
 different is the new man from the old. Yet, however 
 different, it is the same man through the two lives ; the 
 same will, only it has changed its course ; the same player, 
 but in a new role. 
 
 We must recognise, therefore, a very considerable range 
 of variation in the adequacy of activity as the exponent 
 of character. In some actions we see the stirring of the 
 deeps of personality, the revelation of the very self; in 
 others only the waves on the surface of the moral life. 
 There is a great difference in this respect even between 
 individuals. Some men are reserved, and their character 
 is a closed book to their fellows. Others are open, and 
 readily reveal their inner being. In some there is less 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL BASIS. 59 
 
 depth of soil thaii in others, superficial natures, who have 
 not much either to reveal or to conceal, the volume of 
 whose character is quickly read and mastered by their 
 fellows. In some, perhaps in all, there is a double life, an 
 outer and an inner, never quite harmonised, and often 
 directly opposed. This " double-faced unity " in the moral 
 world, this co-existence and antagonism of " two men " in 
 one, of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, is not necessarily duplicity 
 or hypocrisy. Kather it seems to mean that there is al- 
 ways a residuum of moral possibility, whatever the actual 
 character may have become ; the man never is either Dr 
 Jekyll or Mr Hyde, the saint or the sinner, but he is 
 potentially either, though actually partly the one and 
 partly the other, more the one and less the other. And 
 out of the deepest retreats of the unconscious or sub- 
 conscious sphere there may emerge any day the buried, 
 forgotten, yet truest and most real self. The man may 
 have wandered into the far country, and may even seem 
 to have lost all trace of goodness, and yet he may in the 
 end " come to himself," and may recover those possibilities 
 which had till then seemed possibilities no longer. " So 
 long as there is life there is hope." Character may seem 
 to have quite lost its plasticity, and to have become en- 
 tirely fixed and rigid. But it is not so. Character is a 
 living thing, and life is never fixed or rigid. After all, 
 the ordinary average character is more apt to suggest the 
 true state of the case than either of the extremes. These 
 extremes are instability or absence of character on the one 
 hand, and what we have called fixity or finality of char- 
 acter on the other. The latter would be " fossilisation," 
 or the cessation of growth, which is death. Character is 
 
60 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 essentially, from first to last, plastic. It implies " open- 
 mindedness," freshness or ingenuousness, receptiveness for 
 the new. The change is not, indeed, capricious or at 
 random ; the new must be linked to the old ; the old 
 must itself be renewed, recreated in every part. Yet the 
 relation of the new to the old may be that of antithesis 
 and revolt, as well as of synthesis and continuity. The 
 development of character is not always in a straight line : 
 it is ever returning upon and reconstituting itself. 
 
 inteilec- *7. It is necessary, before leaving the psychology of the 
 ments in moral life, to consider the relation of intellect and feeling 
 (a)Concep- to Will. We find several intellectual elements in volition : 
 (a) Conception. The natural or animal life is unthinking ; 
 the voluntary or moral life is a thoughtful life. The 
 Greeks understood this well ; we find Socrates, Plato, and 
 Aristotle all alike identifying virtue with knowledge or 
 rational insight. It is not, however, true that the moral 
 and the intellectual life are one, or that virtue is know- 
 -^] ledge. It is the_ volition behind the intellection that is 
 the essential element. We might say that virtue is 
 attention, or the steady entertainment of a certain concep- 
 tion of life or of its several activities. This is what dis- 
 tinguishes the voluntary form of activity from both the 
 instinctive and the impulsive forms. Instinct executes cer- 
 tain ends unconsciously; it is the unconscious organisa- 
 tion of impulse, nature's own control of natural tendency. 
 Mere impulse, on the other hand, is momentary, and takes 
 in but a single object ; the creature of impulse is touched 
 at only one point of his nature, and follows the tendency of 
 the moment. Since, therefore, man has the organisation, of 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL BASIS. 61 
 
 his impulsive tendencies in his own hands, his first and 
 essential act must be one of thought or conception. Tq 
 think or conceive the proposed action aright, is the condition 
 of right action ; and it is because the vicious man thinks 
 or conceives his action wrongly, and under false colours, that 
 he does it. " To sustain a representation, to think," says 
 Professor James, " is, in short, the only moral act." It is 
 because the drunkard " lets himself go," and will not con- 
 ceive or name his act aright, because he will not acknow- 
 ledge to himself that " this is being a drunkard," that he 
 is a drunkard. So soon as he brings himself to this, he 
 is on the way to being saved; if he keeps his mind on 
 that idea, it will gradually be strengthened, until it is 
 predominant, and issues in the inhibition of the tendency 
 to drink. For thus to conceive an act is to apperceive 
 it, to see it in all its relations to his total self ; and then 
 how differently it looks, how its fascination pales in that 
 larger light. The true centre of influence has now been/ 
 found, in the deeper rational Self which assimilates and 
 rejects according to its discrimination. 
 
 Undue reflectiveness means, of course, weakness of will 
 or indecision of character; it is fatal to that prompti- 
 tude which is essential to effective activity. Plato has 
 drawn a delightful picture of the dire practical effects 
 of undue deliberation, in his contrast of the awkward, 
 ineffective philosopher and the shrewd, quick, business- 
 like little lawyer-soul. 1 In his parable of the Cave, also, 
 he has given expression to the popular idea of the man of 
 thought as little fitted to be, at the same time, a man of 
 action; he represents the philosopher or true thinker as 
 
 1 ' Theaetetus,' 172-176. 
 
62 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 withdrawn from human affairs, and, by his want of in- 
 terest in the concerns of ordinary life, in a sense unfitted 
 for the conduct of life's business. Shakespeare, too, has 
 created for us a Hamlet, a thinker but a dreamer, disabled 
 by undue reflection for the part he is called to play on 
 this world's stage, his will so embarrassed by the pros and 
 cons of a restless intellect that it can accomplish nothing, 
 a man in whom " the native hue of resolution is sicklied 
 o'er with the pale cast of thought." And our own century 
 has furnished a sad living commentary on the familiar 
 text. Amiel's ' Journal ' is the record of how the springs of 
 all practical energy were sapped by a continual, brooding, 
 Hamlet-like reflection which never found vent in action : 
 it is one long bitter plaint of a soul praying for deliver- 
 ance from the body of such a living death, the story of a 
 life endowed with such clearness of intellectual vision, 
 united to such sad impotence of will, that it could trace 
 its own failure to this single source. So true is it that we 
 all have "the defects of our qualities," and that these 
 defects must be our ruin if we guard not against them. 
 Yet life is not all tragedy ; and such dire consequences are 
 not inevitable, or even normal. Even in these cases, it is 
 not that the man thinks too much, but that his activity is 
 not up to the measure of his thought ; unless thought finds 
 its constant and adequate expression in action, it weakens 
 where it ought to strengthen the power to act. The re- 
 sult is what Professor James calls " the obstructed will," 
 the will hindered by thought, which is just at the oppo- 
 site extreme from the " explosive " or impulsive will, the 
 will that does not think, but reacts with " hair-trigger " 
 rapidity and certainty. Thejbrue^uncti^.n, xj thought is 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL BASIS. 63 
 
 to mediate between these extremes of character, not to sap 
 the force of impulse, but to guide that force to more 
 effective issues. The grey light of reason need not quench 
 all the bright sunshine of enthusiasm ; the ruddy life of 
 natural impulse need not be' sicklied o'er with the pale 
 cast of thought. Bather it is the function of reason to 
 convert unthinking impulses into great enthusiasms, to 
 inform the practical energies with far-reaching purposes, 
 and thus to be the will's best helpmate in its proper task. 
 The most effective man is he who, knowing best and 
 thinking most profoundly about life's meaning, feels also 
 most intensely, and acts most promptly and consistently 
 in the common sphere of thought and feeling. 
 
 (b) It is obvious that memory-images are necessary for (b) Mem- 
 
 orv. 
 
 the representation of future possibilities. We can con- 
 ceive the future only in terms of the past : experience is 
 our sole instructor in the conduct of life. And only a 
 vivid and accurate memory of the past, the power to 
 reproduce it as it was, can deliver us from the bondage of 
 
 the engrossing present. The ability to look forward is < 
 
 largely an ability to look backward. Experience is our 
 common instructor here, but we are not all apt pupils. 
 Some gain from experience far more than others, in re- 
 tentive memory they garner its golden grain, and draw 
 from it in all the exigencies of the present; the years 
 bring to them their own peculiar gift the "wisdom of 
 life." To others the years do not bring the philosophic 
 mind ; they seem to pass through the same experience 
 untouched by its lessons. Their life is in the fleeting 
 present. They are like children who amuse themselves 
 with life's changing show. They are the creatures of 
 
64 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 present impulse, passive and receptive, taking no thought 
 for the morrow, because they take no heed of yesterday ; 
 for " purpose is but the slave to memory." l Such lives are 
 without perspective, without appreciation of the far and 
 near; they have no future, because they have no past. 
 The wise man's life is richly " fringed " on either side, 
 and the fringe of the future is of the same pattern as 
 that of the past. Memory is the true "measuring art." 
 A truthful representation of the future depends upon a 
 truthful representation of the past, and will go far to 
 determine the present. 
 
 (c) imagin- (c) The power to look vividly forward is no less necessary 
 than the power to look vividly backward. It is a defect 
 of imagination that is largely to blame for the unworthy 
 and sensual lives we see. It is because the horizon is 
 bounded by the day's needs and the day's capacities of 
 enjoyment, that the life is so narrow and so mean. Could 
 but the horizon lift, could but the man look into the far- 
 distant future, and discern there all the consequences of 
 the act he is about to do, could he but see its waves 
 breaking on those distant shores against which some day 
 they must break, how different his life would be ! And 
 if we would lift the horizon of time itself, and see our 
 life in time sub quddam specie ceternitatis, we must stretch 
 our imagination to the utmost. Seen in that light, in the 
 light of " the immensities and eternities," nothing is com- 
 mon or unclean, nothing is trivial or commonplace ; the 
 simplest and meanest acts become transfigured with a 
 strange dignity and significance. Surely, then, the moral 
 
 1 Hamlet, Act iii. sc. 2, quoted by Hbffding, 327. Cf. his account of 
 this entire subject. 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL BASIS. 65 
 
 imagination which discovers to us the true perspective of 
 life, is no less important for practice than is the scientific 
 imagination for theory. 
 
 8. Two opposed views have long been canvassed, and Will and 
 the controversy still rages, as to the place of feeling in is pleasure 
 the moral life. On the one hand, it is maintained that of choice? 
 pleasure is the constant and exclusive object of desire ; \ 
 on the other hand, that pleasure is never the object of 
 desire. On the one hand, it is said that our life is one 
 continuous pursuit of pleasure ; on the other hand, that 
 the pursuit of pleasure is impossible and suicidal. The 
 one view sees in pleasure the sole actual end of life; 
 the other sees in it the concomitant and result, but not 
 the end or object of pursuit. The former view was held 
 in ancient philosophy by the Cyrenaics, and in modern, 
 among others, by Hume and J. S. Mill. The latter is the 
 view of Aristotle among the ancients, of Butler, Sidgwick, 
 and Green among modern moralists, and of James, Bald- 
 win, and Hoffding among contemporary psychologists^ 
 Both theories admit that feeling is an element in human 
 life; the problem is to determine its psychological place 
 and function. 
 
 A glance at the role of feeling in the lower and non- 
 voluntary activities of instinct and impulse may help us 
 to understand the part it plays in the higher life of Will. 
 We have seen that neither in the case of impulse, nor in 
 that of instinct, is there consciousness of an end. Both 
 are blind, unenlightened tendencies to act in a certain 
 way. In impulsive activities there is no operation of an 
 end at all ; in those which we call instinctive its operation 
 
66 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 is unconscious. But both these types of activity are ac- 
 companied by feeling. There is not merely the tendency 
 to act; the consciousness has a passive as well as an 
 active side, a certain " tone " it is pleasant or painful. 
 Nor is this primarily passive side merely passive, merely 
 concomitant ; it is also influential in determining the 
 activity of the sentient being. It is the single ray of 
 light let into the darkness of the animal life of instinct 
 /and impulse. There is no further vision of the Whither ; 
 /there is no consciousness of purpose, no choice of ends. 
 / But there is a feeling for pleasure and pain, of want and 
 { the satisfaction of it ; and this feeling guides the being 
 towards the objects that will satisfy it, that will quench 
 its pain and yield it pleasure. This feeling for pleasure 
 and pain has helped materially to guide the evolution of 
 animal life. Pleasure-giving and life-preserving activities 
 are, in the main, identical; and the importance of the 
 addition of the conscious pressure of feeling to the un- 
 conscious pressure of environment and circumstances can 
 hardly be overestimated. 
 
 That which distinguishes voluntary from involuntary 
 activity is, we have seen, the conscious operation of ends 
 as motives of choice. The guidance has now passed into 
 the hands of intellect; we act in the light of rational 
 insight into the issues of our activity. To the lower 
 guidance of immediate near-sighted feeling there is now 
 added the higher and farther-seeing guidance of ideas. 
 But, even here, the guidance has not entirely passed 
 from the hands of feeling. For, not only are there, in- 
 terfused with ends, what Professor Baldwin calls " affects," 
 or activities immediately determined by feeling ; but ends 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL BASIS. 67- 
 
 themselves have an "affective" side, or contain an ele- 
 ment of feeling without which they would possess no 
 motive-force. " The simple presence of an idea in con- 
 sciousness is itself a feeling, and only in as far as it 
 affects us does it move us." x Feeling thus mediates 
 between intellect and will, converting the cold intel- 
 lectual conception into a motive of activity. In ends, 
 then, there is always an element of feeling as well as of 
 thought; it is the fusion of these two that constitutes 
 the " interests " of the voluntary life. We are now de- 
 livered from the immediate dominion of feeling; we see* 
 | or foresee what course will yield us pleasure, and we act 
 / under the guidance of this intellectual sight or foresight. 
 But are we not still, indirectly if not directly, controlled 
 by feeling ? The hedonist answers in the affirmative ; lie 
 insists that the ultimate factor in the determination of 
 our choice is feeling rather than thought, that thought is 
 after all the minister of feeling, informing it how a de- 
 sirable state of feeling may be attained and an undesirable 
 state of feeling escaped. The dominion of feeling still 
 persists, only it is an indirect dominion ; feeling has not 
 abdicated, it has only delegated its authority to intellect, 
 and become a constitutional sovereign. The anti-hedonistic 
 answer is that pleasure, or an agreeable state of feeling, is 
 never the end or object of desire and choice ; that while 
 pleasure accompanies both the pursuit and the attainment 
 of our ends, it never constitutes these ends. We never 
 act, it is contended, for the sake of pleasure, but for the 
 sake of objects, or interests, in which we " rest," and from 
 which we do not return to a consideration of our own sub- 
 
 1 Baldwin, 'Psychology,' 313, 314. 
 
68 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 jective feeling of pleasure, either in their pursuit or in their 
 attainment. Let us follow the argument on both sides, if 
 we can, to the end. 
 
 The primary direction of thought, the anti-hedonist 
 maintains, is towards the object, not towards the pleasure 
 which it is expected to yield. We do not, it is argued, 
 look so far ahead as the pleasure ; that is not what moves 
 us. To say that the anticipated pleasure is the motive of 
 activity is to commit the psychologist's fallacy ; to read 
 your own introspective and analytic consciousness of the 
 conditions of consciousness into that original and natural 
 consciousness which is the object of your introspective in- 
 vestigation, but is not itself troubled with introspection or 
 analysis. Even the voluntary life is, to this extent, blind ; 
 even it is not endowed with the minute vision of the psy- 
 chologist, still less with the microscopic eye of the logi- 
 cian. The question is : What do we desire ? not What 
 are the conditions of desire ? or Why do we desire what we 
 desire ? It is a question of fact, not of the conditions or 
 the rationale of the fact. Now, " a pleasant act, and an 
 act pursuing pleasure, are, in themselves, two perfectly 
 distinct conceptions. ... It is the confusion of pursued 
 pleasure with mere pleasure of achievement, which makes 
 the pleasure-theory so plausible to the ordinary mind." 1 
 In short, the " pleasure of pursuit " is psychologically 
 different from the " pursuit of pleasure." 
 
 Even the hedonists themselves seem to yield this point, 
 and to admit the " paradox of hedonism " viz., that " to 
 get pleasure you must forget it." Mill makes this confes- 
 sion, both in his ' Utilitarianism ' and in his ' Autobio- 
 
 1 James, ' Principles of Psychology,' 556, 557. 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL BASIS. 69 
 
 graphy.' He admits that the direct pursuit of pleasure is 
 suicidal, that we must lose sight of the end in the means, 
 and, adopting a kind of " miser's consciousness," affect a 
 disinterested or objective interest, forget ourselves, and 
 pursue objects as if for their own sake, and not for the 
 sake of the pleasure which we expect them to yield. 
 " Something accomplished, something done/' yields pleas- 
 ure ; but if it is to yield the pleasure, at least the maxi- 
 mum of pleasure, we must not do it for the sake of the 
 pleasure. The life of pleasure-seeking is, in other words, 
 by the very nature of the case, a life of illusion and 
 make-believe. 
 
 But, replies the anti-hedonist, such an interpretation of 
 human life is in the highest degree artificial and un-psy- 
 chological. " The real order of things is just the reverse 
 of the hedonistic interpretation of it. Instead of begin- 
 ning with the pursuit of pleasure, and ending by pursuing 
 what was earlier the means to pleasure, we begin by pur- 
 suing an object, and end by degrading this primary object 
 to an artificial means to pleasure, or as a competitor with 
 pleasure for the dignity of being pursued." 1 The passage 
 is " from simple desire for an object which satisfies to 
 I desire for the satisfaction itself." Here, once more, 
 the hedonist seems forced to concede the point to his 
 antagonist. Even such an arch-hedonist as Hume admits 
 that " it has been proved beyond all controversy that even 
 the passions commonly esteemed selfish may carry the 
 mind beyond self directly to the object ; that though the 
 satisfaction gives us enjoyment, yet the prospect of this 
 enjoyment is not the cause of the passion, but, on the con- 
 
 1 Baldwin, ' Psychology,' 327. 
 
"70 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 trary, the passion is antecedent to the enjoyment, and 
 without the former the latter could never possibly exist." 1 
 
 The case now seems to be decided against the hedonist. 
 The latter's interpretation of life seems to have been 
 proved unnatural and forced. The Epicurean may, on 
 reflection, adopt his scheme of life as the only logically 
 defensible scheme ; but his practice will always contradict 
 the logic of his scheme. The " hedonistic calculus " must 
 be abandoned, and another measure found for practical 
 use. But the hedonist is not yet silenced. There is a 
 " previous question," he still insists, which his opponent 
 has not answered viz., What is the " object " of desire, if 
 it is not pleasure ? Are we not brought back to hedonism 
 whenever we investigate the constitution of the object ? 
 Does not that pleasure, which we had just put out at the 
 door, come back through the window ? For what is the 
 object apart from you ? It exists through its relation to 
 you nay, it is yourself. What you desire is .not a mere 
 object, but an object as satisfying yourself, and what moves 
 you to act is the idea of yourself as satisfied in the attain- 
 ment of the object. Not the object, but the attainment of 
 the object by you or, more strictly still, your self-satis- 
 faction in its attainment is the end that moves you to 
 strive after it. And in what can the satisfaction of the 
 self consist but in a feeling of pleasure ? 
 
 Moreover, the " paradox of hedonism " turns out to be 
 more seeming than real ? The distinction between_the 
 end and the means towards its attainment is not a real 
 but an artificial distinction. The end and the means are 
 really the same, you can analyse the one into the other ; 
 
 1 ' Essay on Different Species of Philosophy/ 1, note. 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL BASIS. 71 
 
 the end is the whole, of which the means are the parts or 
 elements, and you can no more lose the end in the means 
 than the whole in the parts. The means to pleasure are 
 just the details of the pleasant life, and in pursuing them 
 you are in truth pursuing, in the only rational manner, 
 step by step, or bit by bit, that totality of satisfaction 
 which can be constituted in .no other way. The life of 
 pleasure is not an abstract universal ; it is a concrete 
 whole, and consists of real particulars. Pleasure, further, 
 is derived from pleasant things ; to divorce it from these 
 is to destroy it. But such a divorce is entirely gratuitous ; 
 no matter how it is reached, the pleasure itself is our real 
 end. We have not " forgotten " the pleasure after all. In 
 the words of J. S. Mill : " In these cases the means have 
 become a part of the end, and a more important part of it 
 than any of the things which they are means to. What 
 was once desired as an instrument for the attainment of 
 happiness, has come to be desired for its own sake. In 
 being desired for its own sake it is, however, desired as 
 part of happiness. The person is made, or thinks he 
 would be made, happy by its mere possession; and is 
 made unhappy by failure to obtain it. The desire of it is 
 not a different thing from the desire of happiness, any 
 more than the love of music, or the desire of health. 
 They are included in happiness ; they are some of the 
 elements of which the desire of happiness is made up. 
 Happiness is not an abstract idea, but a concrete whole ; 
 and these are 'some of its parts. . . . Life would be 
 a poor thing, very ill provided with sources of happiness, 
 if there were not this provision of nature, by which things 
 originally indifferent, but conducive to, or otherwise associ- 
 
72 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 ated with, the satisfaction of our primitive desires, become 
 in themselves sources of pleasure more valuable than the 
 primitive pleasures, both in permanency, in the space^ of 
 human existence that they are capable of covering, and 
 even in intensity." x 
 
 And now the anti-hedonist has to admit, on his part, 
 that " on special occasions, . . . the pleasure of achieve- 
 ment may itself become a pursued pleasure;" and that 
 this is the case in that entire class of pleasures which we 
 call " pleasures of pursuit." Hofifding, indeed, argues that 
 " it springs from a distinct abstraction, when the feeling of 
 pleasure, which we foresee in the attainment of the original 
 object of the impulse, arouses our impulse." 2 But this 
 abstraction, though difficult, is not impossible. We can- 
 not otherwise interpret the " epicurean " life, and we can- 
 not otherwise explain the pleasure-side of the ordinary 
 moral life. Nay, it could easily be shown that our con- 
 sciousness always is " abstract," inasmuch as it is always 
 focused on some point ; abstraction is only the other side 
 of attention. And does not the element of reflection mean 
 that, however apparently objective, the life of Will is always 
 essentially and fundamentally subjective, guided by an in- 
 tellectual comparison of different ideas of self-satisfaction, 
 or of different selves as satisfied by the pursuit of alter- 
 native courses of activity ? Is not this self-satisfaction 
 always the real object ? And is not the apparent absence 
 of the subjective reference in some lives, and on certain 
 occasions, more or less frequent, in all lives, to be traced 
 to the varying ratio of introspection to outwardness and 
 objectivity in different individuals and in the same in- 
 
 1 'Utilitarianism,' 56. 2 'Psychology,' 323 (Eng. tr.) 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL BASIS. 73 
 
 dividual at different times ? Some men, also, are more 
 apt to lose the whole in the parts, the wood in the trees, 
 than others ; and in varying moods the same man will be 
 more occupied, now with the general idea of self-satisfac- 
 tion, now with the idea of the particular things which 
 yield this self-satisfaction. It may be admitted, moreover, 
 that it is not well to be too much given to introspection, 
 that, on the whole, the objective mood and temper of mind 
 ought to be encouraged rather than the subjective and 
 epicurean, that objectivity and enthusiasm are essential 
 to happiness. But this objective " abstraction " does not 
 mean the elimination of subjectivity, any more than the 
 opposite or subjective " abstraction " means the elimina- 
 tion of objectivity. These are the two poles between 
 which consciousness fluctuates, sometimes approaching the 
 one, sometimes the other. Without either pole, the 
 voluntary life, as we know it, would be impossible. The 
 moral, like the intellectual life, is always at once objective 
 and subjective. The idea of self-satisfaction is the con- 
 stant background of our life's activities. But, amid the 
 changing phases of human experience, there is a constant 
 shifting to and fro. Sometimes this background of self- 
 satisfaction is but dimly discerned; the action fills the 
 foreground. Again, the action retreats, and the back- 
 ground once more stands out in clear relief. Both the 
 objective and subjective elements are present in every act 
 of Will, but the emphasis or accent of consciousness may 
 be now on the one, now on the other. 
 
 We have now determined, as precisely as we can, the 
 function of feeling in the life of Will. First, in that 
 animal life of instinct and impulse which, though invol- 
 
74 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 untary, yet contains the germs of volition, we saw that 
 the otherwise blind activity is guided by the illumination 
 of feeling. Those animal tendencies are dark enough, 
 they make for a goal by the animal unseen, along a path 
 of which only the next step can be discerned ; it is a 
 brief straight road, that .of animal life, and travelled 
 step by step. Gradually, as we rise in the scale of 
 human striving and achievement, the vision grows and 
 strengthens, and further reaches of the road are seen, 
 and at last the goal itself to which it leads. But the 
 guidance of feeling is not even now given up ; it is only 
 illuminated by the fuller light of intellectual insight. 
 The goal itself is seized by feeling as well as by thought, 
 and the several steps towards it are felt as well as known. 
 But to detach feeling from thought, and to say that we 
 pursue pleasure only, is as unscientific as to detach 
 thought from feeling, and to say that our active life con- 
 tains no element of feeling at all. Life means interests 
 or focal points of attention, apperceptive centres; and 
 we can neither have interests without a self to feel them, 
 nor evolve them out of a merely sentient self. To at- 
 tempt either explanation is to attempt an unscientific 
 and contradictory tour de force. The entrance of Will 
 upon the field of activity does not mean the deliverance 
 from the guidance of feeling ; what it does mean is such a 
 transfiguration of the old guide that it is hard to recognise 
 the familiar face and voice. 
 
PART I. 
 
 THE MORAL IDEAL 
 
THE MORAL IDEAL. 
 
 WE are now prepared to attempt the solution of the ethical Types of 
 problem the nature of the Moral Ideal or of the ethical Theory : 
 End. We are led to state the problem in this way, 
 whether we approach it from the ancient standpoint of 
 Good, or from the modern standpoint of Duty and Law. 
 In the former case, we^find that conduct, being " impulse 
 organised by the reflective conception of Ends," implies, 
 as its unifying or organising principle, the constant pres- 
 ence and Deration, implicit or explicit, of some single 
 central Eno* of some single Ideal of the total meaning of 
 life, to be realised in the details of its several activities. 
 The logic of the life of a rational being implies the guid- 
 ance of a supreme End as its central and organising prin- 
 ciple. The question of Ethics in this aspect of it is, 
 What is the chief End of man ? What may he, being 
 such as he is, worthily set before him as the Summum 
 Bonum of his life ? Which of the alternative and conflict- 
 ing types of self-hood may he take as his Ideal ? If, on 
 the other hand, we approach the problem from the more 
 modern standpoint of Law and Duty, we are led to sub- 
 stantially the same statement of it. A rational being can- 
 
78 THE MORAL IDEAL. 
 
 not, as such, be content to live a life of mere obedience 
 to rule, even to the rule of Conscience. Mere authority, 
 human or divine, does not permanently satisfy him. The 
 conflicts, or at least the difficulties, which arise in the 
 application of the several moral laws or principles to the 
 details of practice, lead to the attempt to codify these 
 laws, and such codification implies once more a unifying 
 principle the discovery of the common " spirit of the 
 laws." For their absoluteness pertains to the spirit and 
 not to the letter. They are the several paths towards 
 some absolute Good. -Why is it right to speak the truth, 
 to be just, and temperate, and benevolent ? What is the 
 common Ideal of which these are the several manifesta- 
 tions, the Ideal which abides even in their change ? 
 The Law of the several moral laws can be found only in 
 the claim of an absolute Ideal ; their authority must find 
 its seat and explanation in the persistent and rightful 
 dominion of some one End over all the other possible 
 or actual ends of human life. 
 
 Now, when we look at the history of ethical thought, 
 we find that, from the beginning of reflection down to our 
 own time, two opposed types of theory have maintained 
 themselves, and each type has based itself, more or less 
 explicitly, upon a corresponding view of human nature. 
 On the one hand, man has been regarded as, either ex- 
 clusively or fundamentally, a sentient being, and upon 
 this psychology there has been built up a hedonistic 
 theory of the Moral Ideal. If man is essentially a sen- 
 tient being, his Good must be a sentient Good, or Pleasure ; 
 this type of theory we may call Hedonism, or the Ethics 
 of Sensibility. It is the theory of the Cyrenaics and 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 79 
 
 Epicureans among the ancients, and of the Utilitarians, 
 whether empirical, rational, or evolutional, in modern 
 times. On the other hand, it has been held, with no less 
 confidence, that man is, either exclusively or essentially, a 
 rational "being, and that his Good is, therefore, not a sen- 
 tient but a rational Good. This type of theory we may call 
 Eigorism, or the Ethics of Reason. It is the theory of -the 
 ancient Cynics and Stoics, and in modern times of the 
 Intuitionists and of Kant. Either theory might claim 
 for itself the vague term " Self-realisation." The one 
 finds in feeling, the other in reason, the deeper and truer 
 self ; to the one the claims of the sentient, to the other 
 the claims of, the rational self, seem paramount. 
 
 A closer study of the course of moral reflection re- 
 veals two forms an extreme and a moderate, of either 
 type of ethical theory. Extreme Hedonism, excluding 
 Reason altogether, or resolving it into Sensibility, would 
 exhibit the ideal life as a life of pure sentiency, un- 
 disturbed by reason, or into which reason has been ab- 
 sorbed. Extreme Eigorism, on the other hand, denying 
 the place of feeling in the Good of a rational being, 
 would exhibit the ideal life as a life of pure thought, 
 unstained by any intrusion of sensibility. But neither 
 of these extremes can long maintain itself. Neither 
 element can be absolutely excluded without manifestly 
 deducting from the total efficiency of the resulting life. 
 Accordingly, we find that, while the logic of their posi- 
 tions would separate the theories as widely as possible, 
 the necessities of the moral life itself tend to bring them 
 nearer to each other. Hedonism cannot long avoid the 
 reference to Reason, Eigorism the reference to Sensi- 
 
80 THE MORAL IDEAL. 
 
 bility. Hence result a moderate version of the Ethics 
 of Sensibility, which, instead of excluding reason, sub- 
 ordinates it to feeling, and a moderate version of the 
 Ethics of Eeason, which, instead of excluding feeling, sub- 
 ordinates it to reason. Moderate Hedonism recognises 
 the function of reason, first in devising the means to- 
 wards an end which is constituted by sensibility, and 
 later even in the constitution of the end itself. Moderate 
 Eigorism recognises the place of sensibility, at first as 
 the mere accompaniment of the good life, and later as 
 entering into the very texture of goodness itself. Such 
 an approach of the one theory to the other, such a 
 tendency to compromise between them, suggests the more 
 excellent way of a theory which shall base itself on the 
 total nature of man, and shall correlate its various ele- 
 ments of thought and feeling in the unity of a total 
 personal life. This theory we may call, after Aristotle, 
 Eudoemonism, or the Ethics of Personality ; and we shall 
 endeavour to demonstrate its necessity and value by a 
 critical consideration, first, of Hedonism, the Ethics of 
 Sensibility; and, secondly, of Eigorism, the Ethics of 
 Eeason. 
 
81 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 HEDONISM, OR THE ETHICS OF SENSIBILITY. 
 
 I. Development of the Theory. 
 
 1. THE earliest statement of the hedonistic view of life (A] Pure 
 is also the most extreme. We owe it to Aristippus, the o/Cyrenai- 
 founder of the Cyrenaic school. He had learned from c 
 Socrates that the true wisdom of life lies in foresight 
 or insight into the consequences of our actions, in an 
 accurate calculation of their results, pleasurable and 
 painful, in the distant as well as in the immediate future. 
 The chief and only good of life, then, is pleasure. And 
 all pleasures are alike in kind; they differ only in in- 
 tensity or degree. Socrates had taught that the pleasures 
 of the soul are preferable to those of the body; Aris- 
 tippus finds the latter to be better that is, intenser 
 than the former. He had also learned from Protagoras 
 that the sensation of the moment is the only ultimate 
 reality, and his scepticism of the future, in comparison 
 with the certainty of the present, leads him to refuse the 
 Socratic principle of calculation. If the momentary ex- 
 perience is the only certain reality, then the calculating 
 wisdom of Socrates, with its measuring-line laid to the 
 
 F 
 
THE MORAL IDEAL. 
 
 fleeting moments, is not the best method of life. Bather 
 ought we to make the most of each moment ere it passes ; 
 for, even while we have been calculating its value, it has 
 escaped us, and the moments do not return. Ought we 
 not, then, with a miser's jealousy, to guard the interest of 
 the moment ? is not this the true economy of life ? To 
 sacrifice the present to the future, is unwarranted and 
 perilous ; the present is ours, the future may never be. 
 The very fact that we are the children of time, and not 
 of eternity, makes the claim of the present ay, even of 
 the momentary present imperious and supreme. To 
 " look before and after " were to defeat the end of life, to 
 miss that pleasure which is essentially a thing of the 
 present. ISTot the Socratic prudence, therefore, but a 
 (careless surrender to present joys, is the true rule of life. 
 We live only from moment to moment ; let us live, then, 
 in the moments, packing them full, ere yet they pass, 
 y with intensest gratification. A life of feeling, pure and 
 simple, heedless and unthinking, undisturbed by reason, 
 such is the Cyrenaic ideal. It is a product of the sunny 
 Pagan spirit, which has not yet felt " the heavy and the 
 weary weight of all this unintelligible world." And if 
 such a creed is founded in a deep scepticism, there is no 
 pain or despair in the scepticism, but rather a calm and 
 glad acceptance of the ethical limitations which it ini- 
 , plies. Aristippus is glad to be rid of the Socratic concern- 
 for an eternal and ideal welfare in which he has ceased 
 to believe. His is, indeed, a life without a horizon, it 
 has shrunk within the compass of the momentary present; 
 \ it is a life of pure sensibility, with no end to satisfy the 
 j reason. Yet it is a life that satisfies him. For is not the 
 
HEDONISM. 83 
 
 horizon apt to be dark and threatening, and to sadden 
 the sunshine of the present with its lowering clouds ? and 
 what is reason but sensation after all ? 
 
 Cyrenaicism could hardly be the creecf of the modern 
 Christian world. For us such an ideal would be at best 
 an ideal of despair rather than of hope. Keason could 
 hardly in us be so utterly subjected to sensibility ; such 
 scepticism would, at any rate, make us so "sick arid 
 sorry/' that we should lose that very joy in the present 
 which the Cyrenaic reaped from his unconcern for the 
 morrow. And yet our century and our generation has 
 witnessed an attempted revival of the Cyrenaic ideal. 
 Did not Byron and Heine, out of their scepticism of any 
 other meaning in life, use words like these ? Was not 
 their message to their fellows that to live is to feel, and 
 that the measure of life's fulness is the intensity of its 
 passion ? And what else does ^Estheticism mean than 
 a recoil from an intellectual to a sentient ideal ; is it 
 fanciful to see in Mr Pater's ' Marius, the Epicurean ' a 
 splendid attempt to rehabilitate the Cyrenaic view of life ? 
 Its closing words tell how perfectly its author has caught 
 the echo of that ancient creed : " How goodly had the 
 vision been ! one long unfolding of beauty and energy in 
 things, upon the closing of which he might gratefully 
 utter his ' Vixi.' . . . For still, in a shadowy world, his 
 deeper wisdom had ever been, with a sense of economy, 
 with a jealous estimate of gain and loss, to use life, not 
 as a means to some problematic end, but, as far as might 
 be, from dying hour to dying hour, an end in itself, a kind 
 of music, all sufficing to the duly trained ear, even as it 
 died out on the air." 
 
84 THE MORAL IDEAL. 
 
 And although it is only in the school of Aristippus that 
 this pure form of the hedonistic creed has found its philo- 
 (sophic expression, it is a "judgment of life" which has 
 again and again gained utterance for itself in literature. 
 It is a mood of the human mind which must recur with 
 every lapse -into moral scepticism. Whenever life loses 
 its meaning, or when that meaning sinks to the experience 
 of the present, when no enduring purpose or permanent 
 value is found in this fleeting earthly life, when in it is 
 discerned no Whence or Whither, but only a brief blind 
 process, then the conclusion is drawn, with a fine logical 
 perception, that the interests of the present have a 
 paramount claim, and that present enjoyment and un- 
 concern is the only good in life. If indeed 
 
 " We are no other than a moving row 
 Of Magic Shadow-shapes that come and go 
 
 Round with the Sun-illumin'd Lantern held 
 In Midnight by the Master of the Show ; " 
 
 if the movement of our life is from Nothing to Nothing ; 
 if, truly seen, that life is but 
 
 " A Moment's Halt a momentary taste 
 Of Being from the Well amid the Waste 
 
 And lo ! the phantom caravan has reach'd 
 The Nothing it set out from," 
 
 then surely Omar's logic is irresistible : 
 
 " Some for the Glories of This World ; and some 
 Sigh for the Prophet's Paradise to come ; 
 
 Ah ! take the Cash, and let the Credit go, 
 Nor heed the rumble of a distant Drum. 
 
 Come, fill the Cup, and on the fire of Spring 
 Your Winter-garment of Repentance fling : 
 
 The Bird of Time has but a little way 
 To fly and lo ! the bird is on the wing. 
 
 N 
 
HEDONISM. 85 
 
 I must abjure the Balm of life, I must, 
 Scared by some After-reckoning ta'en on trust, 
 Or lured with Hope of some Diviner Drink, 
 To fill the Cup when crumbled into Dust ! 
 
 Oh threats of Hell and hopes of Paradise ! 
 One thing at least is certain This life flies ; 
 One thing is certain, and the rest is Lies ; 
 The Flower that once has blown for ever dies." 1 
 
 It is the logic of Horace as well as of Omar ; for though 
 the Koman poet is rather an Epicurean than a Cyrenaic, 
 yet he strikes the true Cyrenaic chord again and again. 
 Man is a creature of time ; why should he toil for an 
 eternal life ? " Spring flowers keep not always the same 
 charm, nor beams the ruddy moon with face unchanged ; 
 why harass with eternal designs a mind too weak to com- 
 pass them ? " " God in His providence shrouds in the 
 darkness of night the issue of future time, and smiles if a 
 mortal flutter to pierce farther than he may. Be careful 
 to regulate serenely what is present with you ; all else 
 is swept along in the fashion of the stream, which at one 
 time, within the heart of its channel, peacefully glides 
 down to the Tuscan sea; at another, whirls along worn 
 stones and uprooted trees and flocks and houses all 
 together, amid the roaring of the hills and neighbouring 
 wood, whene'er a furious deluge chafes the quiet rills. 
 He will live master of himself, and cheerful, who has 
 the power to say from day to day, ' I have lived ! to- 
 morrow let the Sire overspread the sky either with 
 cloudy gloom or with unsullied light ; yet he will not 
 render of none effect aught that lies behind, nor shape 
 
 1 ' RuMiyat ' of Omar Khayydm. Fitzgerald's translation. 
 
86 THE MORAL IDEAL. 
 
 anew and make a thing not done, what once the flying 
 hour has borne away.' " l 
 
 All things change and pass away, nor has man himself 
 any abiding destiny ; his best wisdom is to clutch from the 
 hands of Fate the flowers she offers, for they perish even 
 as he thinks to pluck them. This logic of Omar and of 
 Horace is also the logic of ' Ecclesiastejs.' " Too much 
 wisdom is much grief, and he that increaseth knowledge 
 increaseth sorrow. . . . For what hath man of all his 
 labour, and of all the vexation of his heart, wherein he 
 hath laboured under the sun ? . . . Then I commanded 
 mirth, because a man hath no better thing than to. eat, and 
 to drink, and to be merry-; for that shall abide with him of 
 his labour the days of his life which God giveth him under 
 the sun." When we compare the Eastern with lihe Western, 
 the Persian and Hebraic with the Greek and Roman, ex- 
 pressions of the Cyrenaic principle, we cannot help feeling 
 that, while the common basis of both is a profound moral 
 scepticism, the loss of faith in any enduring end or sub- 
 stantial good in life, this scepticism has engendered in the 
 one case a pessimistic mood which is entirely absent from 
 the other. Omar and Ecclesiastes clutch at the delights 
 of sense and time, the pleasure of the moment, as the only 
 refuge from the moral despair which reflection breeds. The 
 only cure for the ills of thought is careless and unthink- 
 ing abandon to the pleasures of the present. But always 
 in the background of the mind, and, whenever reflection 
 is reawakened, in the foreground too, is the sad and irre- 
 sistible conviction that, for a rational being, such a merely 
 sentient Good is in strictness no Good at all ; that for a 
 
 1 Horace, Ode xxix. Bk. iii. (Lonsdale and Lee's transl.) 
 
HEDONISM. 37 
 
 being whose very nature it is to " look before and after," 
 and to consider the total meaning of his life, such a pre- 
 occupation with the experience of the moment, as the only 
 moral reality, must render life essentially unmeaning and 
 not worth living. It is little wonder, therefore, that this 
 moral scepticism soon became philosophically speechless. 
 Even the Cyrenaics were unable to maintain their self- 
 consistency in the statement of it. An ethic of pure 
 Sensibility, an absolute Hedonism, is impossible. A 
 merely sentient Good cannot be the Good of a being who is 
 rational as well as sentient ; the true life of a reflective 
 being cannot be unreflective. In order to construct an 
 Ideal, some reference to reason is necessary ; even a suc- 
 cessful sentient life implies the guidance and operation of 
 thought. Accordingly, we find even the Cyrenaics admit- 
 ting, in spite of themselves, that prudence is Essential, to 
 the attainment of pleasure. A man must be master of 
 himself, as a rider is master of his horse ; he must be able 
 to say of his pleasures that he is their possessor, not they 
 his e^w, OVK ef%o/a&. Such self-mastery and self-posses- 
 sion is the work of reason, and a life which is not thus 
 rationally ordered must soon be wrecked on the shoals of 
 appetite and passion. 
 
 2. . This rehabilitation of the Socratic mas ter - virtue (B)Modi- 
 of prudence, suggested by the Cyrenaics, was completed 
 by the Epicureans, who, after the Platonic and Aristo- 
 
 telian insistence on the supreme claims of reason in the amsm - 
 conduct of human life, find it impossible to conceive a 
 Good from which reason has been eliminated, or to which 
 reason does not point the way. The end of life, they hold, 
 
88 THE MORAL IDEAL. 
 
 is not the pleasure of the moment, but a sum of pleasures, 
 a pleasant life. All that was necessary, to effect the transi- 
 tion from the Cyrenaic extreme to this moderate type of 
 Hedonism, was to press to its logical development the 
 Socratic principle that a truly happy, or consistently 
 pleasant life, must be also a rational, reflective, and con- 
 siderate life. Even within the Cyrenaic school, we find 
 an approach towards the moderate or Epicurean position. 
 Theodorus, a later member of the school, holds that the 
 end is not momentary pleasure, but a permanent state of 
 " gladness " (%apa) ; and Hegesias, still later, maintains that 
 painlessness, reached through indifference to pain, rather 
 than positive pleasure or enjoyment, is the attainable end 
 of life. These suggestions were developed, through the 
 re-assertion of the Socratic principle of prudence, strength- 
 ened by the Platonic and Aristotelian doctrine of the guid- 
 ing function of reason in the life of a rational being, into 
 the Epicurean system. * 
 
 Epicurus fully recognises the indispensableness of reason 
 in the conduct of life. The end is pleasure, but this end 
 cannot be attained except under the guidance of reason ; 
 feeling would be but a blind and perilous guide to its own 
 satisfaction. Reason is the handmaid of sensibility, and 
 without the aid of the former the latter would be reduced 
 to impotency. The task of life is discovered, and its 
 accomplishment is tested, by sensibility ; but the execution 
 of the task is the work of reason. For it is reason alone 
 that makes possible the most perfect gratification of feel- 
 ing, eliminating the pain as far as possible, reducing the 
 shocks and jars to a minimum, and, where the pain is un- 
 avoidable, showing how it is the way to a larger and more 
 
HEDONISM. 89 
 
 enduring, a deeper and intenser, pleasure. The happiness 
 of man is a subtler and more enduring satisfaction than 
 that of which the animal, preoccupied with the feeling of 
 the moment, is capable. Man's susceptibilities to pleasure 
 and pain are so much keener and more varied, his horizon, 
 as a rational being, is so much larger than the animal's, 
 that the same interpretation will not serve for both lives. 
 He cannot shut out the past and future, and surrender 
 himself, with careless limitation, to the momentary Now. 
 It is the outlook, the horizon, the prospect and the retro- 
 spect, that give the tone to his present experience. He 
 abides, though his experience changes ; and his happiness 
 must, just because it is his, be permanent and abiding as 
 the self whose happiness it is. Atomic moments of pleas- 
 ure cannot, therefore, be the Good of man; that Good 
 must be a Life of pleasure. An unorganised or chaotic 
 life, at the beck and call of every stray desire, would be a 
 life not of happiness but of misery to such a being as 
 man ; in virtue of his rational nature, he must organise 
 his life, must build up its moments into the hours and 
 days and years of a total experience. While, therefore, 
 the end or fundamental conception under which he must 
 bring all his separate activities, the ultimate unifying 
 principle of his life, is sentient satisfaction ; while the 
 ultimate term of human experience is not reason, but sen- 
 sibility, and man's Good is essentially identical with the 
 animal's, yet so different are the means to their accom- 
 plishment, so different is the conduct of the two lives, 
 that the interests of clear thinking demand the emphatic 
 assertion of the difference, no less than of the identity. 
 "Wherefore," says IJpicurus, " we call pleasure the alpha 
 
90 THE MORAL IDEAL. 
 
 and omega of a blessed life. Pleasure is our first and 
 kindred good. From it is the commencement of every 
 choice and every aversion, and to it we come back, and 
 make feeling the rule by which to judge of every good 
 thing. And since pleasure is our first and native good, 
 for that reason we do not choose every pleasure whatso- 
 ever, but ofttimes pass over many pleasures when a greater 
 annoyance ensues from them. And ofttimes we consider 
 pains superior to pleasures, and submit to the pain for a 
 long time, when it is attended for us with a greater pleas- 
 ure. All pleasure, therefore, because of its kinship with 
 our nature, is a good, but it is not in all cases our choice : 
 even as every pain is an evil, though pain is not always, 
 and in every case, to be shunned. It is, however, by meas 
 uring one against another, and by looking at the conve 
 niences and inconveniences, that all these things must be 
 judged. Sometimes we treat the good as an evil, and th 
 evil, on the contrary, as a good." " It is not an unbroke- 
 succession of drinking feasts and of revelry, not the pleas- 
 ures of sexual love, nor the enjoyment of the fish and 
 other delicacies of a splendid table, which produce a pleas- 
 ant life ; it is sober reasoning, searching out the reasons 
 for every choice and avoidance, and banishing those beliefs 
 through which greatest tumults take possession of the 
 soul. Of all this, the beginning, and the greatest good, is 
 prudence. Wherefore, prudence is a more precious thing 
 even than philosophy : from it grow all the other virtues, 
 for it teaches that we cannot lead a life of pleasure which 
 is not also a life of prudence, honour, and justice ; nor lead 
 a life of prudence, honour, and justice which is not also a 
 life of pleasure. For the. virtues have grown into one 
 
HEDONISM. 91 
 
 with a pleasant life, and a pleasant life is inseparable 
 from them." 1 
 
 Deeper reflection upon the course of human affairs led 
 the Epicureans, as it had led the Cyrenaics, to pessimism. 
 The Good, in the sense of positive pleasure, is not, they 
 find, the lot of man ; all that he may hope for is the nega- 
 tive pleasure that comes with the release from pain. " By 
 pleasure we mean the absence of pain in the body and 
 trouble in the soul." And even this is not always to be 
 attained. If we would escape the pain of unsatisfied 
 desire, we must reduce our desires. Fortune is to be 
 feared, even when bringing gifts ; for she is capricious, and 
 may at any moment withhold her gifts. Let us give as 
 few hostages to Fortune, then, as we can ; let us assert our 
 independence of her, and, in our own self-sufficiency, be- 
 come indifferent to her fickle moods. Let us return, as far 
 as may be, to the " state of nature," for nature's wants are 
 few. " Of desires some are natural and some are ground- 
 less; and of the natural, some are necessary as well as 
 natural, and some are natural only. And of the necessary 
 desires, some are necessary if we are to be happy, and 
 some if the body is to remain unperturbed, and some if 
 we are even to live. By the clear and certain understand- 
 ing of these things we learn to make every preference and 
 aversion, so that the body may have health and the soul 
 tranquillity, seeing that this is the sum and end of a 
 blessed life. For the end of all our actions is to be free 
 from pain and fear ; and when once we have attained this, 
 all the tempest of the soul is laid, seeing that the living 
 creature has not to go to find something that is wanting, 
 
 1 Epicurus' Letter (Wallace's 'Epicureanism,' 129-131). 
 
THE MORAL IDEAL. 
 
 or to seek something else by which the good of the soul 
 
 j and of the body will be fulfilled. When we need pleasure, 
 
 is, when we are grieved because of the absence of pleasure ; 
 
 but when we feel no pain, then we no longer stand in need 
 of pleasure." 1 
 
 The great maxim of the Epicurean life is, therefore, like 
 f that of the Stoic, that we cultivate a temper of indiffer- 
 ence to pleasure and pain, such a tranquillity of soul 
 (arapa^La) as no assault of fortune shall avail to disturb, 
 such an inner peace of spirit as shall make us independent 
 of fortune's freaks./ For the Epicureans have lost the 
 Socratic faith in a divine Providence, the counterpart of 
 human prudence, which secures that a well-planned life 
 shall be successful in attaining its goal of pleasure. Their 
 gods have retired from the world, and become careless of 
 human affairs. The true wisdom, then, is to break the 
 bonds that link our destiny with the world's, and to assert 
 v our independence of fate. V Through moderation of desire, 
 and tranquillity of soul, we become masters of our own 
 destiny, and learn that our true good is to be sought 
 v within rather than without. It is our fear of external 
 evil or calamity, not calamity itself, that is the chief 
 source of pain. [Let us cease to fear that which in itself 
 is not terrible. Even death, the greatest of so-called evils,. 
 
 * the worst of all the blows which fortune can inflict upon 
 us, is an evil only to him who fears it ; even to it we can 
 
 x become indifferent. "Accustom thyself in the belief that 
 death is nothing to us ; for good and evil are only where 
 they are felt, and death is the absence of all feeling; 
 therefore a right understanding that death is nothing to 
 
 1 Epicurus' Letter, loc. cit. 
 
HEDONISM. 93 
 
 us makes enjoyable the mortality of life, not by adding to 
 years an illimitable time, but by taking away the yearn- 
 ing after immortality. , For in life there can be nothing to 
 fear to him who has thoroughly apprehended that there 
 is nothing to cause fear in what time we are not alive. 
 Foolish, therefore, is the man who says that he fears death, 
 not because it will pain when it comes, but because it 
 pains in the prospect. Whatsoever causes no annoyance 
 when it is present causes only a groundless pain by the 
 expectation thereof. Death, therefore, the most awful of 
 evils, is nothing to us, seeing that when we are, death 
 is not yet, and when death comes, then we are not. It is 
 nothing, then, either to the living or the dead ; for it is 
 not found with the living, and the dead exist no longer."> 
 Of this Epicurean ideal we could not have a better 
 picture than that which Horace gives in the Seventh 
 Satire of the Second Book : " Who, then, is free ? He 
 who is wise, over himself true lord, unterrified by want 
 and death and bonds ; who can his passions stem, and 
 glory scorn ; in himself complete, like a sphere, perfectly 
 round ; so that no external object can rest on the polished 
 surface ; against such a one Fortune's assault is broken." 
 It is an ideal of rational self-control, of deliverance from 
 the storms of passion through the peace-speaking voice of 
 reason. The state of sensibility is still the ethical End 
 and criterion ; but all the attention is directed to the 
 means by which that End may be compassed, and the' 
 means are not sentient but rational. Nay, the End itself, 
 as we have just seen, is rather a state of indifference, of 
 neutral feeling, of insensibility, than a positive state of 
 feeling at all. 
 
94 THE MORAL IDEAL. 
 
 (6) Modern 3. Modern Hedonism differs widely from Ancient. 
 
 Hedonism, 
 
 or utm- British from Greek. If we take Mill as the representa- 
 
 tarianism. . 
 
 its chief tive of the modern doctrine, perhaps the differences may be 
 from And- said to resolve themselves, in the last analysis, into three. 
 Optimistic (1) Ancient Hedonism, whether of the Cyrenaic or of 
 tic? SS m ~' the Epicurean type, was pessimistic. Modern Hedonism 
 is, on the whole, optimistic. 1 Where the Greek moralists 
 found themselves forced to conceive the End as escape 
 from pain rather than as positive pleasure, their suc- 
 cessors in England (as well as recently in Germany) have 
 no hesitation in returning to the original Cyrenaic con- 
 ception of the End as real enjoyment, as not merely the 
 absence of pain, but the presence of pleasure. Mill, it 
 is true, in a significant admission, made almost incident- 
 ally in the course of his main argument, comes near 
 striking once more the old pessimistic note. " Though 
 it is only in a very imperfect state of the world's arrange- 
 ments that any one can best serve the happiness of others 
 \ by the absolute sacrifice of his own, yet so long as the 
 world is in that imperfect state, I fully acknowledge that 
 the readiness to make such a sacrifice is the highest virtue 
 to be found in man. I will add, that in this condition 
 of the world, paradoxical as the assertion may be, the 
 conscious ability to do without happiness gives tjm best 
 ! prospect of realising such happiness as is attainal^h For 
 nothing except that consciousness can raise j^Berson 
 above the chances of life, by making him feel umt, let 
 fate and fortune do their worst, they have not power to 
 subdue him ; which, once felt, frees him from excess of 
 
 1 The pessimistic tendency has of late, to a certain extent, reasserted 
 itself. 
 
HEDONISM. 95 
 
 anxiety concerning the evils of life, and enables him, 
 like many a Stoic in the worst times of the Eoman 
 Empire, to cultivate in tranquillity the sources of satis- 
 faction accessible to him, without concerning himself 
 about the uncertainty of their duration, any more than 
 about their inevitable end." - 1 But Mill is delivered from 
 pessimism by his firm conviction that the condition of 
 the world is changing for the better, and that in the , 
 end the course of virtue must " run smooth." The source 
 of this confidence, in Mill and his successors, is not the 
 rehabilitation of the old Socratic faith in a divine Provi- 
 dence ; another ground of confidence is found in the 
 new insight into the course of things which Science has 
 brought to man. Knowledge is Power, and the might 
 of virtue lies in the fact that it has Nature on its side. 
 The principle of Evolution, it. is maintained, shows us 
 that goodness does not work against Nature, but rather 
 assists Nature in her work. Hedonism, therefore, finds 
 a new basis in Evolutionism, and puts forward the new 
 claim of being the only " scientific " interpretation of 
 morality. Yet we find the most brilliant living Evolu- 
 tionist maintaining that the " ethical process " and the 
 "cosmical process" are fundamentally antagonistic, 2 . and 
 one of the ablest of living evolutionary hedonists ad- 
 mitting that "the attempt to establish an absolute co- 
 incidence between virtue and happiness is in ethics what 
 the attempting to square the circle or to discover per- 
 petual motion is in geometry and mechanics." 3 
 
 1 ' Utilitarianism/ ch. ii. 
 
 2 Huxley, Romanes Lectures, 'Evolution and Ethics.' 
 
 3 Leslie Stephen, ' Science of Ethics.' 
 
96 THE MORAL IDEAL. 
 
 (2)Aitru- (2) The standpoint of ancient Hedonism was that of 
 
 istic v. 
 
 Egoistic, the individual, the standpoint of modern is that of society 
 or mankind in general, or even, as with Mill, of the entire 
 sentient creation. While ancient Hedonism was egoistic, 
 
 ^the modern is altruistic or universalistic. "The greatest 
 happiness of the greatest number" has taken the place 
 of the greatest happiness of the individual ; the End has 
 been extended beyond the conception of its ancient ad- 
 vocates. The " wise man " of the Epicurean school was 
 wise for his own interests; his chief virtues were self- 
 sufficiency and self-dependence. It is true that the 
 Epicurean society was held together by the practice, on 
 a fine scale, of the virtue of Friendship, and that they 
 lived, in many respects, a common life ; but this feature 
 of their practice had no counterpart in their ethical 
 theory. The modern hedonist, -realising this defect, and 
 the necessity of differentiating his expanded theory of the 
 End from the narrow conception of the elder school, has 
 invented a new name to express this difference viz., 
 
 ' " Utilitarianism." The new conception has been only 
 gradually reached, however ; there is an interesting bridge 
 between the old egoistic form of hedonism and the new 
 
 I altruistic or " utilitarian " version of it, in the philosophy 
 of Paley. To this "lawyer-like mind" it seemed that 
 we ought to seek " the happiness of mankind, in obedience 
 to the will of God, and for the sake of everlasting happi- 
 ness." The happiness of mankind, he holds, is the " sub- 
 ject " or content of morality, but " everlasting happiness^" 
 one's own, of course is the " motive." The End, there- 
 w\ fore, is one's own individual happiness, and the happiness 
 
 ( of others is to be sought merely as a means to that End. 
 
HEDONISM. 
 
 97 
 
 Such a theory is, it is obvious, thoroughly egoistic ; it is 
 only an improved version of the egoism of Hobbes, which 
 formed the starting-point of modern ethical reflection. 
 It is to Hume, Bentham, and Mill that we owe the 
 substitution of the General Happiness for that of the 
 individual, as the end of life. According to each of these 
 writers the true standpoint is that of society, not that 
 of the individual ; from the social standpoint alone can 
 we estimate aright the claims either of our own happi- 
 ness or of the happiness of others. Mill's statement is 
 the most adequate on this important point. 
 
 The " utilitarian standard " is " not the agent's own 
 greatest happiness, but the greatest amount of happiness 
 altogether." The End, thus conceived, yields the true 
 principle of the distribution of happiness. " As between 
 his own happiness and .that of others, utilitarianism 
 requires him to be as strictly impartial as a disinterested 
 and benevolent spectator. In the golden rule of Jesus of 
 Xazareth, we read the complete spirit of the ethics of 
 utility. To do as one would be done by, and to love one's 
 neighbour as oneself, constitute the ideal perfection of 
 utilitarian morality." Bentham had already enunciated 
 this principle in the formula : " Each to count for one, 
 and no one for morejthan one." But a new question is 
 thus raised for the hedonist viz., bow to reconcile the 
 happiness of all with the happiness of each, or altruism 
 with egoism. " Why am I bound to promote the general 
 happiness ? If my own happiness lies in something else, 
 why may I not give that the preference ? " Mill answers 
 that there are two kinds of sanction for altruistic conduct, 
 external and internal. Both had been recognised by his 
 
98 THE MORAL IDEAL. 
 
 predecessors. Bentham mentions four sanctions, all " ex- 
 ternal" viz., the physical, the political, the moral or 
 popular, and the religious. All four are forces brought 
 to bear upon the individual from without, .and their 
 common object is to produce an identity, or at least 
 community, of interest between the individual and society, 
 in such wise that he shall " find his account " in living 
 conformably to the claims of the general happiness. But 
 such external sanctions, alone, would provide only a 
 secondary and indirect vindication for altruistic conduct. 
 The individual whose life was governed by such con- 
 straints would still be, in character and inner motive, 
 if not in outward act, an egoist ; his end would still be 
 egoistic, though it was accomplished by altruistic means. 
 To the external sanctions must, therefore, be added the 
 \ internal sanction which Hume and Mill alike describe as 
 a " feeling for the happiness of mankind," a " basis of 
 powerful natural sentiment " for " utilitarian morality," a 
 feeling of " regard to the pleasures and pains of others," 
 which, if not " innate " or fully developed from the first, 
 is none the' less " natural." " This firm foundation is that 
 of the social feelings of mankind ; the desire to be in 
 unity with our fellow-creatures, which is already a power- 
 ful principle in human nature, and happily one of those 
 which tend to become stronger, even without express 
 inculcation, from the influences of advancing civilisation." 
 (3) Quail- (3) The third characteristic feature of modern Hedonism, 
 
 tative v. ^ 
 
 Quanti- as contrasted with ancient, is the new interpretation which 
 
 tative 
 
 it offers of the gradation of pleasures. It is Mill's chief 
 
 innovation that he introduces a distinction of quality, in 
 
 \ addition to the old distinction of quantity. The End thus 
 
HEDONISM. 99 
 
 receives, in addition to its new extension, a new refine- 
 ment. The Epicureans had emphasised the distinction 
 between the pleasures of the body and those of the mind, 
 and had unhesitatingly awarded the superiority to the 
 latter, on the ground of their greater durability and their 
 comparative freedom from painful consequences ; but they 
 had not maintained the intrinsic preferableness of the 
 mental pleasures. To Paley and Bentham, as well as to/ 
 the Epicureans, all pleasures are still essentially, or ipf 
 kind, the same. "I hold," says Paley, "that pleasures 
 differ in nothing, but in continuance and intensity." Ben- 
 tham holds that, besides intensity and duration,'the elements 
 of " certainty," " propinquity," " fecundity " (the likeli- 
 hood of their being followed by other pleasures), and 
 "purity" (the unlikelihood of their being followed by 
 pain), must enter as elements into the "hedonistic cal- 
 culus." Such were the interpretations of the distinction 
 prior to Mill ; the distinction was emphasised, but it was 
 explained in the end as a distinction of quantity, not of 
 quality. Mill holds that the distinction of quality is in-j 
 dependent of that of quantity, and that the qualitative 
 distinction is as real and legitimate as the quantitative. 
 " There is no known Epicurean theory of life which does 
 not assign to the pleasures of the intellect, of the feelings 
 and imagination, and of the moral sentiments, a much 
 higher value as pleasures than to those of mere sensation. 
 It must be admitted, however, that utilitarian writers in 
 general have placed the superiority of mental over bodily 
 pleasures chiefly in the greater permanence, safety, costli- 
 ness, &c., of the former that is, in their circumstantial 
 advantages rather than in their intrinsic nature. And on 
 
100 THE MORAL IDEAL. 
 
 all these points utilitarians have fully proved their case ; 
 but they might have taken the other, and, as it may be 
 called, higher ground, with entire consistency. It is quite 
 compatible with the principle of utility to recognise the 
 fact that some kinds of pleasure are more desirable and 
 more valuable than others. It would be absurd that 
 while, in estimating all other things, quality is considered 
 as well as quantity, the estimation of pleasure should be 
 supposed to depend on quantity alone." As to the criterion 
 of quality in pleasures, or " what makes one pleasure more 
 valuable than another, merely as a pleasure, except its 
 being greater in amount, there is but one possible answer." 
 That answer is the one which Plato gave long ago, the 
 answer of the widest and most competent experience. " Of 
 two pleasures, if there be one to which all or almost all 
 who have experience of both, give a decided preference, 
 irrespective of any feeling of moral obligation to prefer it, 
 that is the more desirable pleasure. If one of the two is, 
 by those who are competently acquainted with both, placed 
 so far above the other that they prefer it, even though 
 knowing it to be attended with a greater amount of dis- 
 content, and would not resign it for any amount of the 
 other pleasure which their nature is capable of, we are 
 justified in ascribing to the preferred enjoyment a superior- 
 ity in quality, so far outweighing quantity as to render it, 
 in comparison, of small account. Now it is an unquestion- 
 able fact that those who are equally acquainted with, and 
 equally capable of appreciating and enjoying both, do give 
 a most marked preference to the manner of existence 
 which employs their higher faculties. Few human 
 creatures would consent to be changed into any of the 
 
HEDONISM. 101 
 
 lower animals for a promise of the fullest allowance of a 
 beast's pleasures ; no intelligent human being would con- 
 sent to be a fool, no instructed person would be an ignor- 
 amus, no person of feeling and conscience would be selfish 
 and base, even though they should be persuaded that the 
 fool, or the dunce, or the rascal is better satisfied with his 
 lot than they are with theirs. They would not resign 
 what they possess more than he, for the most complete 
 satisfaction of all the desires which they have in common 
 with him. . . . We may give what explanation we please 
 of this unwillingness, . . . but its most appropriate ap- 
 pellation is a sense of dignity, which all human beings 
 possess in one form or other, and in some, though by no 
 means in exact, proportion to their higher faculties, and 
 which is so essential a part of the happiness of those in 
 whom it is strong, that nothing which conflicts with it 
 could be, otherwise than momentarily, an object of desire 
 to them." This higher nature, with its higher demand of 
 happiness, carries with it inevitably a certain discontent. 
 Yet " it is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a 
 pig satisfied /better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool 
 satisfied. And if the fool or the pig is of a different opinion, 
 it is because they only know their own side of the question. 
 The other party to the comparison knows both sides." 
 
 tn \-ro z&cj; o > ,' o o i- o o i '6 f r 
 
 4. Not the least important modern modification of the (c) Evoi- 
 hedonistic theory is its affiliation to an evolutionary utmtari- 
 view of morality. The current form of Hedonism is ai 
 Evolutional Utilitarianism. The reform in ethical method 
 which the evolutionary moralists seek to introduce is, in 
 words, the same as Kant's reform of metaphysics viz., to 
 
102 THE MORAL IDEAL. 
 
 I make it scientific. Apply the principle of Evolution to 
 the phenomena of moral life, as it has already been ap- 
 plied to the phenomena of physical life, and the former, 
 equally with the latter, will fall into order and system. 
 Morality, like Nature, has evolved; and neither can be 
 I understood except in the light of its evolution. Nay, the 
 evolution of morality is part and parcel of the general 
 >/ evolution of nature, its crown and climax indeed, but of 
 the same warp and woof. In the successful application 
 of his theory to moral life, therefore, the Evolutionist sees 
 the satisfaction of his highest ambition ; for it is here that 
 the critical point is reached which shall decide whether or 
 not his conception is potent to reduce all knowledge to 
 unity. If morality offers no resistance to its application, 
 its adequacy is once for all completely vindicated. Thus 
 we are offered by the Evolutionists what Green called a 
 ~> " natural science of morals." 
 
 According to Mr Spencer, Morality is " that form which 
 universal conduct assumes during the last stages of its 
 evolution." Conduct is " the adjustment of acts to ends," 
 and in the growing complexity and completeness of this 
 adjustment consists its evolution. Things and actions are 
 " good or bad according as they are well or ill adapted to 
 achieve prescribed ends," or "according as the adjust- 
 ments of acts to ends are or are not efficient." And, 
 ultimately, their goodness or badness is determined by 
 the measure in which all minor ends are merged in the 
 grand end of self and race-preservation. Thus " the ideal 
 goal to the natural evolution of conduct " is at the same 
 time " the ideal standard of conduct ethically considered." 
 The universal End of conduct, therefore, is " life " its 
 
HEDONISM. 103 
 
 preservation and development. But " in calling good the 
 conduct which subserves life, and bad the conduct which 
 hinders or destroys it, and in so implying that life is a 
 blessing and not a curse, we are inevitably asserting that 
 conduct is good or bad according as its total effects are 
 pleasurable or painful." 
 
 Looking at the inner side of conduct, and seeking to 
 trace " the genesis of the moral consciousness," Mr Spen- 
 cer finds its " essential trait " to be " the control of some ~ 
 feeling or feelings by some other feeling or feelings " ; 
 and " the general truth disclosed by the study of evolving 
 conduct, sub-human and human," is that, " for the better 
 preservation of life, the primitive, simple, presentative feel- 
 ings must be controlled by the later-evolved, compound, 
 and representative feelings." Mr Spencer mentions three 
 controls of this kind the political, the religious, and the ) 
 social. These do not, however, severally or together, 
 " constitute the moral control, but are only preparatory 
 to it are controls within which the moral control evolves." 
 " The restraints properly distinguished as moral are unlike 
 those restraints out of which they evolve, and with which 
 they are long confounded, in this they refer not to the 
 extrinsic effects of actions, but to their intrinsic effects. 
 The truly moral deterrent is ... -constituted ... by a 
 representation of the necessary natural results." 
 
 Thus arises " the feeling of moral obligation," " the sen-i 
 timent of duty." " It is an abstract sentiment generated 
 in a manner analogous to that in which abstract ideas are 
 generated." On reflection, we observe that the common 
 characteristic of the feelings which prompt to "good" 
 conduct is that "they are all complex, re-representative 
 
104 THE MORAL IDEAL. 
 
 feelings, occupied with the future rather than the pres- 
 ent. The idea of authoritativeness has, therefore, come 
 to be connected with feelings having these traits." There 
 is, however, another element in the " abstract conscious- 
 ness of duty " viz., " the element of coerciveness." This 
 Mr Spencer derives from the various forms of pre-moral 
 restraint just mentioned. But, since the constant ten- 
 dency of conduct is to free itself from these restraints, 
 and to become self-dependent and truly " moral," " the 
 sense of duty or moral obligation [i.e., as coercive] is 
 transitory, and will diminish as fast as moralisation 
 increases. . . . While at first the motive contains an 
 element of coercion, at last this element of coercion 
 dies out, and the act is performed without any conscious- 
 ness of being obliged to perform it ; " and thus " the doing 
 of work, originally under the consciousness that it ought 
 to be done, may eventually cease to have any such accom- 
 panying consciousness," and the right action will be done 
 " with a simple feeling of satisfaction in doing it." Since 
 the consciousness of obligation arises from the incomplete 
 adaptation of the individual to the social conditions of 
 his life, "with complete adaptation to the social state, 
 that element in the moral consciousness which is ex- 
 pressed by the word obligation will disappear. The 
 higher actions required for the harmonious carrying on 
 of life will be as much matters of course as are those 
 lower actions which the simple desires prompt. In their 
 proper times and places and proportions, the moral sen- 
 timents will guide men just as spontaneously and ade- 
 quately as now do the sensations." J 
 
 1 'Data of Ethics,' 127-129. 
 
 r 
 
HEDONISM. 105 
 
 For the conflict between the interests of society and 
 those of the individual, which is the source of the feeling 
 of Obligation as coercive, is not absolute and permanent. 
 A "conciliation" of these interests is possible. Egoism 
 and Altruism both have their rights. When we study the 
 history of evolving life, we find that " self-sacrifice is nO| 
 less primordial than self-preservation," and that, through- 
 out, " altruism has been evolving simultaneously with 
 egoism." "From the dawn of life egoism has been de- 
 pendent upon altruism, as altruism has been dependent 
 upon egoism ; and in the course of evolution the recip- 
 rocal services of the two have been increasing." Thus 
 " pure egoism and pure altruism are both illegitimate ; " 
 and " in the progressing ideas and usages of mankind " 
 a " compromise between egoism and altruism has been 
 slowly establishing itself." Nay, a " conciliation has been, 
 and is, taking place between the interests of each citizen 
 and the interests of citizens at large; tending ever to- 
 wards a state in which the two become merged in one, 
 and in which the feelings answering to them respectively 
 fall into complete concord." Thus " altruism of a social 
 kind . . . may be expected to attain a level at which it 
 will be like parental altruism in spontaneity a level 
 such that ministration to others' happiness will become 
 a daily need." This consummation will be brought about 
 by the same agency which has effected the present partial 
 conciliation viz., sympathy, " which must advance as fast 
 as conditions permit." During the earlier stages of the 
 evolution sympathy is largely painful, on account of the 
 existence of " much non- adaptation and much consequent 
 unhappiness." " Gradually, then, and only gradually, as 
 
106 THE MORAL IDEAL. 
 
 these various causes of unhappiness become less, can sym- 
 pathy become greater. . . . But as the moulding and re- 
 moulding of .man and society into mutual fitness pro- 
 gresses, and as the pains caused by unfitness decrease, 
 sympathy can increase in presence of the pleasures that 
 come from fitness. The two changes are, indeed, so related 
 that each furthers the other." And the goal of evolution 
 can only be perfect identity of interests, and the con- 
 sciousness of that identity. 
 
 One favourite conception of the Evolutionary school is 
 missed in Mr Spencer's statement of the theory, that of the 
 " Social Organism." Mr Leslie Stephen has used this idea 
 with special skill in his ' Science of Ethics.' " Scientific " 
 Utilitarianism, he insists, must rest upon a deeper view 
 of society and of its relation to the individual. The old 
 Utilitarianism conceived society as a mere " aggregate " of 
 individuals. The utilitarian was still an " individualist " ; 
 though he spoke of " the greatest number " of individuals, 
 the individual was still his unit. Now, according to Mr 
 Stephen, the true unit is not the individual, but society, 
 which is not a mere " aggregate " of individuals, but an 
 " organism," of which the individual is a member. " So- 
 ciety may be regarded as an organism, implying ... a 
 social tissue, modified in various ways so as to form the 
 organs adapted to various specific purposes." Further, 
 the social organism and the underlying social tissue are to 
 be regarded as evolving. The social tissue is being gradu- 
 ally modified so as to form organs ever more perfectly 
 adapted to fulfil the various functions of the organism as 
 a whole ; and the goal of the movement is the evolution of 
 the social " type " that is, of that form of society which 
 
HEDONISM. 107 
 
 represents " maximum efficiency " of the given means to* 
 the given end of social life. In short, we may say 
 that the problem which is receiving its gradual solution 
 in the evolution of society is the production of a " social 
 tissue," or fundamental structure, the most "vitally 
 efficient." 
 
 In describing the ethical End. therefore, we must substi- 
 tute for " the greatest happiness of the greatest number " 
 of individuals, the "health" of the social organism, or, 
 still more accurately, of the social tissue. The true " util- 
 ity " is not - the external utility of consequences. Life is 
 not " a series of detached acts, in each of which a man can 
 calculate the sum of happiness or misery attainable by 
 different courses." It is an organic growth ; and the re- 
 sults of any given action are fully appreciated, only when 
 the action is regarded, not as affecting its temporary 
 " state," but as entering into and modifying the very sub- 
 stance of its fundamental structure. The " scientific cri- 
 terion," therefore, is not Happiness, but Health. " We 
 obtain unity of principle when we consider, not the vari- 
 ous external relations, but the internal condition of the 
 organism. . . . We only get a tenable and simple law 
 when we start from the structure, which is itself a unit." 
 Nor are the two criteria health and happiness " really 
 divergent ; on the contrary, they necessarily tend to coin- 
 cide." The general correlation of the painful and the 
 pernicious, the pleasurable and the beneficial, is obvious. 
 " The useful/ in the sense of pleasure-giving, must ap- 
 proximately coincide with the ' useful ' in the sense of life- 
 preserving. . . . We must suppose that pain and pleasure 
 are the correlatives of certain states which may be roughly 
 
108 THE MORAL IDEAL. 
 
 regarded as the smooth and the distracted working of the 
 physical machinery, and that, given those states, the sen- 
 sations must always be present." And in the evolution of 
 society we can trace the gradual approximation to coin- 
 cidence of these two senses of " utility." 
 
 Objectively considered, then, moral laws may be iden- 
 tified with the conditions of social vitality, and morality 
 may be called " the sum of the preservative instincts of 
 a society." That these laws should be perceived with 
 increasing clearness as the evolution proceeds, is a cor- 
 ollary of the theory of Evolution ; as the social type is 
 gradually elaborated, the conditions of its realisation will 
 be more clearly perceived. Thus we reach the true 
 interpretation of the subjective side of morality. Cor- 
 responding to social welfare or health the objective 
 end there is, in the member of society, a social in- 
 stinct or sympathy with that welfare or health. The 
 old opposition between the individual and society is 
 fundamentally erroneous, depending as it does upon the 
 inadequate mechanical conception of society already re- 
 ferred to. " The difference between the sympathetic and 
 the non-sympathetic feelings is a difference in their law 
 or in the fundamental axiom which they embody." " The 
 sympathetic being becomes, in virtue of his sympathies, 
 a constituent part of a larger organisation. He is no 
 more intelligible by himself alone than the limb is in 
 all its properties intelligible without reference to the 
 body." Just as " we can only obtain the law of the 
 action of the several limbs" when we take the whole 
 body into account, so with the feelings of "the being 
 who has become part of the social organism. . . . Though 
 
HEDONISM. 109 
 
 feelings of the individual, their law can only be deter- 
 mined by reference to the general social conditions." As 
 a member of society, and not a mere individual, man 
 cannot but be sympathetic. The growth of society im- 
 plies, as its correlate, " the growth of a certain body of 
 sentiment " in its members ; and, in accordance with the 
 law of Natural Selection, this instinct, as pre-eminently 
 useful to the social organism, will be developed at once 
 extended and enlightened. "Every extension of reason- 
 ing power implies a wider and closer identification of self 
 with others, and therefore a greater tendency to merge 
 the prudential in the social axiom as a first principle 
 of conduct." 
 
 Thus what is generated in the course of Evolution is 
 not merely a type of conduct, but a " type of character " ; 
 not merely altruistic conduct, but "the elaboration and 
 regulation of the sympathetic character which takes place 
 through the social factor." We can trace the gradual 
 process from the external to the internal form of mor- 
 ality, from the law " Do this " to the law " Be this." We 
 see how approval of a certain type of conduct develops 
 into "approval of a certain type of character, the exist- 
 ence of which fits the individual for membership of a 
 thoroughly efficient and healthy social tissue." This, it 
 is insisted, is the true account of Conscience. " Moral 
 approval is the name of the sentiment developed through 
 the social medium, which modifies a man's character in 
 such a way as to fit him to be an efficient member of 
 the social tissue. It is the spiritual pressure which 
 generates and maintains morality," the representative and 
 spokesman of morality in the individual consciousness. 
 
110 THE MORAL IDEAL. 
 
 "The conscience is the utterance of the public spirit of 
 the race, ordering us to obey the primary conditions of 
 its welfare." l 
 
 I 
 
 (d) Ration- 5. Hedonism is the Ethics of Sensibility, and we have 
 tarianisin. traced how thinker after thinker of this school, each avail- 
 ing himself of the new insight unavailable to his prede- 
 cessors, has striven to solve the ethical problem in terms 
 of feeling, to interpret the Good, whether our own or that 
 of others, as, in the last analysis, a sentient rather than 
 a rational" or intellectual Good. In particular, we have 
 watched the gradual solution of the problem of the rela- 
 tion of the Good of the individual to the Good of others, 
 the problem of Egoism and Altruism. We have seen 
 Mill reconciling these two Goods, or rather resolving them 
 into one, through our " feeling of unity with our fellow- 
 men," a sympathy which identifies their good with our 
 own, and which all the influences of advancing civilisation 
 and moral education are tending to foster and develop. 
 We have seen the Evolutionists relying upon the same 
 agency of sympathetic feeling for the accomplishment of 
 the desired reconciliation, and invoking the law of Evolu- 
 tion and the conception of the Social Organism in behalf of 
 their prediction of an ultimate harmony of the interests of 
 all with the interests of each. Now, Professor Sidgwick, 
 coming to the solution of the problem as it is thus handed 
 to him, or rather as it is handed to him by Mill (for he does 
 not take any apparent interest in the Evolutionary solu- 
 tion of it), concludes that, as a problem of mere feeling, it 
 
 1 The above sketch of Evolutional Utilitarianism is taken from an article 
 by the author on the "Evolution of Morality " (' Mind,' xiv. 27). 
 
HEDONISM. Ill 
 
 is insoluble, and that the only possible solution of it is a 
 rational solution. His endeavour, therefore, is to establish 
 the rationality of Utilitarianism, and thus to provide, its 
 needed " proof." That proof is not, as Mill held, psycholo- 
 gical, but logical ; and he sets himself, as he says, to dis- 
 cover " the rational basis that I had long perceived to be 
 wanting to the Utilitarianism of Benthani [and of Mill] 
 regarded as an ethical doctrine." The resulting theory he 
 calls " Kational Utilitarianism." 
 
 Agreeing with the hedonistic interpretation of the End 
 as a sentient Good or a Good of feeling, Mr Sidgwick 
 finds it necessary to appeal to reason for the regulative 
 principles the principles of the distribution of this Good. 
 (1) Without passing beyond the circle of the individual 
 life, we find it necessary to employ a rational principle 
 in the choice of sentient satisfaction. The bridge on 
 which we pass from pure to modified Hedonism, from 
 Cyrenaicism to Epicureanism, from the irresponsible en- 
 joyment of the moment to a well-planned and successful L_ 
 life of pleasure, from pleasure to Happiness, is a bridge of 
 reason, not of feeling. To feeling, the present moment's 
 claim to satisfaction is paramount its claim is felt more 
 imperatively than that of any other ; it is to the eye of 
 thought alone that the true perspective of the moments 
 and of their capacities of pleasure is revealed. When we ^ 
 reflect or think, we see that the Good is not a thing of the 
 passing moments, but of the total life ; reason carries us, 
 as feeling never could, past a regard for our " momentary 
 good " to a regard for our " good on the whole." Eeeling 
 needs the instruction of reason our self-love has to be- 
 come a rational, as distinguished from a merely sentient 
 
112 THE MORAL IDEAL. 
 
 love of self. Eeason dictates an " impartial concern for 
 all parts of our conscious life," an equal regard for the 
 rights of all the moments, the future as well as the 
 present, the remote as well as the near; teaches short- 
 sighted Feeling, with its eye filled with the present, that 
 " Hereafter is to be regarded as much as Now," and that 
 
 \| " a smaller present good is not to be preferred to a greater 
 future good." When the Good is enjoyed, now or then, 
 to-morrow or next year, is, or may be, to Eeason a matter 
 of indifference, while to Feeling it is almost everything ; it 
 is for Eeason to educate Feeling, until Feeling shares her 
 own perspective. This rational principle which guides us 
 in the distribution of our own Good is Prudence. 
 
 But the path of Prudence is not itself alone the path of 
 Virtue. Even one's own " good on the whole " is not ipso 
 facto the same as the general good. Whence shall we 
 derive the principle of the distribution of Good when the 
 Good is the Good of all, and noir merely that of the in- 
 dividual. How construct the bridge that will span the 
 interval between our own good and that of .others, and 
 correlate altruistic with egoistic conduct? For, once 
 more, mere Feeling does not constitute the bridge between 
 Egoism and Altruism. The dualism of Prudence and 
 Virtue, regard for our own good and regard for the good of 
 others or the general good, remains for Feeling irresolvable. 
 Society never quite annexes the individual ; his good and 
 
 , its never absolutely coincide in Ufre sphere of sensibility. 
 But reason solves the problem which is for feeling in- 
 soluble. The true proof of Utilitarianism or Altruistic 
 Hedonism is not psychological, but logical. When " the 
 egoist offers the proposition that his happiness or pleasure 
 
 
HEDONISM. 113 
 
 is good, not only for him, but absolutely, he gives the 
 ground needed for such a proof. For we can then point 
 out to him that his happiness cannot be a more important 
 part of Good, taken universally, than the equal happiness 
 of any other person. And thus, starting with his own 
 principle, he must accept the wider notion of universal 
 happiness or pleasure, as representing the real end of 
 Eeason, the absolutely Good or Desirable." To feeling it 
 ' makes all the difference in the world, whether it is my 
 own happiness or some one else's that is in question ; to 
 reason this distinction also is, like the distinction of time, 
 ' a matter of indifference. As, to the eye of reason, there is 
 110 distinction between the near and the remote, but every 
 moment of the individual life has its equal right to satis- 
 faction, so is there no distinction between meum and tuum, 
 but each individual, as equally a sentient being, has an 
 equal right to consideration. " Here again, just as in the 
 former case, by considering the relation of the integrant 
 parts to the whole and to each other, we may obtain the 
 self-evident principle that the good of any individual is 
 of no more importance, as a part of universal good, than 
 the good of any other ; unless, that is, there are special 
 grounds for believing that more good is likely to be 
 realised in the one case than in the other. And as 
 rational beings, we are manifestly bound to aim at good 
 generally, not merely at this or that part of it." That 
 " impartiality " which Bentham and Mill declared essential 
 to utilitarian morality, in which " each is to count for one, 
 and no one for more than one," is the impartiality of 
 reason, to which mere feeling could never attain. This 
 rational principle, which alone can guide us in the dis- 
 
 H 
 
114 THE MORAL IDEAL. 
 
 tribution of happiness between ourselves and others, is 
 " the abstract principle of the duty of Benevolence." To 
 Prudence must be added Benevolence. 
 
 But, in order to a perfectly rational distribution of 
 Happiness, whether among the competing moments of 
 the individual life or among competing individuals, yet 
 a third principle of reason must be invoked. Whether 
 we are considering the sum-total of our own happiness or 
 of the general happiness, we find that the constituent 
 parts have not all an equal importance. Some moments 
 in the individual life are more important than others, 
 because they have a larger or a peculiar capacity for 
 pleasure ; and some individuals are more important than 
 others, because they too have a larger or a peculiar 
 capacity for pleasure. Neither in the individual nor in 
 the social sphere is there a dead level of absolute equality ; 
 there are rational grounds for recognising inequality in 
 both. Accordingly, if the maximum of happiness is to 
 be realised, the strict literal " impartiality " of the prin- 
 ciples of Prudence and Benevolence must be enlightened 
 by the better insight of a higher Justice which, witli its 
 yet stricter scrutiny and more perfect impartiality, shall 
 recognise the true claim and the varying importance of 
 each moment and of each individual. It is, indeed, rather 
 a principle of Equity than of Justice, a " Lesbian rule " 
 which adapts itself to the inequalities and variations of that 
 living experience which it measures. As such, it is the 
 true and ultimate economic principle of Hedonism. In- 
 stead of depressing the maximum to a rigid average, by 
 distributing the " greatest happiness " equally among the 
 " greatest number " of moments or of individuals, the priii- 
 
HEDONISM. 115 
 
 ciple of Justice directs us to aim at the greatest total 
 happiness, or the greatest happiness "on the whole," 
 whether in our own experience or in that of the race. 
 
 II. Critical Estimate of Hedonism. 
 
 6. The formal merits of Hedonism as a philosophical () its psy- 
 theory of morals are of the highest order. It is a bold made- 
 and skilfully executed effort to satisfy the philosophical q 
 demand for unity. It offers a xlear and definite con- 
 ception of the End of life, a principle of unity under 
 which its most diverse elements are capable of being 
 brought, and under which they receive at least a very 
 plausible interpretation. It acknowledges the growth t- 
 and change which have characterised the course of 
 moral theory and practice ; it recognises the fact that ^ 
 morality is an evolution, and has a history ; and it offers 
 a philosophy of this history, a theory of this evolution. 
 Nor does it fall into the fallacy of reading its own philo- 
 sophical theory into the ordinary naive moral conscious- 
 ness of mankind. The dominating tendency of the entire 
 ethical movement, it insists, is utilitarian and hedonistic ; 
 but this tendency is present unconsciously and implicitly 
 oftener than consciously and explicitly. Until we reflect,, ^ 
 we may not realise that the End which we seek in all 
 our actions is pleasure ; but let us once reflect, and we 
 cannot fail to detect its constant presence and opera- 
 tion. And when we follow the history of the theory, 
 from its ancient beginnings in Cyrenaicism to its classical 
 development in Epicureanism, and from the Egoism of 
 Paley to the Altruism of Bentham and Mill, and the \ 
 
 \ 
 
116 THE MORAL IDEAL. 
 
 Evolutionism of Spencer and his school, we must admire 
 not only the strenuous perseverance with which the old 
 formula has been stretched again and again so as to ac- 
 commodate higher and hitherto unconsidered aspects of the 
 ethical problem, but also the skill and open-mindedness, 
 the sense of moral reality, the vitality of thought, which 
 have enabled the theory to adapt itself so readily and so 
 naturally to new moral and intellectual conditions. 
 
 A peculiar and, to a certain extent, an unwarranted 
 plausibility has, however, accrued to the theory from its 
 appropriation of the term "Happiness" to express its 
 conception of the ethical end. We hear the theory as 
 often called " Eudsemonism " as " Hedonism," the " Happi- 
 ness-theory " as the " Pleasure-theory." It would conduce 
 to clearness of thought if these terms were kept apart. 
 For, as Aristotle says, we are all agreed in describing the 
 End as Happiness (ev&ai/jiovia), but we differ as to the 
 definition of Happiness. Pleasure (fjbovrj) is one among 
 other interpretations of Happiness, and, though it may be 
 the most usual, its justice and adequacy must be con- 
 sidered and vindicated, like those of any other interpre- 
 tation. Happiness is, in itself, merely equivalent to 
 " Well-being " or " Welfare," and the nature of this may 
 be described in other terms, as well as in those of Pleasure. 
 Pleasure is aesthetic or emotional welfare, welfare of Sen- 
 sibility; but there is also intellectual welfare, and that 
 welfare of the Will or total active Self which is rather 
 \\Q\\-doing than v? oil-being (ev %fjv KOI ev r jrpd r rreiv). The 
 Welfare or Happiness may be that of the sentient, or of 
 the intellectual, or of the total (sentient and intellectual) 
 or active Self. No doubt, Pleasure, or the Happiness of 
 
HEDONISM. 117 
 
 the sentient self, is the only term we have to describe the 
 content of Happiness. But to exclude the possibility of 
 any other interpretation by identifying Happiness and 
 Pleasure at the outset, and using these terms interchange- 
 ably throughout the discussion, is, it seems to me, to 
 employ a " question-begging epithet." The thesis, of which 
 Hedonism ought to be the demonstration, is that Happi- 
 ness is pleasure or the "sum of pleasures." Kealising 
 this to be the true state of the argument, we may now 
 proceed to consider the legitimacy and adequacy of the 
 hedonistic interpretation of Happiness. There need be 
 the less hesitation in styling the theory in question the 
 " pleasure-theory," rather than, more vaguely if more 
 plausibly, the " happiness-theory," since the Epicureans 
 of old, almost as eagerly as Mill and his successors in 
 our own time, have maintained the claims of the term 
 "pleasure" to the highest emotional connotation. The 
 real question at issue, let us understand, is the legitimacy 
 of the limitation of the conception of Happiness to the 
 sentient or emotional sphere. 
 
 Now, the fundamental inadequacy of Hedonism, already 
 suggested in the above remarks, is a psychological one. 
 The hedonistic theory of life is based upon a one-sided 
 theory of human nature. Man is regarded as, fundamentally 
 and essentially, a sentient being, a creature of sensibility ; 
 and therefore the end of his life is conceived in terms of 
 sensibility, or as sentient satisfaction. Now, there is no 
 doubt that sensibility is a large and important element in 
 human life; the question is, whether it is the ultimate 
 and characteristic element. This question must, I think, 
 be answered in the negative. We are so constituted as to 
 
118 THE MORAL IDEAL. 
 
 be susceptible to pleasure and pain, and we might con- 
 ceivably make this susceptibility the sole guide of our life. 
 That we cannot do so consistently with our nature, is 
 because we are also so constituted as to regulate our 
 feelings by reference not only to one another, but to the 
 rational nature which belongs to our humanity and differ- 
 entiates us from the animal creation. In the animal life, 
 pleasure and pain are the " sovereign masters " ; in ours, 
 they are subjected to the higher sovereignty of reason. 
 " If pleasure* is the sovereign good, it ought to satisfy 
 absolutely all our faculties ; not only our sensibility, but 
 also our intelligence and will." Or rather, it must satisfy 
 the "nature" which these faculties, in their unity and 
 totality, constitute, and must satisfy that " nature " in its 
 unity and totality. But pleasure, or sentient satisfaction, 
 is not a category adequate to the interpretation of the life 
 of such a being as man. . The hedonistic theory of life 
 purchases its simplicity and lucidity at the expense of 
 depth and comprehensiveness of view. -Its formula is too 
 simple. Its End is abstract and one-sided, the exponent of 
 the life of feeling merely ; the true End must be the 
 exponent of the rational, as well as of the sentient 'self. 
 It may be difficult to describe such an End ; but the dif- 
 ficulty of the ethical task is the inevitable result -of the 
 complexity of man's nature. The very clearness and 
 simplicity of Hedonism is, in this sense, its condemnation. 
 It is doubtless pleasing to the logical sense to see the 
 whole of our complex human life reduced to the simple 
 terms of Sensibility. But the true principle of unity 
 must take fuller account of the complexity of the problem ; 
 insight must not be sacrificed to system the true system 
 
HEDONISM. 119 
 
 will be the result of the deepest insight. Festina lente is 
 the watchword in Ethics as in Metaphysics; the true 
 thinker, in either sphere, will not make haste. And if 
 Plato was right when he said that the good life is a 
 harmony of diverse elements, he was also right when 
 he said that the kgjr to this harmony is to be found rather 
 in Keason than in Sensibility. 
 
 To a psychologist who, like Mill and Bain, or like the 
 ancient Cyrenaics, resolves our entire experience into 
 feeling or sensibility, such a criticism would not, of 
 course, appeal. He would disallow, the distinction between 
 reason and sensibility, and maintain that the former 
 differs from the latter only in respect of its greater com- 
 . plexity, that " reason," so - called, is but the complex 
 product of associated feelings. Hedonism in Ethics is the 
 logical correlate of Sensationalism in Psychology. But, 
 short of such a psychological demonstration, the Aristo- 
 telian argument holds, that the End of any being must 
 be in accordance with its peculiar nature ; and, since 
 sensibility assimilates man to the animals, and reason 
 differentiates him from them, his true well-being must 
 be found in a rationally guided life, rather than in 
 a life whose sole guide and " sovereign master " is 
 sensibility. 
 
 7. This psychological error produces in its turn a mis- (J) its inad- 
 equate in- 
 leading and inverted view of Character, an estimate of terpreta- 
 
 it which surely misses its true significance. The most character, 
 obvious defect of^ the theory is its externalism. Its point ^ 
 of view is that of consequences and results, and only in- 
 directly that of motives and iiitgniipsisj conduct alone is 
 
120 THE MORAL IDEAL. 
 
 | of direct and primary importance, the significance of 
 ) character is indirect and secondary. The attainment of 
 / a certain type of character, or of a certain bent of will, is, 
 indeed, of the highest importance, but only because it is 
 I the surest guarantee for a certain type of activity. The 
 I latter is desirable in itself, and as an end ; the former is 
 I desirable only as the best means towards the attainment 
 of this end. Character, in other words, is instrumental ; 
 the " good-will "__is jLJiieans to^an^end, not an end-in- 
 itself; will^ like_^reasqn,^is subordinated to feeling. The 
 whole estimate of motives, as compared with actual con- 
 sequences, in the hedonistic school, implies this view ; 
 but we have the explicit statement of Mill himself as to 
 the real importance of the good will. " It is because of 
 
 the importance to others of being able to rely absolutely 
 on our feelings and conduct, and to oneself of being able 
 to rely on one's own, that the will to do right ought to 
 be cultivated into this habitual independence. In other 
 
 I words, this state of the will is a means to good, not in- 
 
 trinsically a good." 1 Which is to say that the state of 
 feeling, or the production of pleasure, is the end, "the 
 only thing always and altogether good " ; while the char- 
 acter of the will is only a means to this end. Professor 
 Gizycki forms precisely the same estimate of the good 
 will : " Virtue is the highest excellence of man. It is 
 not an excellence of the body, but of the mind ; and not 
 of the understanding, but of the will. Virtue, therefore, 
 is excellence of will, or, in short, a good will. Why is 
 it the highest excellence ? Because nothing so much 
 accords with the ultimate standard of all values. The 
 
 1 'Utilitarianism,' ch. iv. 
 
HEDONISM. 121 
 
 character of man is the principal source of the happiness, 
 as well as of the misery, of mankind. Certainly also 
 health, strength, and intelligence are essential conditions 
 of human welfare ; but the good-will is still more essen- j 
 tial, for only it guarantees a benevolent direction of the I 
 others." l The good man, then, according to the hedon-l 
 istic estimate, is simply a reliable instrument, warranted! 
 not to go wrong, but to continue steadily producing the 
 greatest amount of happiness possible in the circum- | 
 stances, whether for himself or for others. 
 
 Now, this interpretation of character, it seems to me, 
 falsifies the healthy moral consciousness of mankind, by 
 simply reversing its estimate. That estimate is that* 
 character, the attainment of a certain type of personality \ 
 or bent of will, is not a means but an end-in-itself ; that j 
 this, and not the production of a certain state of feeling, ( 
 is the only thing which is always and altogether good/j 
 and itself "the ultimate standard of all values." And 
 why ? Because character is the expression and exponent of 
 the total personality. Neither the emotional nor the m-\ 
 tellectual state, but that state of Will which includes them ' 
 both, is the ultimate and absolute Good, the chief End of ' 
 man. It is true that this form of being is always at the 
 same time a form of doing, that character and conduct are 
 inseparable, that et<? expresses itself in evepyeia. But the \ 
 character is not there for the sake of the conduct, the j 
 being for the sake of the doing. That would still be an I 
 external view, and would make character merely instru- \ 
 mental. This is true even of Mr Stephen's view that 
 moral progress is always from the form " Do this " to the 
 
 1 'Moral Philosophy,' 112 (Eng. tr.) 
 
122 THE MORAL IDEAL. 
 
 form " Be this." As long as we thus distinguish the 
 from the doing, the character from the conduct, our inter- 
 pretation must be inadequate. Tor we are still thinking 
 of will as if it were a machine, cunningly contrived so as 
 to produce something beyond itself. But, as Aristotle 
 points out, the activity may be itself the end, and in 
 natural activities (fyvaiKai), as distinguished from artificial 
 (re^yncaL), this is the case. Above all, in the case of the 
 human will, the end is not something beyond the activity, 
 but is simply evepyeia i/r 1^779, such an evepyeia as leads to 
 the formation of a certain eft?, or habit of similar activity. 
 The will is not to be regarded as making something else 
 (even a state of feeling), but always and only as making 
 itself. By separating the action from the person, conduct 
 from character, and by placing the emphasis on the con- 
 duct rather than on the person, Hedonism misses the real 
 significance of both. The ethical importance of actions is 
 only indirect, as the exponents of character ; the ethical 
 importance of character is direct and absolute. Charac- 
 ter and activity are inseparable ; character is a habitual 
 activity. But the ethical activity which is identical with 
 character is not properly regarded as productive of any- 
 thing beyond itself ; it is its own end, and exceeding great 
 reward. 
 
 {c)itsreso- 8. In yet another respect does the hedonistic theory 
 
 virtue into invalidate, instead of explaining, the healthy moral con- 
 
 ency! *~ sciousness of mankind ; it resolves Virtue into Prudence, 
 
 and sees in Duty only a larger and wiser Expediency. 
 
 The distinction between good and evil becomes a merely 
 
 relative one, a distinction of degree and not of kind. 
 
HEDONISM. 123 
 
 All motives being essentially the same, moral evil is 
 resolved into intellectual error; the ethical distinction 
 disappears in the psychological identity. " On the hedon- 
 istic supposition, every object willed is on its inner side, 
 or in respect of that which moves the person willing, the 
 same. The difference between objects willed lies on their 
 outer side, in effects which follow from them, but are not 
 included in them as motives to the person willing." Thus 
 Bentham says that though "it is common to speak of 
 actions as proceeding from good or bad motives," " the 
 expression is far from being an accurate one," and it is 
 " requisite to settle the precise meaning of it, and observe 
 how far it quadrates with the truth of things. With 
 respect to goodness and badness, as it is with everything 
 else that is not itself either pain or pleasure, so is it with 
 motives. If they are good or bad, it is only on account of 
 their effects : good, on account of their tendency to pro- 
 duce pleasure, or avert pain ; /bad, on account of their 
 tendency to produce pain, or avert pleasure. Now the 
 case is, that from one and the same motive, and from 
 every kind of motive, may proceed actions that are good, 
 others that are bad, and others that are indifferent." l He 
 concludes that "there is no such thing as any sort of I 
 motive that is in itself a bad one." " Let a man's motive ' 
 be ill-will ; call it even malice, envy, cruelty ; it is still a 
 kind of pleasure that is his motive : the pleasure he takes 
 at the thought of the pain which he sees, or expects to 
 see, his adversary undergo. Now even this wretched 
 pleasure, taken by itself, is good : it may be faint ; it may 
 be short: it must at any rate be impure: yet while it 
 
 1 ' Principles of Morals and Legislation,' chap. x. sees. 11, 12. 
 
J 
 
 124 THE MORAL IDEAL. 
 
 lasts, and before any bad consequences arrive, it is as 
 good as any other that is not more intense." 1 In this 
 interpretation of motives we see demonstrated once more 
 the externalism and the intellectualism of the theory. 
 The criterion is found outside the action, in the conse- 
 quences ; not within the action, in the motive. Actions 
 ) are simply tendencies to produce certain results ; and in so 
 far as we are forced from the outer to the inner view of 
 the action, from the result itself to the tendency, our 
 judgment proceeds entirely upon the relative intellectual 
 efficiency of the tendency in question. The difference 
 between Virtue and Vice is reduced to one between 
 Prudence and Imprudence. The intellectual process may 
 be more or less correct, the vision of the consequences 
 may be more or less clear ; but, inasmuch as the moral or 
 practical source of the action is always found in the same 
 persistent and dominant desire for pleasure, the intrinsic 
 value of the action remains invariable. As Professor 
 Laurie puts it : "A man may be careless or stupid, and 
 cast up the columns of his conduct-ledger wrong ; or he 
 , may be foolish, unwise, intellectually perverse ; but noth- 
 ing more and nothing worse." Of such a theory must 
 we not say, with Green, that " though excellent men have 
 argued themselves into it, it is a doctrine which, nakedly 
 put, offends the unsophisticated conscience ; " that, instead 
 ' of explaining morality, Hedonism explains it away ? For 
 the very essence of morality is that the distinction between 
 \ good and evil is a distinction of principle and not merely 
 j of result, an intrinsic and essential, not an extrinsic and 
 i contingent distinction. With the elimination of this dis- 
 
 1 Loc. cit., sec. 10, note. 
 
HEDONISM. 125 
 
 tinction in principle, the strictly ethical element in the case 
 is eliminated. With the glory of the Ideal, vanishes also 
 the shame and sorrow of failure to attain it ; with the 
 critical significance of moral alternative vanishes also the 
 infinite possibility of moral life ; all its lights and shadows, 
 all the strangely interesting "colours of good and evil" 
 disappear, leaving the blank monotony of a prudential^ 
 calculation. 
 
 9. Hedonism seems to me still further to break down (d) its ac- 
 
 , , . , . count of 
 
 moral reality by its interpretation of moral law as essen- Duty, 
 tially identical with physical, by its resolution of the 
 ideal into the actual, of the Ought into the Is. This 
 criticism has been well put by Professor Sidgwick in the 
 statement that " psychological hedonism is incompatible 
 with ethical hedonism." If it is the law of our nature to 
 
 Vj 
 
 seek pleasure, then there is no more meaning in the 'com- 
 mand, " Thou shalt seek it," than there would be in the 
 command, "Thou shalt fall" to the stone, whose nature it 
 is to fall. The law or uniformity of nature is in the one 
 case physical, in the other psychological; but in both 
 cases it is uniformity of nature. In the words of Ben- 
 tham, so " sovereign " are those " masters " pain and 
 pleasure that " it is for them alone," not only " to point 
 out what we ought to do," but " to determine what we shall 
 do. On the one hand, the standard of right and wrong, 
 on the other, the chain of causes and effects, are fastened to 
 their throne. They govern us in all we do, in all we say, 
 in all we think ; every effort we can make to throw off 
 our subjection will serve but to demonstrate and confirm 
 it. In words a man may pretend to abjure their empire, 
 
126 THE MORAL IDEAL. 
 
 but in reality lie will remain subject to it all the while." l 
 If pleasure is the constant and inevitable object of desire, 
 and also the true end of life, it cannot present itself, 
 except temporarily or relatively, as ethical Law or Ought, 
 as " dictate " or " imperative." But, with this resolution 
 of moral law into natural law, the conception of Duty 
 or Obligation is at once invalidated. Man's attitude to 
 the "law" of his life becomes essentially the same as 
 the attitude of other natural beings; in him, as in all 
 ^else animal, plant, inorganic thing nature must in- 
 Witably achieve its own end. The only difference be- 
 tween man and the other beings is that he can see further 
 reaches of the road which he and they must in common 
 travel. 
 
 This inevitable logic of the theory is recognised by its 
 modern disciples, and the attempt is made, in the true 
 empirical spirit, to account for the illusion of Obligation 
 by establishing its relative validity, and by exhibiting its 
 genesis and function. Two classes of " sanctions " have 
 been recognised the external and the internal. Ben- 
 tham recognises only the external sanctions physical, 
 political, moral or popular, and religious four forces, 
 ultimately resolvable into the single force of nature itself, 
 which coerce man to act for the general happiness rather 
 than selfishly to seek his own. Mill, Spencer, and Bain 
 also lay much stress upon the external sanctions of 
 morality the coercion of public opinion, the law of the 
 land, education, &c. They insist, however, that the ulti- 
 mate sanction is an internal one. There is an authority 
 other than that of mere force ; the element of coercion is 
 
 1 'Principles of Morals and Legislation,' ch. i. sec. 1. 
 
HEDONISM. 127 
 
 not the ultimate factor in morality. There is an inner 
 authority which comes from insight into the utility of 
 our actions. The recognition of this inner authority 
 brings with it emancipation from Obligation in the sense 
 of coercion, and the substitution of spontaneity for con- 
 straint. This emancipation, however, merely means, as 
 Evolutionism explains it, that the laws of his environ- 
 ment, physical and social, have become the laws of man's 
 own life; that the outer has become an inner law; and 
 that he does not feel the pressure any more, because the 
 moulding of him into the form of his environment has 
 been perfected. Thus the evolution of Morality falls 
 within the evolution of Nature, and our fancied emanci- 
 pation from the force of the " nature of things " is only 
 a demonstration of the perfection of Nature's mastery 
 over us. 
 
 But, indeed, an ultimate vindication of Obligation is 
 obviously impossible on the hedonistic theory. Feeling 
 cannot be the source of this idea. Sensibility, being 
 essentially subjective and variable, cannot yield the 
 objectivity and universality of the ethical imperative. If 
 the state of my sensibility be the sole criterion of good 
 and evil activity, I cannot (theoretically at least) be 
 obliged to do what offends my sensibility ; I must so act 
 as to gratify it. But feeling is just that element in my 
 nature and experience which I cannot universalise ; my 
 sensibility is my intimate and exclusive individual prop- 
 erty, and its word must be final for me. I cannot even 
 be coerced to act against the dictates of my feeling ; if, in 
 my own nature, I have no other guide, then the outward 
 constraint must become the inward constraint of sensi- 
 
 ' 
 ^ o? > r^ 
 
 , - 
 
128 THE MORAL IDEAL. 
 
 bility, and this necessity of feeling is still the Must, 
 or rather the Is, of nature, not the Ought - to - be of 
 morality. But is not such a translation of Ought into 
 Must or Is a violation once more of the healthy moral 
 consciousness of mankind ? The reality of moral obli- 
 gation stands or falls with the reality of the distinc- 
 tion between the ideal and the actual ; moral obliga- 
 tion is man's attitude towards the moral Ideal. If, 
 therefore, we resolve the ideal into the actual, as 
 "psychological hedonism" does, we make the attitude 
 of duty impossible. 
 
 This consequence is frankly accepted by the Evolu- 
 tionary school. The sense of obligation is, they say, only 
 temporary, existing during the earlier stages of the evolu- 
 tion of morality, but destined to disappear with the com- 
 pletion of the process. Moral life is, in its ideal, perfectly 
 spontaneous, and is always tending to become more 
 entirely so. " The feeling of obligation tends to dis- 
 appear, as fast as moralisation progresses." But is not 
 the conception of Duty or Obligation a central and 
 essential element of the moral life, to be explained and 
 vindicated in its permanent and absolute validity, rather 
 than explained awAy as only temporarily and relatively 
 valid ? Moral progress, while in a sense it liberates us 
 from the irksomeness of duty, also brings with it a larger 
 sense of duty, and a more entire submission to it. The 
 disappearance of the conception would mean either 
 sinking to the level of the brutes or rising to the 
 divine. As Kant contended, to act without a sense of 
 obligation does not become our station in the moral 
 universe. It is this characteristic of the moral life that 
 
HEDONISM. 129 
 
 separates it for ever from the life of nature. The moral 
 life cannot, as moral, become " spontaneous " or simply 
 " natural." The goal of the physical evolution and that 
 of the moral are not ipso facto the same. A perfectly 
 comfortable life, that is, a life in which the discomfort 
 of imperfect adaptation to the conditions of life should 
 no longer be felt, would not be a perfect moral life. 
 Thus, as from the non-moral a ^^m-inorality was evolved, 
 so into the non-moral it would ultimately disappear. To 
 " naturalise the moral man " would be to destroy morality. 
 To make the sense of duty a coefficient of the real, by 
 interpreting it as merely the transitional effect and 
 manifestation of the imperfect adjustment of the in- 
 dividual to his environment, may be a partial account, 
 but is at any rate a very inadequate account of the 
 moral situation. That situation is not fully understood 
 until, in the consciousness of Law and Duty, is heard the 
 eternal claim of the ideal upon the actual. 
 
 10. This leads us to remark that Hedonism, as an (e) Failure 
 
 of Sensi- 
 
 ethical theory, can never account for more than the con- bmty to 
 tent or " raw material " of morality ; the form, or prin- principle 
 ciple of arrangement, of this raw material must be found distribu- 
 elsewhere. In other words, sensibility does not provide tlon ' 
 for its own organisation ; the unifying principle of its 
 " mere manifold " must be found in a rational and not 
 in a sensible principle. To adopt a Kantian phrase, we 
 may say that if reason without feeling is empty, feeling 
 without reason is blind. This is only to repeat what Plato 
 and Aristotle, and even Socrates, said long ago viz., that 
 the ordering and guiding principle of human life is to be 
 
 I 
 
130 THE MORAL IDEAL. 
 
 found in " right reason," and that it is the place of feeling 
 to submit itself to that higher guidance and control. 
 Feeling is capricious, peculiar to the individual, clamant, 
 chaotic; its life, unchecked by the control of rational 
 insight and foresight, would be a chameleon-like life, a 
 thing that owed its shape and colour to the moments as 
 they passed. If the life of sensibility is to be unified or 
 organised, it can only be through the presence and opera- 
 tion in it of rational principle. 
 
 This problem of the organisation of sensibility early 
 forced itself upon the attention of hedonistic moralists. 
 , It was seen that the ordering of man's life is in his own 
 hands, that the organisation of sensibility which is effected 
 for the animal must be effected ly man ; and the question 
 forced itself upon reflection, Whither must we look for 
 guidance ? Is feeling self-sufficient, or must the appeal 
 be made from feeling to reason ? The^istoryj^Sedon- 
 ism reveals, as we have seen, a growing place for reason 
 in the life of feeling. The significance of this appeal to 
 reason in an ethic of sensibility was not at first perceived, 
 and we find the appeal made accordingly with all open- 
 ness and confidence by the Epicurean school. A success- 
 ful life of feeling, a life which shall attain the end of 
 sentient existence, must be, as they maintain, a rationally 
 conducted life, which plans and considers and is always 
 master of itself. The supreme virtue is Prudence. Modern 
 hedonists have been no less conscious of the necessity of 
 solving the problem of the organisation of feeling. The 
 utilitarians especially have widened the problem so as to 
 include the organisation of the social as well as of the 
 individual life. To the ancient virtue of Prudence they 
 
HEDONISM. 131 
 
 have added the modern virtue of Benevolence. The 
 problem of organisation has thus become more clamant 
 and more complex than ever. A rational solution of this 
 problem, however, is seen to be inconsistent with Hedon- 
 ism, and to involve a surrender of the case for the 
 adequacy of that theory of life. The attempt has been 
 made, accordingly, in different ways, to reduce this ap- 
 parently rational control of sensibility to a mere control 
 of feeling by feeling. Let us consider the success of 
 these efforts, in the case (1) of the individual, and (2) 
 of the social life. 
 
 (1) One of the chief novelties of Mill's statement of the (l) Within 
 
 the indi- 
 
 hedonistic Ethics is his recognition of a qualitative, as well vidual life, 
 as a quantitative, difference between feelings. Feelings 
 are, he insists, higher and lower, as well as more or less 
 intense, enduring, &c. ; they differ in rank, as well as in 
 strength. A new element is thus added to the definition 
 of Happiness. The pleasures of the mind are superior to 
 those of the body, not merely because the former are en- 
 during and fruitful in other pleasures, while the latter are 
 evanescent and apt to carry with them painful conse- 
 quences, but because the former are the pleasures of the 
 higher, the latter those of the lower nature. Now, the 
 plea for this distinction of quality stands or falls with the 
 validity or invalidity of the reference to the source of the 
 pleasures compared. But the invalidity of such a refer- 
 ence, from the standpoint of Hedonism, is perfectly ob- 
 vious. If pleasure is the only good, then pleasure itself 
 is the only consideration ; the source of the pleasure has no 
 hedonistic significance, and ought not to enter into the 
 hedonistic calculus. If Hedonism will be " psychological," 
 
132 THE MORAL IDEAL. 
 
 it must forego this distinction of source, and, with it, the 
 distinction of quality in pleasures. 
 
 Mill's appeal is, like Plato's, to those qualified, by their 
 wide experience and their powers of introspection, to judge 
 of the relative value of pleasures. The thinker knows the 
 pleasures of thought as well as the pleasures, say, of sport, 
 while the sportsman knows only the latter class of pleasures 
 and not the former ; the thinker's preference for the pleas- 
 ures of thought has, therefore, the authority of experience. 
 The preference of the higher nature covers the case of the 
 lower, but not vice versd. But, on the hedonistic theory, 
 this claim to authority must be disallowed. The prefer- 
 ence of the higher nature covers only the case of the 
 higher nature, the case of those on the same plane of sen- 
 sibility as itself. Its preference (and the deliverance 
 founded upon it) cannot be authoritative for a lower 
 nature, for a being on a different plane of sensibility. A 
 "lower" pleasure will be more intense to a "lower" 
 nature ; and if pleasure be the only standard, I cannot be 
 asked to give up a greater for a less pleasure, to sacrifice 
 quantity to quality. Quality is an extra-hedonistic crite- 
 rion ; the only hedonistic criterion is quantity " the 
 intensity of each kind, as experienced by those to whom 
 it is most intense." Indeed, the so-called difference of 
 quality will be found to resolve itself (so far as pleasure 
 is concerned) into a difference of quantity for the higher 
 nature. To the higher nature, the higher pleasure is also 
 the more intense pleasure ; to the thinker, say, the pleas- 
 ures of thought are more intense than the pleasures of 
 the chase. This greater intensity is the only hedon- 
 istic ground of the higher nature's preference for its own 
 
HEDONISM. 133 
 
 chosen pleasures. Upon the lower nature the lower pleas- 
 ures have, gud pleasures, an equally rightful and irresist- 
 ible claim ; and upon such a nature the higher pleasures 
 will have no claim until for it too they have become more 
 intense, or the means to a more intense pleasure. Only 
 thus can they make good their superior claim at the bar 
 of sensibility. 
 
 If we press Mill to assign the ultimate ground of this 
 preference, and of the corresponding difference in kind 
 between pleasures, he refers us to the " sense of dignity " 
 which is natural to man, and forms " an essential part of 
 the happiness of those in whom it is strong." Socrates 
 would rather be Socrates discontented than a contented 
 fool ; he could not lower himself to the fool's status and 
 the fool's satisfaction, without the keenest sense of dissatis- 
 faction, and therefore of misery. But this " sense of dig- 
 nity " cannot be resolved into desire of pleasure ; and 
 while it certainly regulates man's pleasures, and becomes 
 a real element in his happiness, it is itself the constant 
 testimony to the possibility and the imperativeness for 
 man of a higher life than that of mere pleasure. It is the 
 utterance of the rational self behind the self of sensibility, 
 demanding a satisfaction worthy of it the expression of 
 its undying aspiration after a life which shall be the per- 
 fect realisation of its unique possibilities, and of its eternal 
 and " divine discontent " with any life that falls short of 
 such realisation of itself. Not the attainment of pleasure 
 as such, but the finding one's pleasure in activities which 
 are worthy of this higher and rational nature, such is 
 the end set before us by our peculiar human " sense of 
 dignity." This interpretation of the end does enable us 
 
134 THE MORAL IDEAL. 
 
 to understand the intrinsic difference of pleasures, but 
 only at the expense of surrendering Hedonism as a suffi- 
 cient ethical theory. For it is not as pleasures that the 
 pleasures are " higher " or " lower." The clue to the dis- 
 tinction is found in N their common relation to the one 
 identical rational self ; according as ft is more or less fully 
 satisfied, by being more or less fully realised, is the pleas- 
 ure " higher " or " lower." Otherwise, there is no such 
 distinction. The " dignity " is the dignity of reason, not 
 of feeling. So great is that dignity of reason that, in its 
 presence, the claims of feeling may be hushed to utter 
 silence ; that, before its higher claim, the question of pleas- 
 ure and pain, in all their infinite degrees, may not be even 
 heard. Are there not occasions at least when we must 
 take this " heroic " view of life, and in our loyalty to an 
 eternal principle of right, above all particular sentient 
 selves and their pleasures and pains, be content to sacrifice 
 all our capacity for pleasure, it may be utterly and for 
 ever ? Such an action can only be described as faithful- 
 ness to the true self, to the divine ideal of our manhood ; 
 and the fact of the possibility of such an action and of 
 other actions which, though on a more ordinary plane, 
 would yet be impossible but for the inspiration of such a 
 spirit, proves that, though man is an individual subject of 
 feeling of passion so intense that it may seem at times to 
 constitute his very life he is something more, and, in vir- 
 tue of that " something more," is capable of rising above 
 himself, above his own little life of clamant sensibility, 
 and viewing himself and his present activity sub specie 
 ceternitcdis, in the clear light of eternal truth and right, as 
 a member of a rational order of being, and subject to the 
 
HEDONISM. 135 
 
 law of that order. But for such an estimate of life He- 
 donism, as the Ethics of Sensibility, cannot find a place. 
 
 Other hedonistic writers, recognising the impossibility 
 of reconciling Mill's doctrine of the intrinsic difference of 
 pleasures with orthodox Hedonism, have attempted to find 
 the clue to the organisation of sensibility outside, in the 
 " external sanctions " already mentioned, in the pressure 
 of society upon the individual. The seat of authority is, 
 they hold, outside the individual, in the law of the land, 
 in public opinion, &c. ; not within, in the individual con- 
 science. The inner authority is only the reflection of the 
 outer. No doubt there is a great deal of truth in this, as 
 a representation of the normal course of moral education. 
 Until a moral being has learned to control himself, he 
 must be controlled from without ; until the moral order is 
 developed within him, that order must be impressed upon 
 him. But the progress of moral education brings us, sooner 
 or later, to the stage at which the outer law, if it is to 
 maintain its influence, must produce its " certificate of 
 birth," or, in other words, must show that it is only the 
 reflection of an inner order. The rationale of the outward 
 order, the Why of the social forces, must inevitably become 
 a question. This solution, therefore, only pushes the 
 problem a step farther back. 
 
 The Evolutionists see that the external controls the 
 physical, social, religious are really " pre-moral controls 
 within which the moral control evolves," its scaffolding, to 
 be taken down as soon as the structure is complete. The 
 external pressure of environment must be superseded 
 by an internal psychological pressure. This inner, and 
 strictly moral, control is described by Spencer as the sub- 
 
136 THE MORAL IDEAL. 
 
 jection of the earlier-evolved, simpler, and presentative 
 feelings to the later-evolved, more complex, and repre- 
 sentative feelings. But why this subordination ? Not 
 simply because the one set of feelings occur earlier and 
 the other occur later in the evolution, but because the 
 one class of feelings are more efficient factors in the evo- 
 lution of conduct than the other. But how are we to judge 
 of the value of the Evolution itself ? What is the ideal 
 or type of conduct which it is desirable to evolve ? Our 
 old question recurs once more, therefore, in the new form : 
 What is the criterion of ethical value, by which we may 
 define and determine moral evolution or progress ? Whither 
 moves the ethical process ; what form of conduct do we 
 judge to be worth evolving ? Are the " ethical process " 
 and the " cosmical process " the same, or even coincident ? 
 The fact that one of the greatest living representatives of 
 scientific Evolutionism has found himself forced to deny 
 both the identity and the coincidence, is striking proof 
 that this is no capricious or imaginary question. 1 The 
 fact of a certain order, and the fact of its gradual genesis 
 or development in time, furnish no answer to the question 
 of the raison d'etre of the fact; here, as elsewhere, the 
 answer to the Quid Facti is no answer to the Quid 
 Juris. 
 
 I think we can now see that it is the sheer stress of 
 logic that has driven Professor Sidgwick to appeal from 
 the bar of sensibility to that of reason for the lacking 
 element of moral authority, for the organising principle 
 of the moral life. Even within the sphere of individual 
 I experience, sensibility does not provide a principle which 
 
 1 Cf. Professor Huxley's Romanes Lecture on " Evolution and Ethics." 
 
HEDONISM. 137 
 
 shall determine its own distribution. How to compass 
 the attainment of the " greatest happiness," not for the 
 moment but " on the whole," is a problem which feeling 
 alone is unable to solve. The content of the moral life 
 may be furnished by sensibility, as the content of the 
 intellectual life is furnished by sensation; but the form 
 or principle of arrangement of this " raw material," the 
 unifying and organising principle, is, in the one case as in 
 the other, the birth of reason. 
 
 (2) When we pass beyond the sphere of the individual (2) Be- 
 life to that of society, we find the same impasse for Hedon- individual 
 ism. If sensibility does not provide the principle of its ety. S 
 own distribution within the individual life, still less does it 
 provide the principle of its distribution between ourselves 
 and others. If the life of Prudence cannot be reduced to 
 terms of mere sensibility, still less can the life of Justice 
 and Benevolence ; if the instruction of reason is necessary 
 in the former case, it is even more obviously necessary in 
 the latter. Yet the disciples of Hedonism have boldly 
 thrown themselves into this forbidding breach, and in 
 various ways have sought to demonstrate that, here again, 
 what seems to be the product of reason is, in reality, the 
 product of sensibility. In the first place, Mill has tried to 
 extend his " psychological proof " of Hedonism in general 
 to Altruistic Hedonism, or Utilitarianism. Since each 
 desires his own happiness, it follows that the general 
 happiness is desired by all. But the logical gap is so 
 evident that it is difficult to believe that Mill himself 
 was not aware of it. The aggregate happiness may be 
 the end for the aggregate of individuals, and the happiness 
 of each may be a unit in this aggregate end. But to con- 
 
 suvi 
 
138 THE MORAL IDEAL. 
 
 elude that the greatest happiness of the greatest number 
 is therefore directly, and as such, an end for each individ- 
 ual, is to commit the notorious fallacy of Division. In- 
 directly and secondarily that is, as the means to the 
 attainment of his own happiness the general happiness 
 may become an end for the individual ; and thus an 
 altruism may be reached, which is merely a " trans- 
 figured " or " mediate " egoism, and benevolence may be 
 provisionally vindicated as only a subtler and more refined 
 selfishness. This, however, is not the altruism of Mill 
 and the Utilitarian school. Their aim is to establish 
 benevolence as the direct and substantive law of the 
 moral life, as the first, and not the second, commandment 
 of a true moral code. They offer the greatest happiness 
 of the greatest number as itself the End, not a means to 
 one's own greatest happiness. 
 
 J Mill is conscious of the difficulty of the transition from 
 egoism to altruism, and he looks to sensibility to fill the 
 logical gap. We have a feeling for the happiness of others 
 as well as for our own, as Shaftesbury and Hutcheson and 
 Hume had already maintained ; let us take our ground 
 upon this psychological fact this " feeling of unity " with 
 our fellows, a mighty emotional force which must break 
 down any barriers of mere logic. To this disinterested 
 sympathy we may confidently commit the task of the 
 complete reconciliation of the general with the individual 
 happiness. For we may expect an indefinite development 
 of the feeling, as the pain which sympathy now carries 
 with it is superseded by the pleasure of sympathy with 
 more complete lives ; or, as Spencer states it in the lan- 
 guage of Evolution, as the pains of sympathy with the 
 
HEDONISM. 139 
 
 pains of mal-adjustment of individuals to their environ- 
 ment are superseded by the pleasures of sympathy with 
 the pleasures of more and more perfect adjustment to 
 environment. 
 
 Such a solution, however, confuses the practical with 
 the theoretical problem. It does not follow that "con- 
 duct so altruistic would be egoistically reasonable," and 
 what we are in search of is such a rationale of altruism 
 as shall reconcile it with egoism. Nor can the " feeling 
 of unity " with our fellows, such love as casts out selfish- 
 ness, such perfect sympathy as overcomes the dualism of 
 virtue and prudence, of altruistic and egoistic conduct, 
 and makes us " love our neighbour as ourselves," be found 
 in all the universe of sensibility. Uninstructed feeling is 
 incompetent for the discharge of such a splendid task ; 
 though, when instructed and illuminated by rational in- 
 sight, feeling alone can execute it. Like Mill's " sense of 
 dignity," this " feeling of unity " has a higher certificate 
 of birth to show than that of blind unilluminated feeling ; 
 it, too, is the child of reason by sensibility. Only the 
 marriage of these two can have such a noble issue. Sen- 
 sibility alone might unite us with our fellows ; but it 
 might just as probably separate us from them. Tor if 
 feeling is naturally sympathetic and altruistic, it is also 
 naturally selfish and egoistic. The problem is to cor- 
 relate and conciliate these two tendencies of human sen- 
 sibility. Can we trust the correlation and conciliation 
 to their own unguided operation ? May we expect a 
 parallelogram of these two opposing forces ? On the 
 whole, must we not say that the tendency of mere 
 sensibility is rather to separate and individualise, than 
 
140 THE MORAL IDEAL. 
 
 to unite and socialise men ? It is reason that unites 
 us ; the sphere of the universal is the sphere of thought ; 
 we think in common. Sensibility separates us, shuts us 
 up each in his own little, but all - important, world of 
 subjectivity; its sphere is the sphere of the particular; 
 we feel each for himself, and a stranger intermeddleth 
 not with the business of the heart. At any rate, sensi- 
 bility alone, inevitably and intensely subjective as it is, 
 would never dictate that strict " impartiality " as between 
 our neighbour's happiness and our own which, utilitarians 
 agree, must be the principle of distribution of pleasures if 
 the maximum general happiness is to be constituted. 
 From the point of view of sensibjlity, I cannot be 
 " strictly impartial " in my estimate of the relative value 
 of my own happiness and that of others ; I cannot count 
 myself, or even others, "each for one, and no one for 
 more than one " ; I cannot " love my neighbour as myself," 
 any more than I can love all my neighbours alike. I 
 cannot reduce the various pleasures that offer themselves 
 in the field of possibility to a unit of value ; sensibility is 
 not a unitary principle, it does not yield a common meas- 
 ure. Ultimately, my own pleasure alone has significance 
 for me as a sentient being. To detach myself from it, or 
 it from myself, and to regard it from the standpoint of 
 an " impartial spectator," would be to destroy it. If all 
 were thus "strictly impartial," there would be no gen- 
 eral, because there would be no individual, happiness. 
 Utilitarianism puts an impossible strain upon sensibility. 
 The formula of Evolution has been brought to bear, as 
 we have seen, upon the problem of the reconciliation of 
 egoism with altruism. Mr Spencer finds that there is 
 
HEDONISM. 141 
 
 gradually establishing itself, in the history of evolving con- 
 duct, not merely a compromise, but a conciliation of indi- 
 vidual and social interests ; and he confidently constructs 
 a Utopia in which the happiness of the individual and the 
 interests of society will perfectly coincide. Mr Stephen, 
 on the other hand, acknowledges a permanent conflict 
 between the two. " The path of duty does not coincide 
 with the path of happiness. ... By acting rightly, I 
 admit, even the virtuous man will sometimes be making 
 a sacrifice ; " it is " necessary for a man to acquire certain 
 instincts, amongst them the altruistic instincts, which fit 
 him for the general conditions of life, though, in particular 
 cases, they may cause him to be more miserable than if 
 he were without them." And even Mr Spencer acknow- 
 ledges " a deep and involved " though not a permanent 
 "derangement of the natural connections between pleasures 
 and beneficial actions, and between pains and detrimental 
 actions." But, it is contended, such a statement will not 
 be " conclusive for the virtuous man. His own happiness 
 is not his sole ultimate aim ; and the clearest proof that 
 a given action will not contribute to it will, therefore, not 
 deter him from the action." The individual, as a member 
 of the social organism, forgets his own welfare or happiness 
 in that of society. 
 
 From the hedonistic point of view, however, we cannot 
 thus merge the individual in society. We must not be 
 misled by the metaphor of the "social organism," for 
 it is only a metaphor, and a metaphor, as Mr Stephen 
 fears, " too vague to bear much argumentative stress." As 
 Professor Sidgwick remarks, it is not the organism, but 
 /"the individual, after all, that feels pleasure and pain." 
 
j 
 
 142 THE MORAL IDEAL. 
 
 It is true that " the development of the .society implies 
 the development of certain moral instincts in the indi- 
 vidual, or that the individual must be so constituted as 
 to be capable of identifying himself with the society, and 
 of finding his pleasure and pain in conduct which is socially 
 beneficial or pernicious/' Yet the individual can never 
 wholly identify himself with the society, simply because 
 he remains, to the last, an individual. It is said that the 
 antagonism of individual and social interests is incidental 
 to the transition-stages of the evolution, and that, with the 
 development of sympathy, and the perfect adaptation of 
 the individual to his social environment, complete identity 
 of interests will be brought about. But, so long as the 
 interest is merely that of pleasure, perfect identity of 
 interests is impossible. The metaphor of the " social 
 organism " is here particularly misleading. As Professor 
 Sorley remarks, " the feeling of pleasure is just the point 
 where individualism is strongest, and in regard to which 
 mankind, instead of being an organism in which each part 
 but subserves the purposes of the whole, must rather be 
 regarded as a collection of competing and co-operating 
 units." 1 From the point of view of pleasure, society is 
 not an organism, but an aggregate of individuals ; and, 
 if we speak of the "health" of the society, we cannot 
 mean its happiness, but simply the general conditions of 
 the happiness of its individual members. As Mr Stephen 
 acknowledges, there seems to be a permanent dualism 
 between the " prudential " and the " social " rules of life, 
 " corresponding to the distinction of the qualities which 
 are primarily useful to the individual and those which are 
 
 1 'Ethics of Naturalism,' 139, 140. 
 
HEDONISM. 143 
 
 primarily useful to the society." The former code has not 
 yet been incorporated in the latter. 1 
 
 Does not the stress of logic once more force us to appeal, 
 with Professor Sidgwick, from sensibility to reason ? The 
 latter writer holds that though strict egoistic Hedonism 
 cannot be transferred into universalistic Hedonism or 
 Utilitarianism, yet "when the egoist offers . . . the 
 proposition that his happiness or pleasure is good not 
 only for him, but absolutely, he gives the ground needed 
 for such a proof. For we can then point out to him that 
 his happiness cannot be a more important part of Good, 
 taken universally, than the equal happiness of any other 
 person. And thus, starting with his own principles, he 
 must accept the wider notion of universal happiness or 
 pleasure as representing the real end of Eeason, the 
 absolutely Good or Desirable." But such a hedonistic 
 perspective is, as Mr Sidgwick sees, impossible for un- 
 aided Sensibility ; to the sentient individual his own 
 pleasure is indefinitely " more important than the equal 
 happiness of any other person." The Good of Sensi- 
 bility is essentially a private and individual, not a 
 common and objective Good. It is in the common 
 sphere of reason that we meet, and, having met there, we 
 recognise one another when we meet again in the sphere 
 of sensibility. To the rational, if not to the sentient 
 individual, we can " point out that his own pleasure is 
 no more important," objectively and absolutely regarded, 
 " than the equal happiness of any other person ; " and 
 sensibility, thus illuminated by reason, may be trusted to 
 effect that reconciliation of the individual with the social 
 
 1 On the permanence of this dualism, cf. Kidd, ' Social Evolution.' 
 
144 THE MORAL IDEAL. 
 
 welfare, which it never could have brought about alone. 
 From this point of view, the problem at once loses its 
 hopeless aspect. The true altruism, we can see, is not 
 reached by the negation of egoism, or only by the negation 
 of the lower egoism. There is a higher egoism which 
 contains altruism in itself, and makes "transition" un- 
 necessary. I have not indeed discovered my own true 
 End, or my own true Self, until I find it to be not ex- 
 clusive but inclusive of the Ends of other Selves. I am 
 not called, therefore, to transcend egoism, and exchange 
 it for altruism, but to discover and realise that true 
 egoism which includes altruism in itself. Since each is 
 an Ego, the others as well as I, to eliminate egoism would 
 be to uproot the moral life itself. The entire problem is 
 found within the sphere of egoism, not beyond it; and 
 it is solved for each individual by the discovery and 
 realisation of his own true Ego. For, truly seen, the 
 spheres of the different Egos are like concentric circles. 
 The centre of the moral life must be found within the 
 individual life, not outside it. The claim of society upon 
 the individual is not to be explained even by such a figure 
 as that of the " social organism." The moral Ego refuses 
 to merge its proper personal life in that of society. The 
 unity or solidarity of the individual and society must 
 be so conceived as that the wider social life with which 
 he identifies himself, so far from destroying the personal 
 life of the individual, shall focus and realise itself in that 
 life. But, if the social and the individual life are to be 
 seen thus as concentric circles their common centre 
 must be found ; and it can be found only in reason, not in 
 sensibility. Lives guided by mere sensibility are eccen- 
 
HEDONISM. 145 
 
 trie, and may be antagonistic ; only lives guided by a sen- 
 sibility which has itself been illuminated by reason are 
 concentric and, necessarily, co-operative, because directed 
 to a common rational End. 
 
 11. In coming to a final judgment as to the value of (/)The 
 Hedonism as a theory of the Moral Ideal, we must be physical & 
 guided by metaphysical considerations with regard to 
 man's ultimate nature, and place in the universe. It 
 has been truly said that a noble action or life is a 
 grand practical speculation about life's real meaning and 
 worth. Hedonism, like every ethical theory, is, in the last 
 analysis, a metaphysical speculation of this kind. "What 
 are we to say of its value ? 
 
 The hedonistic view is the empirical, "scientific," or 
 naturalistic view of human life; it is the expression of 
 ethical realism, as distinguished from ethical idealism or 
 transcendentalism. It derives the ideal from the actual, 
 the Ought- to-be from the Is. To it the ideal is only the 
 shadow which the actual casts before it. Its effort is " to 
 base ethics on facts, to derive the rules of our attitude 
 toward facts from experience, to shape our ideals not from 
 the airy stuff of something beyond the ken of science, but 
 in accordance with laws derived from reality." It is an 
 attempt to " naturalise the moral man," by showing the 
 fundamental identity of moral laws with the laws of 
 nature. The moral order falls within the natural: 
 " sociological laws are ... of a natural growth ; the 
 evolution of the social affairs of mankind is deeply 
 rooted in the conditions of things." This naturalism 
 and empiricism of the hedonistic theory reach their 
 
 K 
 
146 THE MORAL IDEAL. 
 
 culmination in the "scientific" ethics of the evolution- 
 ary school. 
 
 The metaphysical question is, more particularly, the 
 question of the nature and worth of the human person. 
 " Conduct will always be different," says M. Fouillee, 
 " according to the value, more or less relative and fleet- 
 ing, which one accords to the human person ; according 
 to the worth, more or less incomparable, which we attri- 
 bute to individuality." Is man an end-in-himself, the 
 bearer of the Divine and Eternal, as no other creature 
 is, capable of identifying himself with and forwarding the 
 divine End of the universe by accepting that as his life's 
 ideal, or of antagonising, and even, in a sense, of frus- 
 trating it ? Is he a free spiritual being, with a sentient 
 and animal nature, or is he only a " higher animal " ? 
 In the words of the writer just quoted : " There are cir- 
 cumstances in which the alternative which presents 
 itself in consciousness is the following Is it necessary 
 to act as if my sensible and individual existence were 
 all, or as if it were only a part of my true and universal 
 existence ? " 
 
 Hedonism rests upon what Mill has happily named 
 the " psychological " theory of the Self. What Professor 
 James calls the Me, the "stream" of consciousness, is 
 regarded as the total and ultimate Self; man is a 
 "bundle of states," and nothing more. It follows that 
 his sole concern in life is with these passing states of 
 feeling, which are not his but he. If we are merely 
 sentient beings, subjects of sensibility, then the nature 
 of that sensibility must be all in all to us. If the per- 
 manence of a deeper rational self-hood is a mere illusion, 
 
HEDONISM. 147 
 
 and the changing sentient self-hood is alone real; then 
 our concern is with the latter, not with the former, and 
 Cyrenaicism is the true creed of life. At most, Virtue 
 is identical with Prudence. 
 
 But we cannot thus identify the Self with its experi- 
 ence. Interpret our deeper self -hood how we may, we 
 must acknowledge that we are more than the " stream " 
 of our feelings. Our very nature is to transcend the 
 present, and to regard our life as having a permanent 
 meaning and reality. These experiences are mine, part of 
 my total and continuous experience, and I am more than 
 they. It needs such an " I " to account for the " psycho- 
 logical Me." The Self persists through all its changing 
 " states," and its demand for satisfaction is the unceasing 
 spring of the moral life. It is not a mere " sum " of 
 feelings; it is their unity, that by reference to which 
 alone they gain their ethical significance. In mere feel- 
 ing there is no abiding quality, it is a thing of the 
 moment. The devotee of pleasure is no richer at the 
 close of life than the beggar or the martyr. His pleasures, 
 like the latter's pains, have passed, as all mere feelings 
 must. But he remains, and all his life's experience, from 
 first to last, has left its record in his character, in the 
 permanent structure of the Self. " Earth changes, but 
 thy soul and God stand sure." A theory of life which 
 concerns itself only with the passing experience, and not 
 with the permanent character of the Self, is fundamentally 
 inadequate. 
 
 The merit 
 
 12. To sum up the merit and demerit of Hedonism, we and de- 
 merit of 
 may say that it does well in emphasising the claims of Hedonism. 
 
148 THE MORAL IDEAL. 
 
 sensibility in human life ; but that it errs, either in assert- 
 ing these to be the exclusive claims, or in subordinating 
 to them the more fundamental claims of reason. To take 
 the demerit first, the history of Hedonism is itself a 
 demonstration of the impossibility of an Ethic of pure 
 Sensibility. The gradual modification of the theory which 
 we have traced is a gradual departure from strict hedon- 
 istic orthodoxy, a gradual admission of reason to offices 
 which at first were claimed for sensibility. Man's pleasure- 
 seeking, being man's, cannot be unreflective, as the hedon- 
 v ists very early saw ; and, in the development of the theory, 
 /the reflective element is more and more emphasised. The 
 successful life of pleasure is acknowledged to be essen- 
 tially a calculating life, a life of thought. Mere feeling, 
 A it is found, is an insufficient principle of unity. It 
 unifies neither the individual life itself, nor the individual 
 arid the social life. It does not supply a regulative prin- 
 I ciple, a principle of the distribution of pleasure. Sensi- 
 bility, like sensation, is a " mere manifold " which has to 
 be unified by the rational Self ; as the one is the content 
 of the intellectual life, the other is the content of the 
 moral life. But the form of knowledge and of morality 
 alike is rational. Feeling does not provide for its own 
 guidance ; if it is to be the guide of human life, the dark- 
 ness of animal sensibility must receive the illumination 
 of reason. Sooner or later, Hedonism finds itself com- 
 
 ^ 
 
 pelled to appeal to reason for the form of morality ; and 
 the history of the theory is the story of how this rational- 
 
 i ism which was implicit in it from the first has gradually 
 
 ' become explicit. 
 
 Yet sensibility is the content of morality, and if we 
 
HEDONISM. 149 
 
 would not have the mere empty form, we must recognise 
 the momentous significance of the life of sensibility in- 
 formed by reason. Feeling is an integral part of the ^ 
 moral life, which no ethical theory can afford to overlook ; 
 and Hedonism has done well to emphasise its importance. 
 A merely rational life, excluding sensibility, is as impos- 
 sible for man as a life of mere sensibility without reason. t 
 The rational life is for him a life of sensibility rationalised f 
 or regulated by reason, and his total rational "well-being 
 must report itself in sensibility. This is the permanent 
 truth in Hedonism. The ascetic ideal is a false and in- 
 adequate one ; it means the dwarfing of our moral nature, 
 the drawing away of the very sap of its life. The spring 
 of the action, its origin, is in sensibility ; if the End or 
 motive is a product of reason, the roots of its attractive 
 power are in sensibility. And the way to the attainment 
 of the End lies through pleasure and pain ; the state of 
 feeling is not merely the index and concomitant of suc- 
 cessful pursuit, it is a constant guide towards success ; 
 and attainment itself brings with it a new pleasure, as 
 failure brings with it a new pain. Pleasure is, as Aris- *-*-" 
 totle said, the very bloom of goodness, it is the very crown 
 of virtue. The threads of which our life is woven are *- 
 threads of feeling, if the texture of the web is reason's 
 work. The hedonist unweaves the web of life into its 
 threads, and having unwoven it, he cannot recover the 
 lost design. 
 
 I think we must go even farther, and admit that, while 
 the mere distinctions of feeling, as pleasant or painful, 
 are not, as such, moral distinctions, and do not always 
 coincide with the latter, yet tlise distinctions are natu- 
 
 
150 THE MORAL IDEAL. 
 
 rally connected and coincident. If pleasure is not itself 
 the Good, it is its natural and normal index and expression, 
 as pain is the natural and normal index and expression of 
 evil. Hence the problem always raised for man by the 
 suffering of the good, the problem that fills the book of 
 Job, and seems to have been deeply felt by Plato. In the 
 first book of the ' Republic,' we find an impressive picture of 
 a life of perfect Justice (Plato's word for Righteousness), 
 misunderstood and misinterpreted, a life that is perfectly 
 just, but seems to men who cannot understand it to be 
 most unjust. " They will say that in such a situation the 
 just man will be scourged, racked, fettered, will have his 
 eyes burnt out, and at last, after suffering every kind of 
 torture, will be crucified ; and thus learn that it is best 
 (that is, pleasantest) not to be but to seem just." The " just 
 man " generally has been misunderstood by his fellows ; 
 goodness always has meant suffering, its paths never have 
 been altogether paths of pleasantness and peace. The 
 Christian world has drawn its inspiration from a Life that 
 has seemed to it the fulfilment of the Platonic and pro- 
 phetic dream a life of transcendent! goodness, which was 
 also a life of utmost suffering, of suffering even unto the 
 \ death of the Cross. We must indeed believe that the 
 . goal of moral progress is the complete coincidence of good- 
 ness with happiness. But at present it is not so, and the 
 lesson of the best lives is that the way to that goal lies 
 through suffering. Perhaps we cannot understand the 
 full significance of pain in relation to goodness, but its 
 presence in all noble lives tells of a higher End than 
 pleasure, of an End in which pleasure may be taken up as 
 an element, but which itself is infinitely more, of an End 
 
HEDONISM. 151 
 
 faithfulness to which must often mean indifference to pain, 
 or, better even than indifference, a noble willingness to 
 bear it for the sake of the higher Good which may not 
 otherwise be reached, for the sake of that highest life 
 which is not possible save through the death of all that 
 is lower than itself. 
 
152 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 RIGORISM, OR THE ETHICS OF REASON. 
 
 Rigorism: 1. WE have traced the implicit rationalism of the hedon- 
 
 its rational 
 
 and ideal- istic theory gradually becoming explicit as we passed from 
 
 istic stand- r , ; 
 
 point. Cyrenaicism to Epicureanism, from Paley and Bentham 
 to Mill and Professor Sidgwick. This appeal to reason 
 became necessary, first, for the guidance of individual 
 choice by reference to a criterion of the " higher " and 
 " lower " in pleasure, and, secondly, as the only possible 
 means of transition from Egoism to Altruism, from Self- 
 ishness to Benevolence. 
 
 But in both ancient and modern times the ethical rights 
 of Reason have been emphasised no less strongly, and 
 often no less exclusively, than the ethical rights of Sensi- 
 bility. This assertion of the claims of Reason in the life 
 of a rational being is at the basis of the common modern 
 antithesis, or at any rate distinction, between Duty and 
 Pleasure, between Virtue and Prudence, between the 
 Right and the Expedient. In ethical theory, too, " duty 
 for duty's sake " has been proclaimed with no less em- 
 phasis than "pleasure for pleasure's sake," as the last 
 word of /the moral life. The effort to idealise or spirit- 
 
RIGORISM. 153 
 
 ualise the moral man has been no less strenuously pursued 
 than the effort to " naturalise " him. In Eeason, rather 
 than in Sensibility, it has been maintained, is to be found 
 the characteristic element of human nature, the quality 
 which differentiates man from all lower beings, and makes 
 him man. This is not so much an explicit theory of the 
 End or Ideal, as a vindication of the absoluteness of moral 
 Law or Obligation, of the category of Duty as the supreme 
 ethical category. But it is, at any rate, a delineation of 
 the ideal life, and therefore, implicitly or explicitly, of the 
 Moral Ideal itself. 
 
 The rational, like the hedonistic, Ethics takes two its two 
 forms an extreme and a moderate. The former is that tremeand" 
 the good life is a life of pure reason, from which all sensi- 
 
 has been -eliminated. The latter is that it is a life 
 which, though contaiimlg^ensibility as an element, is 
 fundamentally rational a life of sensibility guided by 
 reason. In either case, the entire emphasis is laid upon 
 reason, and the theory may be called Eigorism, because 
 the attitude to sensibility is that of rational superiority 
 and stern control, where it is not that of rational intoler- 
 ance and exclusiveness. Eeason claims the sovereignty, 
 and sensibility is either outlawed, or degraded to the status 
 of passive obedience. 
 
 Whether in its extreme or in its moderate form, Eigor- 
 ism is the expression of ethical Idealism, as Hedonism is 
 the expression of ethical Eealism. The one is the charac- 
 teristic temper of the modern Christian world, as the 
 other is the characteristic temper of the ancient Classi- 
 cal world. Our normal and dominant mood is that of 
 " strenuous " enthusiasm, of dissatisfaction with the actual, 
 
 - 
 
154 THE MORAL IDEAL. 
 
 of aspiration after the ideal ; the supreme category of 
 our life is Duty or Oughtness. The normal and dominant 
 mood of the Greeks was just the reverse the mood of 
 sunny sensuous contentment with the present and the 
 actual. That " discontent " which we account the evi- 
 dence of our diviner destiny was foreign to their spirit. 
 The ethics of Socrates is the philosophical expression of 
 this characteristic Greek view of life ; moderation or self- 
 control is the deepest principle he knows. For Aristotle, 
 too, the sum of all virtue is the " middle way " between 
 the two extremes of excess and defect. The master-virtue 
 of the Greeks, in life and in theory, is a universal Tem- 
 perance or (raxf>po<rvvij. 
 
 Yet it is to the Greeks that we must trace back the 
 rigoristic, no less than the hedonistic, view of life. For 
 the Greek mind, though sensuous, is always clear and 
 rational, always " lucid," always appreciative of form ; 
 and the rational life has therefore always a peculiar 
 charm for it. This appreciation of the rational life 
 finds expression in the Socratic ideal of human life as 
 a life worthy of a rational being, founded in rational 
 insight and self-knowledge a life that leaves the soul 
 not demeaned and impoverished, but enriched and satis- 
 fied, adorned with her own proper jewels of righteousness 
 and truth. Plato and Aristotle follow out this Socratic 
 clue of the identity of the good with the rational life. 
 For both, the life of virtue is a life " according to right 
 reason," and the vicious life is the irrational life. Both, 
 however, distinguish two degrees of rationality in what 
 was, for Socrates, a single life of reason. First there is 
 the reason-guided life of sensibility, or the life according 
 
RIGORISM. 155 
 
 to reason ; but beyond that lies the higher life of reason 
 itself, the intellectual, contemplative, or philosophic life. 
 The chief source of this ethical Idealism in Greek phil- 
 osophy, which was destined to receive such a remarkable 
 development in the Stoic school, and, through the Stoics, 
 in our modem life and thought, is to be found in Plato's 
 'separation of the ideal reality from the sensible appear- 
 ance. If, however, we would learn the original expo- 
 sition of Greek Rigorism, we must go back to the im- ~^ 
 mediate disciples of Socrates, the notorious Cyjiic school. 
 
 2. The quality in the Socratic character which most (A) Ex- 
 impressed the Cynics was its perfect self-control (ey orism. oz) 
 , its sublime independence of circumstances, its ( a )Cyni- 
 
 complete self-containedness and self-sufficiency. This 
 became the ideal of the school. Happiness, they main- 
 tained, is to be sought within, not witlimit^Jn virtue or 
 of character, not in pleasure (avrdp/cr) rrjv 
 
 dperrjv Trpos ev&aifjuovlav). Wisdom and happiness are 
 synonymous, and the life jyfjthe wise is the passionless 
 life of reason. The life of pleasure is the life of folly, 
 the wise man would rather be mad than pleased. For 
 pleasure makes man the slave of Fortune, the servant of 
 circumstance. Independence is to be purchased only 
 by indifference to pleasure and pain, by insensibility 
 (aTrdOeia), by the uprooting of the desires which bind us 
 to outward things. There must be no rifts in the armour 
 of the soul, through which the darts of fortune may 
 strike : the man who has killed out all desire is alone 
 impenetrable by evil. But the wise man is impenetrable. 
 Not without, but within the soul, are the issues of life. 
 
156 THE MORAL IDEAL. 
 
 Desire binds us to that which is external, and foreign 
 (%eviic6v} to the soul. But " for each thing that only can 
 be a good which belongs to it, and the only thing which 
 belongs to man is mind or reason " (1/01)9, XOYO?). This, 
 man's proper inner good, outward evil cannot touch ; as 
 Socrates said, "No evil can happen to a good man." 
 Without such virtue, nothing is good ; with it, there is no 
 evil. This is the constant tejLLof Cynic morality the 
 supremacy of the human spirit over circumstance, its 
 mastery of its own fortunes, founded on the sovereignty 
 of reason over passion. The sum of Cynic Wisdom is the 
 sublime pride of the masterful rational self, which can 
 acknowledge no other rule than its own, and which makes 
 its possessor a king in a world of slaves. 
 
 But these " counsels of perfection " are hard to follow. 
 The life of wisdom is a veritable "choice of Hercules." 
 The true riches of the soul are to be purchased only by 
 selling all the deceitful riches of pleasure. The one path- 
 way to heaven is the beggar-life. The emancipation from 
 the outward is difficult, and J;he_Cynic rule of life is one 
 long course of self-denial. We must reduce our wants 
 to a minimum, we must extirpate all artificial, luxurious, 
 and conventional needs, and return to the simplicity of 
 "nature." Better far to climb with staff and scrip the 
 steep ascent of virtue, than, burdened with wealth and 
 houses and lands, to remain in the City of Destruction. 
 For the reward of such self-denial is a perfect peace of 
 mind, which nothing can perturb. The man who has 
 attained to the wisdom of life has penetrated all illusions, 
 and conquered death itself ; for if none of the experiences 
 of life are truly evil, since they cannot touch the soul that 
 
RIGORISM. 157 
 
 has steeled itself in an armour of indifference, least of all 
 is that which is not an experience at all. 
 
 This pride of reason led the Cynics into strange ex- 
 travagance and fanaticism. Their return to "nature," 
 their scorn for public opinion, their self-conscious affecta- 
 tions, their lack of personal dignity, their contempt for 
 their fellows, whom they regarded, like Carlyle, as " mostly 
 fools," have become proverbial. Yet Cynicism is no mere 
 irresponsible or unimportant vagary of the human mind. 
 It is the first philosophical expression, among the Greeks, ^ 
 of that tendency with which we have become so familiar 
 since, the tendency to see in the life of reason the only 
 life worthy of a rational being, and in all natural sensi- > 
 bility a trap laid for the soul of man, in which he will ' 
 be snared if he avoids it not altogether ; it is the first I 
 and the most extreme expression of the ascetic principle. \ 
 That principle was reasserted later, by the Stoics, with 
 such impressiveness and dignity that the importance and 
 originality of its earlier statement have perhaps been 
 under-estimated. 
 
 The Greeks do not appear to have taken the Cynics (?) stoi- 
 cism, 
 seriously ; much had to occur in their experience before 
 
 they were ready to accept that lesson of self-discipline 
 which had been the burden of the Cynic school. The 
 course of the moral life ran very smooth in those pros- 
 perous city-states ; it was not difficult to live a harmoni- 
 ous, measured, rhythmic life in such conditions. And 
 the Greek spirit always was aesthetic rather than ethical, 
 the category of its life was the beautiful rather than the 
 good. Not until the jar came from without, not till the 
 fair civil order broke down, was the discord felt, or the 
 
158 THE MORAL IDEAL. 
 
 need for a more perfect and a diviner order, and salvation 
 sought in conformity to its higher law. Then men re- 
 membered the wistful note which had been struck by 
 Plato, and by Aristotle too, how both had spoken of 
 another life than that of this world, and were willing 
 to listen to the Stoics as they repeated the old Cynic 
 doctrine. 
 
 How it But Stoicism differed from Cynicism in several important 
 
 Cynicism : particulars. (1) For the crude " naturalism " of the Cynics, 
 
 the Stoics substitute an idealistic or transcendental view 
 
 natural- Qf ^ The k|eal nfe Qf plat() ftnd Aristofclej the life 
 
 of reason itself, they regard as the only worthy life for 
 man. The old Cynic phrase, " life according to nature " 
 (6/jio\o<yovfjLev(i)s ry fyvcrei %f)v), thus receives, for the Stoics, 
 a new meaning. For in nature (<f>va-i<;) whether the 
 nature of things or their own nature they find, with 
 Heraclitus, a common reason (\6yos), and a common law 
 (vo/jios). They are thus able to identify the rational life 
 with the life " according to nature," and both with the life 
 " according to law." They do not, like the Cynics, fly in 
 the face of custom and convention, the common reason has 
 for them taken shape and embodiment in the established 
 laws and usages of human society, and conformity, rather 
 than non-conformity, becomes man's duty. In this sense, 
 the Stoics are at once realists and idealists : for them " the 
 ^ real is the rational." And, although they too counsel 
 indifference and callousness to the events of fortune and 
 the changing circumstances of human life, their resigna- 
 tion to the course of things is supported by the conviction 
 that " all things work together for good," that what 
 happens is always most fit, and that it becomes man to 
 
RIGORISM. 159 
 
 accept as such all the events of life and the grand event of 
 death itself. " Nothing can happen to me which is not 
 best for thee, Universe." 
 
 (2) For the sheer individualism of the Cynics, Stoi- (2) Cosmo- 
 
 . politan v. 
 
 cism offers to man a new and nobler citizenship than that individual- 
 of any earthly State. The Stoic "cosmopolitanism" or 
 "citizenship of the world" is no merely negative con-, 
 ception. It is true that the Stoics are individualists, and 
 that their ideal life is self-contained and self-sufficient. 
 This aspect of the Cynic ideal they reassert. But their 
 emancipation from the narrow limits of the Greek State 
 gives them a spiritual entrance into a larger and nobler 
 society, a " City of God," the universal kingdom of human- 
 ity itself. On the earth that true city is not found ; it is 
 not, like Plato's, a " Greek city," but a spiritual State,, and 
 the Stoic citizenship is in the heavens. It is like Kant's 
 Kingdom of Intelligence, in which each citizen is at once 
 sovereign and subject, for its law is the law of reason 
 itself. " ( KOO-JULOS uxravel 7ro?U9 ea-nv the world is as it 
 were a commonwealth, a city ; and there are observances, 
 customs, usages actually current in it things our friends 
 and companions will expect of us, as the condition of our 
 living there with them at all, as really their peers or fellow- 
 citizens. Those observances were, indeed, the creation of 
 a visible or invisible aristocracy in it, whose actual man- 
 ners, whose preferences from of old, become now a weighty 
 tradition, as to the way in which things should be or not 
 be done, are like a music, to which the intercourse of life 
 proceeds such a music as no one who had once caught 
 its harmonies would willingly jar. In this way, the 
 becoming, as the Greeks or manners, as both Greeks and 
 
160 THE M0RAL IDEAL. 
 
 Eomans said, would indeed be a comprehensive term for 
 duty. Righteousness would be, in the words of the Caesar 
 himself, but the 'following of the reasonable will and 
 ordinance of the oldest, the most venerable, of all cities 
 and polities the reasonable will of the royal, the law- 
 giving element in it forasmuch as we are citizens of that 
 supreme city on high, of which all other cities beside are 
 but as single habitations.' " l 
 
 (3) The (3) But the failure to find on earth any counterpart of 
 
 anchoiy. that fair city in the heavens bred a new melancholy in 
 the Stoics, which was strange to the buoyant spirit of the 
 earlier Greeks. Not that the Stoics are pessimists ; the 
 Cynics were pessimists, but their pessimism seemed to 
 give them much satisfaction in the added sense of their 
 own superiority. The Stoics, on the contrary, are opti- 
 mists ; idealism is always optimistic. All things are, 
 truly understood, most fit; rational order pervades the 
 universe. But the shadow of the ideal and supersensible 
 lies upon the actual and sensible ; the shadow of eternity 
 is cast athwart the world of time. The soul that has 
 beheld the abiding Eeality is possessed by the sense of 
 the utter insignificance and transitoriness of all temporal 
 interests, and sees in all things the seeds of quick decay 
 and dissolution. Its cry is for rest and peace, cessation 
 from futile striving. Vanitas vanitatum ! The wise man 
 has awakened from life's fevered dream, and broken the 
 spell of all its illusions. His is the quiet and imper- 
 turbable dignity of spirit that goes not well with mirth 
 or vulgar enjoyment. To him death is more welcome 
 than life, for it is the way out of time into eternity. " I 
 
 1 Walter Pater, 'Marius the Epicurean,' ii. 15, 16. 
 
RIGORISM. 161 
 
 find that all things are now as they were in the days of 
 our buried ancestors all things sordid in their elements, 
 trite by long usage, and yet ephemeral. How ridiculous, 
 then, how like a countryman in town, is he who wonders 
 at aught ! Doth the sameness, the repetition of the pub- 
 lic shows, weary thee ? Even so doth that likeness of 
 events make the spectacle of the world a vapid one. 
 And so must it be with thee to the end. For the wheel 
 of the world hath ver the same motion, upward and 
 downward, from generation to generation. When, then, 
 shall time give place to eternity ? " 1 " To cease from action 
 
 the ending of thine effort to think and to do there is 
 no evil in that. . . . Thou climbedst into the ship, thou 
 hast made thy voyage and touched the shore; go forth 
 .now! Be it into some other life; the divine breath is 
 everywhere, even there. Be it into forgetfulness for 
 ever ; at least thou wilt rest from the beating of sensible 
 images upon thee, from the passions which pluck thee 
 this way and that, like an unfeeling toy, from those long 
 marches of the intellect, from thy toilsome ministry to 
 the flesh." 2 
 
 Thus the Stoic life is a life of pure reason, in which no 
 place is found for natural sensibility. It is founded on 
 the Platonic dualism of Form and Matter, the Ideal and 
 the Sensible, as well as on the psychological dualism, com- 
 mon to both Plato and Aristotle, of the rational and the 
 irrational. The maxim, Live according to nature, means 
 
 Live according to that rational order which is the deep 
 est nature of things. Let the Logos which reveals itself 
 in the universe reveal itself also in thee, who art a part 
 
 1 Walter Pater, op. cit., i. 205. ~ Op. cit., i. 206. 
 
 L 
 
162 THE MORAL IDEAL. 
 
 of the universe. As for the life of passion and sensibility, 
 that is essentially a lawless and capricious life. The 
 animal may fittingly obey its claim, and submit to its 
 slavery. But thou, who canst think, who canst enter into 
 and make thine own possession the rational order of the 
 universe, art surely called upon to follow the leading of 
 that superior insight, and to conduct thyself in all thy 
 doings as a sharer in the universal Reason. Nor is it 
 only needful that thou regulate and be master of thy 
 feelings, thou must be absolutely emancipated fronLjthem. 
 No " harmony " of the rational and the irrational elements 
 is possible, such as Plato fondly dreamed of ; there must 
 be war to the knife, and no quarter given to the enemy 
 of the soul, if the soul is to live. Feeling is the bond 
 that ties thee to the external, to what is not thyself, 
 and makes thee the slave of circumstance and fortune. 
 Thou must assert thine independence of all outside thy- 
 self; thou must learn to be self-contained and at home 
 with thyself; and thou canst only be so by living the 
 life of Reason, and obeying in all things and with a single 
 mind its uncompromising Law. Therein lies thy proper 
 Good ; all else is in reality indifferent, and must become 
 so to thee, if thou wouldst attain the peace and complete- 
 ness of the good life. With the true wisdom of rational 
 insight into the eternal substance of things will come 
 apathy to all the interests of time mere " shadow-shapes 
 that come and go " and the emancipated spirit will lay 
 hold on the eternal life of the universal Reason. 
 
 It was not among the Greeks themselves, but in the 
 larger Roman and Christian worlds, that Stoicism was to 
 come to its real influence upon mankind. The Romans 
 
RIGORISM. 163 
 
 seemed to themselves to have realised the Stoic dream of 
 a universal empire of Humanity, and in the " natural law " 
 of the Porch they found a basis for their splendid juris- 
 prudence. So powerfully did its stern ideal of life appeal 
 to the characteristic " severitas " of the Roman mind, that 
 Stoicism found at Eome a new life, and its finest achieve- 
 ments are Eoman rather than Greek. It is, however, 
 through the medium of Christianity that Stoicism has 
 chiefly influenced the modern world. 
 
 3. The fundamental idea of Christianity is the idea of (&) Mod- 
 
 . ern : (a) 
 
 the divine Righteousness, with its absolute claim upon the Christian 
 
 life of man. This idea was the inheritance of Christianity csm. 
 from the Hebrews, but it was reasserted with a new 
 emphasis and a new rigour. " Except your righteousness 
 shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, 
 ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven." It 
 is a righteousness not of external act or observance, but of 
 the inner man, a righteousness of heart and will. And 
 though the Founder of Christianity did not, by word or 
 life, inculcate an ascetic ideal, but gave his ungrudging 
 sanction to all the natural joys of life, his uncompromis- 
 ing attitude towards unrighteousness meant inevitably, 
 for himself and for his disciples, suffering, self-sacrifice, and 
 death. The essential spirit of the Christian life is the 
 spirit of the Cross. It is out of the death of the natural"" 
 man that the spiritual life is born. " Strait is the gate, and 
 narrow is the way, that leadeth unto life." The way of the 
 Christian life is the way of the Master, the way of utter 
 self-sacrifice. " He that seeketh his life shall lose it, and 
 he that loseth his life shall find it." The natural life of 
 
164 THE MOEAL IDEAL. 
 
 sensibility is not in itself evil ; but it must be perfectly 
 mastered and possessed by the rational spirit. If it " of- 
 fends " the spirit's life and it may " offend " at any point 
 it must be denied. " If thy right eye offend thee, pluck 
 it out, and cast it from thee : for it is better for thee that 
 one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole 
 body should be cast into hell. And if thy right hand 
 offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee : for it is pro- 
 fitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, 
 and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell." So 
 exacting is the Christian ideal of righteousness. 
 
 We know how this moral rigour of Christianity was 
 developed by its disciples into an asceticism of life, in 
 which the Stoic " apathy " was reproduced and given a new- 
 ethical significance. Not to save himself from the attacks 
 of a capricious and often evil Fate, but to save the spirit's 
 life from the snares of the tempting Flesh, is man called 
 upon to eradicate all desire. For the flesh, as such, is 
 antagonistic to the spirit, and matter is essentially evil. 
 The thought of this ethical dualism this home-sickness 
 of the soul for the ideal world, whence it had fallen into 
 this lower life of sense and time came to the Christian 
 Church, as it had come to the Stoics, from Plato. To Plato 
 all education had been a process of purification, a gradual 
 recovery of what at birth man^ost, an ever more perfect 
 " reminiscence " of the upper world. There is man's true 
 home ; not here, in the cave of sensibility, the soul's sad 
 prison-house. If this thought never took hold of the 
 Greeks themselves, we know how potent it was with the 
 Neo-platonists, and with the Mediaeval saints and mystics. 
 The mediaeval world was a world of thought and aspira- 
 
RIGORISM. 165 
 
 tion, of " divine discontent " with the actual, an eternal 
 world in which no room was found for the interests of 
 time, a world of contemplation rather than of activity. 
 Of this spirit the characteristic product was Monasticism, 
 with its separation from the world, and its vows of chastity, 
 poverty, and obedience. But Christian Asceticism did not 
 pass away with the Middle Age. It survives not only in 
 contemporary Catholicism, but, to a large extent, in the life 
 of Protestantism as well. Christianity is still apt to be 
 " other-worldly," to regard this life as merely a pilgrimage, 
 and a preparation for that better life which shall begin 
 with the separation of the spirit from the body of its 
 humiliation, to regard Time as but " the lackey to 
 Eternity," to think that here we have only the Preface, 
 there the Volume of our life, here the Prelude, there the 
 Music. Accounting his citizenship to be in the heavenly 
 and eternal world, and preoccupied with its affairs, the 
 Christian saint is apt to sit loose to the things of time, 
 and to cultivate an aloofness and apathy of spirit no less 
 real than that of Stoic sage or mediaeval monk. 
 
 4. The great modern representative, in ethical philoso- (p) Kantian 
 phy, of the extreme or ascetic form of Rigorism is Kant, dentalism. 
 the author of one of the most impressive moral idealisms 
 of all time. For KanLiiie_zo_oil the only thing absolute 
 and altogether good is the_goodjwill. And the good will 
 is, for him, the rational will, the will obedient to the law 
 of the universal reason. It is the prerogative of a rational 
 being to be self-legislative. The animal life is one of 
 heteronomy ; the course of its activity is dictated by ex-*" 
 ternal stimuli. And if man had been a merely sentient 
 
166 THE MORAL IDEAL. 
 
 being, and pleasure his end, nature would have managed 
 his life for him as she manages the animal's, by provid- 
 ing him with the necessary instincts. The peculiarity of 
 man's life is that he belongs to two spheres. As a sensible 
 being, he is a member of the animal sphere, whose law is 
 pleasure ; as a rational being, he enacts upon himself the 
 higher law of reason, which takes no account of sensibility. 
 Hence arises for him the Categorical Imperative of Duty 
 the " Thou shalt " of the rational being to the irrational 
 or sentient. As a rational being, man demands of himself 
 a life which shall be reason's own creation, whose spring 
 shall be found in pure reverence for the law of his rational 
 nature. Inclination and desire are necessarily subjective 
 and particular ; and in so far as they enter, they detract 
 from the ethical value of the action. Nor do consequences 
 come within the province of morality ; the goodness is 
 determined solely by the inner rational "form" of the act. 
 
 The Categorical quality of the imperative of morality is 
 founded on the absolute worth of that nature whose law 
 it is. A rational being is, as such, an end-in-himself, and 
 may not regard himself as a means to any other end. He 
 must act always in one way viz., so as to fulfil his 
 rational nature ; he may never use his reason as a means 
 by which to compass non-rational ends. The law of his 
 life is : " So act as always to regard humanity, whether in 
 thine own person or in that of another, always as an end, 
 never as a means." 
 
 The moral law thus becomes for Kant the gateway of 
 the noumenal life. As subject to its categorical impera- 
 tive, man is a member of the intelligible or supersensible 
 world the world of pure reason. From that higher 
 
KIGORISM. 167 
 
 vantage-ground, lie sees the entire empirical life disap- 
 pear, as the mere shadow or husk of moral Eeality. As 
 moral, he lives and moves and has his being in that 
 noumenal world from which, as intellectual, he is for ever 
 shut out. As he listens to the voice of Duty, and con- 
 cedes the absolute and uncompromising severity of its 
 claim upon his life, he "feels that he is greater than he 
 knows" and welcomes it as the business of his life to 
 appropriate his birth-right, and to constitute himself in- 
 deed, what in idea he is from the first, a member and 
 a citizen of the intelligible world. There too he finds 
 the goodly fellowship of universal intelligence, and be- 
 comes at once subject and sovereign in the kingdom of ; 
 pure reason. 
 
 5. Such are the chief forms of Eigorism, in its extreme Criticism 
 
 . , of Extreme 
 
 type, and it is not difficult to see how the fundamental Eigorism, 
 defects of such a view of life necessitated the transition to tSn to" 18 
 the more moderate form of the theory. The view rests Moderate - 
 
 * 
 
 upon an absolute psychological duajisj3i,_iiLJReaaQn^^Jid. 
 Sensibility, of the rational and the irrational. Because 
 reason differentiates man from the animal, and his life 
 must therefore be a rational life, it is inferred that all the 
 animal sensibility must be eliminated. The result is an 
 intellectualising of the moral life, the identification of 
 goodness with wisdom, of virtue with knowledge, of duty 
 with rational consistency, of practical activity with phil- 
 osophic contemplation. But this passionless life of reason 
 is not the life of man as we know him. We_cannot sum- i 
 marily dismiss the entire life of sensibility as irrational. 
 If we do so, we lose the entire content of morality, and 
 
168 THE MORAL IDEAL. 
 
 what is left is only its empty form. It is notorious that 
 the Kantian ethics are purely formal, giving us the sine 
 qud non of the good life, but not the very face and 
 lineaments of goodness itself. By identifying Will with 
 Practical Eeason, and by demanding that the motive of 
 all activity shall be found within reason, it provides the 
 mere Form of will, a will that wills itself, a logical intel- 
 lect rather than a good will. The ideal life of Plato and 
 Aristotle is confessedly a purely intellectual or speculative 
 life. But the flesh and blood of moral reality come from 
 sensibility. It has been truly said that the movement of 
 the real world is not " a ghostly ballet of bloodless cate- 
 gories." No more is the movement of human life. In 
 its dance, reason and sensibility must be partners, even 
 though they often quarrel. Nay, their true destiny is a 
 wedded life, in which no permanent divorce is possible. 
 That feeling is simply the irrational, and incapable of 
 becoming an element in the life of a rational being, is 
 sheer mysticism ; and mysticism in Ethics is no less false 
 than mysticism in Metaphysics. To deny the reality of 
 any element of the real world, and to refuse to deal with 
 \ it, that is the essence of mysticism. The very problem 
 jof the moralist is set for him by the existence of this 
 dualism of reason and sensibility in human nature, and 
 by this alternative possibility, in human life, of guidance 
 by feeling or guidance by reason. To eliminate or to 
 disparage either element, to destroy the alternative moral 
 possibility, is to cut the knot of life's great riddle rather 
 than to unravel it. 
 
 An implicit acknowledgment of this necessity of feeling, 
 if the ends of reason are to take body and shape, and to 
 
RIGORISM. 169 
 
 find their actual realisation, is made by Kant when, after 
 excluding all "pathological inclination," that is, all em- 
 pirical sensibility, he brings back sensibility itself in the 
 form of " pure or practical interest." 1 The moral law, he 
 finds, demands for its_realisatipn_a spring or motive-force 
 in sensibility ; only, the_feeling must be the^offspring of 
 reason. The psychological distinction of reason and sensi- 
 bility is, however, clearly admitted, as well as the ethical 
 consequence that both must enter as factors into the life 
 of Will. Plato and Aristotle may be said to make the 
 same concession, in their description of ordinary " moral " 
 or " practical " virtue as the excellence of the compound 
 nature of man, mixed of reason and irrational sensibility. 
 This life of feeling controlled by reason, they both seem 
 to say, is the characteristic life of man, though the higher 
 and divine life may be attained at intervals, and ought 
 never to be lost sight of as the ideal. 
 
 One phase of the problem seems to have been quite 
 ignored by the school whose views we are considering 
 namely, that it is through sensibility that we are delivered 
 from ourselves, and find the way to that fellowship with 
 mankind which the Stoics so impressively portray, and 
 which Kant contemplates in his Kingdom of Ends. " Cool 
 reason " is not a sufficient bond, we must fed our unity - 
 with our fellows. Though reason is universal, the Ethics of 
 pure Eeason are inevitably individualistic. The Stoic and 
 the Kantian life the ascetic life, is essentially self-con- 
 tained, is a life which withdraws into itself. Its dream *" 
 of a kingdom of universal intelligence, of a City of God, 
 of a communion of saints, remains for it a dream which 
 
 1 Cf. Dewey, ' Outlines of Ethical Theory/ 86. 
 
170 THE MORAL IDEAL. 
 
 can never be realised on earth. The bands that unite us 
 with our fellows are bands of love ; reason, alone, is clear 
 in its insight into the common nature and the common 
 weal, but powerless to realise it. Kill out sensibility, and 
 you not only impoverish your own life, but you separate 
 ^ yourself from your fellows no less thoroughly than does 
 the egoistic hedonist. 
 
 We must say, therefore, that the Ethic of pure Eeason 
 , is, no less than the Ethic of pnrp, Spmaihi"lif-,y ; a premature 
 unification_of_haman life. The truejinity is the unity of 
 the manifol^.; the true universal is the universal that 
 contains and explains all the particulars ; the true a priori 
 is the a priori which embraces the empirical. The sim- 
 plification required is one which shall systematise and 
 organise all the complex elements of our nature and our 
 life, not one which is reached by the elimination of the 
 complexity and detail. The rigoristic principle, like the 
 hedonistic, is too simple. As well try to eliminate sensa- 
 tion from the intellectual life, as sensibility from the 
 moral. In the one case as in the other, the form of 
 reason, without the content of feeling, is empty ; as the 
 content of feeling, without the form of reason, is blind. 
 The mere unity of reason is as inadequate to the concrete 
 moral life as is the mere manifold of sensibility. The one 
 provides a purely general ethical formula, as the other 
 provides only the " data of ethics." 
 
 Nor is self-sacrifice the last word of morality to any 
 part of our nature. It is only a moment in the ethical 
 life, one phase of its most subtle process, not its be-all 
 and its end-all. The tru^Jife_^jLjnan_jnust be theJife_of 
 
RIGORISM. 171 
 
 the total, single self, rational and ^sentient,; the sentient^ 
 self is to be sacrificed only as it opposes itself to the 
 deeper and truer human self of reason. The sentient self 
 is not, as such, evil or irrational, and it may be completely 
 harmonised with the rational self. The ascetic ideal is 
 thoroughly false and .inadequate, and must always be 
 correcte^bj^^e^hedQriistic. It is not right that the 
 ruddy bloom of youth and health should be all " sicklied 
 o'er with the pale cast of thought," that the thrill of 
 
 quickened life should be stilled and deadened to the 
 
 
 
 stately march of reason in the soul, and that " apathy " 
 and "impassibility" should take the place of the eager 
 pulsing life of nature in the human heart. The spectacle 
 of the world is always fresh and fascinating, and we 
 should keep our eyes bright to see it. The music of life 
 need never grow monotonous, and our ears should be 
 alert to catch its strains. Life is life, and we should not 
 make it a meditatio mortis. Its banquet is richly spread, 
 and we should enjoy it with a full heart, nor see the 
 death's head ever at the feast. Aloofness of spirit from 
 the world and all its eager crowding human interests is 
 not in the end the noblest attitude. The body is not to be 
 thought of as the mere " prison-house of the soul," from 
 which it must escape if it would live in its own element. 
 Escape it cannot, if it would. The spirit and the flesh 
 cannot cut adrift from one another ; each has its own 
 lesson for its fellow. The way to all human goodness lies 
 in learning "the value and significance of flesh." The 
 passionless life of reason strikes cold and hard on the 
 human heart. 
 
172 THE MORAL IDEAL. 
 
 " But is a calm like this, in truth, 
 The crowning end of life and youth. 
 And when this boon rewards the dead, 
 Are all debts paid, has all been said ? 
 
 Ah no, the bliss youth dreams is one 
 For daylight, for the cheerful sun, 
 For feeling nerves and living breath 
 Youth dreams a bliss on this side death. 
 It dreams a rest, if not more deep, 
 More grateful than this marble sleep ; 
 It hears a voice within it tell : 
 Calm's not life's crown, though calm is well. 
 'Tis all perhaps which man requires, 
 But 'tis not what our youth desires." 1 
 
 The Stoic and the Kantian view of life rests, as we 
 have seen, upon a metaphysical idealism which finds no 
 place for the reality of the sensible and phenomenal world. 
 Such is the cleft between these two worlds that the one 
 cannot enter into relation with the other, and withdrawal 
 into the noumenal world of pure reason becomes the only 
 path to the true or ideal life. The entire life of sensi- 
 bility is disparaged and despised as shadowy and unreal, 
 a dream from which we must awaken to moral reality. 
 But such a transcendental idealism must always call forth 
 the protest of a healthy moral realism. " The world and 
 life's too big to pass for a dream." Nay, the advocate of 
 sensibility will not hesitate to say that your world of pure 
 reason is all a mystic dream, that moral reality is to be 
 found in the fleeting moments and the pleasures and pains 
 they bring, that he who has dulled his sensibilities, and 
 lived the Stoic life of " apathy " to these, has missed 
 life's only treasure. ThejOjrenaic argument for engross- 
 
 1 Matthew Arnold, "Youth and Calm." 
 
fllGORISM. 1*73 
 
 ment with the present is the same as the Stoic argument 
 for apathy to it that the present is evanescent, and 
 perishes with the using. If our idealism is to stand, it^ 
 must contain realism within itself ; if the spirit is to 
 live its own proper life, it can only be by annexing the 
 territory of the flesh, and establishing its own order there. 
 The necessity of this acknowledgment of the rights of 
 sensibility and of the relative truth of the hedonistic 
 interpretation of life has led to the more moderate 
 statements of Eigorism or the Ethics of Eeason, which 
 we find among both the Greek and modern moralists. J 
 
 6. Moderate rigorism is, one might say, the character- (B) Moder- 
 istic Greek view of the moral life ; the Greek ideal is a fsm. 'fa)" 
 life of rational sensibility. Such an ideal alone satisfies 
 at once the intellectualism and the sensuousness of the 
 national genius, its love of rational clearness and form, 
 and of aesthetic satisfaction. The fact that the good is 
 also for the Greeks the beautiful, and that the supreme 
 category of their life is rather TO KaXov than TO ayaOov, 
 carries with it the necessity that a life of reason divorced 
 from sensibility could never prove satisfying. Their keen 
 appreciation of the " things of the mind," of the purely 
 scientific and philosophical interests, made it equally im- 
 possible for them to rest content with a life of sensi- 
 bility divorced from reason. It is not surprising, therefore, 
 to find impressive and invaluable statements of the neces- 
 sity of this ethical harmony in Greek philosophical litera- 
 ture. We need only recall here Heraclitus' suggestions 
 of that order, uncreated by gods or men, which pervades 
 all things, of that " common wisdom " to which man ought 
 
174 THE MORAL IDEAL. 
 
 to conform his life, of those " fixed measures " which the 
 Sun himself must observe " else the Erinnyes will find 
 him out," of the universal " harmony of opposites " by 
 which the process of things is made possible ; the Socratic 
 life and teaching, with its perfect moderation, its firj^ev 
 ayav, its reduction of the conduct of life to the discovery of 
 the true " measure " of life's experience ; Plato's " harmony" 
 of appetite and " spirit " with reason, and his picture of 
 the soul as a well-ordered State in which Justice, the key 
 to all the virtues, lies in the doing of its proper work by 
 every element, and of the common weal that results from 
 such a perfect division and co-operation ; and the Aristo- 
 telian conception of Virtue as the choice of the Mean 
 between the two extremes of excess and defect, of Happi- 
 ness or Welfare as consisting in rational activity accom- 
 panied by pleasure, of virtuous activity as essentially 
 pleasant because habitual and easy, and thus finally of 
 pleasure itself as the bloom and crown of the life of 
 Virtue. 
 
 (6) its 7. It is in modern philosophy, however, that the 
 
 pressions. X " moderate version of Rigorism has received the greatest 
 theory tlers attention and its most important development. Here it 
 science' * s f am ^i ar to us under the name of Intuitionism, and the 
 real founder of Intuitionism was Bishop Butler in his 
 famous ' Sermons.' Butler's problem came to him from 
 his predecessors of the seventeenth century. Hobbes, 
 by his theory of the artificial and conventional char- 
 acter of moral laws, by his resolution of " nature " into 
 custom and contract, had given rise to several attempts 
 to prove the directly rational and natural character of 
 
RIGORISM. 175 
 
 these laws. The mathematical moralists, Cud worth and 
 Clarke, had sought to prove the " eternal fitness " of 
 moral distinctions, their " immutable and eternal " nature, 
 their mathematical necessity, their utter rationality. For 
 them, as for the Stoics, morality was part of the " nature 
 of things," and the bad was synonymous with the absurd 
 or irrational. Shaftesbury and Hutcheson, again, had 
 contended for an immediate and unerring perception of 
 moral distinctions, a " moral sense " of the beauty and 
 deformity of actions. Butler, following on the whole the 
 lead of the latter school, seeks to bring philosophy back 
 to earth, and to find in the peculiar nature and constitu- 
 tion of man the soil of all moral distinctions. In the 
 little State of Mansoul, however, Butler finds, as Plato 
 had already found, a principle which draws its right to 
 rule from its community with the central principle of 
 all things. 
 
 The sum and substance of morality being contained in 
 the maxim "Follow nature," the business of Ethics is to 
 determine the true meaning of " human nature." In the 
 determination of this, Butler uses to fine purpose Plato's 
 figure of the State. A " system, economy, or constitution," 
 is " a one or a whole, made of several parts," in such wise 
 that " the several parts, even considered as a whole, do 
 not complete the idea, unless, in the notion of a whole, 
 you include the relations and respects which those parts 
 have to each other." Now, when we consider the various 
 elements of human nature, we find that the most import- 
 ant relation which they sustain to each other is precisely 
 that relation which is most important in the civil economy 
 viz., the relation of authority or right to rule. This 
 
176 THE MORAL IDEAL. 
 
 difference in authority, " not being a difference in strength 
 or degree," Butler calls "a difference in nature and in 
 kind." The supreme place in the hierarchy of natural 
 principles belongs of right to the rational or reflective ; it 
 is theirs to govern the unreflective, immediate, impulsive 
 principles or " propensions." The chief of the reflective 
 principles is Conscience. " There is a principle of reflec- 
 tion in men, by which they distinguish between, approve 
 and disapprove, their own actions. We are plainly con- 
 stituted such sort of creatures as to reflect upon our own 
 nature. The mind can take a view of what passes within 
 itself, its propensions, aversions, passions, affections, as 
 respecting such objects, and in such degrees ; and of the 
 several actions consequent thereupon. In this survey it 
 approves of one, disapproves of another, and towards a 
 third is affected in neither of these ways, but is quite 
 indifferent. This principle in man, by which he approves 
 or disapproves his heart, temper, and actions, is conscience." 
 Authority is " a constituent part of this reflex approbation " 
 it is " implied in the very idea of reflex approbation ; " 
 " you cannot form a notion of this faculty, conscience, 
 without taking in judgment, direction, superintendency : 
 ... to preside and govern, from the very economy and 
 constitution of man, belongs to it." 
 
 "As the idea of a civil constitution implies in it united 
 strength, various subordinations under one direction, that 
 of the supreme authority, the different strength of each 
 particular member of the society not coming into the 
 idea ; whereas, if you leave out the subordination, the 
 union, and the one direction, you destroy and lose it. So 
 reason, several appetites, passions, and affections, prevailing 
 
RIGORISM. 
 
 in different degrees of strength, is not that idea or notion 
 of human nature ; but that nature consists in these several 
 principles considered as having a natural respect to each 
 other, in the several passions being naturally subordinate 
 to the one superior principle of reflection or conscience. 
 Every bias, instinct, propension within, is a real part of 
 our nature, but not the whole : add to these the superior 
 faculty, whose office it is to adjust, manage, and preside 
 over them, and take in this its natural superiority, and 
 you complete the idea of human nature. And as in civil 
 government the constitution is broken in upon and vio- 
 lated by power and strength prevailing over authority ; so 
 the constitution of man is broken in upon and violated by 
 the lower faculties or principles within prevailing over 
 that which is in its nature supreme over them all." 
 " Natural " action is, therefore, action proportionate to 
 the nature of man as a whole, as a constitution or econ- 
 omy ; or it is action prescribed by Conscience, as the su- 
 preme regulative principle of the human constitution. 
 
 The approval or disapproval of this Conscience, which 
 makes man " in the strictest and most proper sense a law 
 unto himself," is immediate or intuitive, and unerring. 
 It " pronounces determinately some actions to be in 
 themselves just, right, good ; others to be in themselves, 
 evil, wrong, unjust." " Let any plain honest man, before 
 he engages in any course of action, ask himself, Is this I 
 am going about right, or is it wrong ? is it good, or is it 
 evil ? I do not in the least doubt but that this question 
 would be answered agreeably to truth and virtue by 
 almost any fair man in almost any circumstances." 
 
 Butler recognises a second principle in human nature, 
 
 
 
 . J 
 
178 THE MOEAL IDEAL. 
 
 which, since it also is reflective, has an equally authori- 
 tative rank with Conscience namely, " cool " or " reason- 
 able Self-love." Action in the line of Self-love is as 
 " natural " as action in the line of Conscience. " If 
 passion prevails over self-love, the consequent action is 
 unnatural ; but if self-love prevail over passion, the action 
 is natural. It is manifest that self-love is in human 
 nature a superior principle to passion. This may be con- 
 tradicted without violating that nature; but the former 
 cannot. So that, if we will act conformably to man's 
 nature, reasonable self-love must govern." The sphere of 
 this second regulative principle is that of Prudence a 
 part of the total sphere of Virtue, which is the empire of 
 Conscience. " It should seem that a due concern about 
 our own interest or happiness, and a reasonable endeavour 
 to secure and promote it, which is, I think, very much 
 the meaning of the word prudence, in our language, it 
 should seem that this is virtue, and the contrary be- 
 haviour faulty and blameable ; since, in the calmest way 
 of reflection, we approve of the first and condemn the 
 other conduct, both in ourselves and others." The ap- 
 proval is as immediate in the one case as in the other. 
 " The faculty within us, which is the judge of actions, 
 approves of prudent actions and disapproves imprudent 
 ones ; I say prudent and imprudent actions, as such, and 
 considered distinctly from the happiness or misery which 
 they occasion." This principle of self-love " is indeed by 
 no means the religious, or even moral, institution of life ; " 
 but "prudence is a species of virtue, and folly of vice." 
 As guides of conduct, " Conscience and self-love, if we 
 understand our true happiness, always lead us the same 
 
RIGORISM. 179 
 
 way for the most part in this world, but entirely and in 
 every instance if we take in the future, and the whole ; 
 this being implied in the notion of a good and perfect 
 administration of things." 
 
 Under these two regulative principles conies the entire 
 impulsive nature, which may be summarised in two main 
 divisions the selfish and the benevolent, or, as we should 
 say, the egoistic and the altruistic. " Mankind has vari- 
 ous instincts and principles of action, as brute creatures 
 have some leading most directly and immediately to 
 the good of the community, and some most directly to 
 private good." The latter may collectively be termed 
 "passionate or sensual Selfishness," the former (passion- 
 ate) Benevolence. Self-love, as " cool " or " settled " in its 
 temper, and general in its range, is distinguished as well 
 from Selfishness as from Benevolence, as well from pas- 
 sionate and "particular" regard for self as from such 
 passionate and " particular " regard for others. It follows 
 that virtue consists neither in self-interest nor in dis- 
 interestedness ; " the goodness or badness of actions does 
 not arise from hence, that the epithet, interested or dis- 
 interested, may be applied to them any more than any 
 other indifferent epithet." Hence, particularly, utility is 
 not the ground of virtue. We judge actions to be good 
 or bad, " not from their being attended with present or 
 future pleasure or pain, but from their being luliat they 
 are viz., what becomes such creatures as we are, what 
 the state of the case requires, or the contrary." We are 
 " constituted so as to condemn falsehood, unprovoked 
 violence, injustice,- and to approve of benevolence to some 
 preferably to others, abstracted from all consideration 
 
180 THE MORAL IDEAL. 
 
 which conduct is likeliest to produce an overbalance of 
 happiness or misery." Butler can conceive " no more 
 terrible mistake " than that " the whole of virtue consists 
 in promoting the happiness of mankind, and the whole of 
 vice in doing what they foresee, or might foresee, is likely 
 to produce an overbalance of unhappiness." Yet the only 
 final justification or explanation of virtue is its reduction 
 to self T interest. "Let it be allowed, though virtue or 
 moral rectitude does indeed consist in affection to and 
 pursuit of what is right and good, as such ; yet, that when 
 we sit down in a cool hour, we can neither justify to our- 
 selves this or any other pursuit, till we are convinced that 
 it will be for our happiness, or at least not contrary to it." 
 
 Criticism 8. We thus find in Butler several lines of thought 
 
 of Butler's i !' T/Y i /> -11 
 
 theory. which it is difficult, if not impossible, to harmonise 
 with one another. He seems to be almost equally im- 
 pressed by the interested and the disinterested sides of 
 conduct, but to be more fully persuaded of the importance 
 of its self-regarding than of that of its benevolent side. 
 Virtue is not synonymous with Benevolence, but in a 
 sense it is synonymous with Self-love. The latter is a 
 reflective and reasonable principle of life; prudence and 
 virtue are co-ordinate, if not coincident. In spite of the 
 authority of Conscience, and the intrinsic quality of that 
 rightness which it approves, Butler's morality is not dis- 
 interested ; its raison d'etre is the individual happiness 
 to which it leads. The " approval " or " disapproval " of 
 Conscience is immediate and direct, independent of the 
 consequences to which the action leads ; but the logical 
 basis of this approval or disapproval is the bearing of the 
 
RIGORISM. 181 
 
 
 
 action upon the agent's happiness in the present and in 
 the future. Though the approval of Conscience is im- 
 mediate, and not the result of calculation, yet the course 
 approved is always that of Self-interest. The authority 
 of Conscience is, therefore, after all, not original, but 
 secondary, derived from Self-interest. Butler's Conscience 
 is in itself a merely formal principle ; and when he gives 
 it content, that content is the content of Self-love.. 
 
 Failing such an identification of Virtue with Prudence, 
 of Conscience with Self-love, we have (1) no explana- 
 tion of morality, no theory of virtue, but a mere psycho- 
 logy of the moral life. And this is, in general, Butler's 
 position. He is willing, in the main, to rest in the im- 
 mediate and authoritative approval of Conscience, without 
 investigating the object of its approval or the basis of 
 its authority. Conscience is the regulative faculty in 
 human nature, and virtue is that conduct which it dic- 
 tates as fitting or natural to man. Even as a psycho- 
 logical statement, we must dissent from Butler's artificial 
 divorce between " act " and " consequence." Even psy- 
 chologically, the action is not separated from its con- 
 sequences, and judged to be " in itself " right or wrong ; 
 the consequences reveal the nature of the action, and are 
 themselves part of it. But we must advance beyond the 
 psychological to the philosophical, or strictly ethical view ; 
 we must investigate the why of Conscience's approval and 
 disapproval, as also its right to approve and disapprove. 
 
 (2) His refusal to identify Conscience with Self-love 
 leads Butler to rest in an irreducible dualism of the 
 spheres governed by these two principles respectively 
 the spheres of Virtue and Prudence. For Conscience and 
 
182 THE MORAL IDEAL. 
 
 Self-love are at least co-ordinate in authority ; " the epi- 
 curean rule of life," though not identical with the " moral/ 1 
 has its place alongside the latter. Eegard for one's " in- 
 terest " or " good on the whole " is as legitimate as regard 
 for the " right." This is Butler's way of modifying the 
 rigorism of his rational standpoint ; he recognises the 
 " reasonableness " of Self-love as a principle of conduct. 
 But it is impossible thus to adjust the rival claims of 
 Virtue and Prudence ; and Butler, when pressed, falls 
 back, as we have seen, upon the old hedonistic device 
 of resolving the virtuous into the prudential self. This 
 dilemma is the result of his inadequate conception of 
 virtue. The " right " must contain the " good," virtue 
 prudence. Or rather, the true Moral Ideal must be the 
 supreme Good, or simply the Good that Good which 
 not only transcends all other goods but explains their 
 goodness, and in undivided loyalty to which the moral 
 being finds his perfect satisfaction. The true moral in- 
 terest must be supreme, embracing and transcending, 
 including and interpreting, all the interests of life. The 
 mere suggestion of a " self " whose satisfaction or interest 
 is still to seek after the moral task is done, is proof 
 sufficient that that task has been inadequately conceived. 
 The only way to make the various circles of our life's 
 activities concentric, is by discovering their common 
 centre. 
 
 Finally (3) Butler's difficulty in reconciling Benevolence 
 and Self-love arises from the same fundamental defect. 
 If the self does not find its perfect satisfaction in the 
 life of Virtue, neither, of course, will other selves find 
 theirs ; and it is only because the self is thus inadequately 
 
RIGORISM. 183 
 
 conceived that the conflict of individual interests arises. 
 It is the prudential, not the virtuous self which finds it 
 necessary to compete with others for the " goods " of life, 
 because its " interest " and theirs are mutually exclusive. 
 If we would find deliverance from Hobbes's " war of 
 every man against every man," we must learn to see how 
 deeply winatural that warfare is. Again we must insist 
 that, as the Good of human life is not conceived aright 
 until it is seen to be a Good so complete that the indi- 
 vidual has no " private " interests of his own apart from 
 his participation in it, so it is not conceived aright until it 
 is seen to be a Good so comprehensive that all individuals 
 alike shall find in it their common good. 1 
 
 9. Contemporary Kigorism retains essentially the form (0) 
 in which Butler stereotyped the theory. That his psycho- its diver- 
 logical standpoint is still the standpoint of the school is f r m But- 
 
 IfiET 
 
 indicated by the term which it adopts to characterise 
 its view viz., Intuitionism. That moral principles are 
 directly and immediately recognised, that they are self- 
 evident or axiomatic truths of reason, and that Conscience 
 is the faculty of such immediate moral insight, all this 
 is held in common by Butler and by the Scottish School of 
 " Common-Sense.'' The absolute authoritativeness of these 
 " first principles " of morality, and therefore of Conscience 
 as the faculty which reveals them, is also common ground. 
 But the Conscience of contemporary Intuitionism has a 
 much narrower range than Butler's Conscience. The latter 
 
 1 Such a conception is perhaps suggested to us by Butler himself in his 
 principle of the " Love of God," which seems to transcend both Conscience 
 and Self-love. Cf. T. B. Kilpatrick, Introduction to Butler's 'Sermons.' 
 
184 THE MORAL IDEAL. 
 
 was a faculty of particular moral judgments or " percep- 
 tions," which told the plain man unerringly and imme- 
 diately the course of present duty " in almost any circum- 
 stances." The contemporary Conscience is found unequal 
 to this task. The historical sense has developed greatly 
 since Butler wrote, and has forced us to acknowledge that 
 the " human nature " which seemed to him. a constant and 
 unchanging quantity is a growth, and, with it, its " virtue " 
 and " vice," that the content of our particular moral 
 judgments varies much with time and place and cir- 
 cumstance, that these judgments are, in a very real sense, 
 empirical judgments. The Intuitionist has accordingly 
 been compelled either to acknowledge that Conscience, 
 in Butler's sense of the term, is educated by experi- 
 ence, and is dependent upon such " empirical instruction " 
 for all the concreteness of its dicta, or so to narrow 
 the meaning of the term Conscience as to make it the 
 unerring faculty of general or " first " principles merely, 
 and to attribute to the very fallible and empirically 
 minded Judgment the application of these immutable 
 principles to the variety of particular circumstances and 
 cases as they arise. The latter alternative is the one 
 chosen. The historical element in morality is carefully 
 sifted from the unhistorical, the temporal and changeable 
 manifestation from the eternal and unchanging essence. 
 Morality is reduced to " simple " or ultimate ideas such 
 as Justice, Temperance, Truthfulness ; these, it is claimed, 
 have no history, and their a priori origin is the source of 
 their absolute validity. 
 
 its defects. The current intuitional doctrine is thus forced to sacri- 
 fice all the concreteness and particularity which belonged 
 
RIGORISM. 185 
 
 to Butler's theory of Conscience. The uneducated Con- 
 science, the " original " faculty, provides us with no more 
 than the merest generalities or abstractions, which must 
 be made concrete before they have any real significance. 
 Moral life consists of particulars, of " situations," of def- 
 inite circumstances and individual occasions; and an 
 indeterminate or vague morality is no morality at all. 
 Intuitionism, with its fixed and absolute principles of 
 conduct, can find no place in its ethical scheme for the 
 actual variation in moral opinion. What, for example, 
 is the " equality " demanded by the principle of Justice ? 
 Very different answers would be given to this question 
 by different epochs of human civilisation, and by different 
 communities in the same epoch. Make the conception 
 concrete, and it is found to be a changing one; allow 
 for the variation, and the general formula becomes a 
 mere abstraction. It is the particulars and details of 
 the moral life that are real ; our general moral conceptions 
 or " principles " derive their reality from the particulars 
 of which they are the " abstract " or transcript. 
 
 Besides, the intuitive character of moral principles may 
 be accounted for, as just suggested, by an empirical theory 
 of morality. It may be shown that these principles are 
 intuitive in the sense of being instinctive. To the indi- 
 vidual in any age and country, the morality of that age 
 and country (and even the particular modification of it in 
 the atmosphere of which he has grown up) may be said to 
 present itself as absolutely and immediately obligatory. 
 The moral, like the intellectual consciousness of the 
 nation and of the society to which he belongs is, some- 
 how, focused and crystallised in the individual, who is 
 
186 THE MORAL IDEAL. 
 
 their " child." One might go. further, and say that the 
 experience and education of the race itself is, in a sense, 
 possessed by the individual, that the real education of 
 Conscience is on a wider scale than the individual, and is 
 what Lessing called an " education of the human race." The 
 individual, as the child of the race, " the heir of all the 
 ages " of its experience, accepts his inheritance, whether 
 moral or intellectual, for the most part unquestioningly, 
 and is only too content to " stand in the old paths." The 
 absoluteness and originality of moral principles are there- 
 fore, or may be, merely subjective. Objectively, morality 
 is constantly changing ; and even the moral consciousness 
 is found, when we regard it from without, to be changing 
 too. The change in the one is correlative with the change 
 in the other. All that is left, independent of experience, 
 is a vague moral susceptibility or potentiality, which ex- 
 perience alone can determine and define. 
 
 In two respects, Intuitionism fails to satisfy the require- 
 ments of an ethical philosophy. (1) It is a mere psychology 
 of the moral consciousness. We may admit that moral 
 intuitions are facts (though they have a history and are not 
 original or simple), that they represent the subjective side 
 of the Wliat of morality. But the philosophical question 
 lies behind such facts ; it is the question of the Why of 
 the facts. Certain moral principles, like certain intellectual 
 principles, may be to us necessary and irresistible; but 
 these characteristics do not, as such, tell us anything of 
 the objective basis of the principles in question, anything 
 of the nature of morality itself. They may be character- 
 istic of our moral consciousness, and yet not be fit to stand 
 as the criteria of moral value. The question which Hume 
 
RIGORISM. 187 
 
 raised with regard to the intellectual " intuitions " must 
 also be raised with regard to the moral intuitions. Hume 
 did not deny the " necessity " of the causal principle ; 
 but he sought to resolve that necessity into its causes, 
 showing that it might be entirely subjective, a feeling 
 which was the product >i experience and custom, and 
 had no objective validity. So the ethical question of the 
 validity of moral principles, of their objective basis and 
 explanation, is not answered by a psychological theory of 
 their " necessity " or " universality." The real question of 
 Ethics is not, as Intuitionists have stated, and answered it : 
 How do we come to know moral distinctions ? but, What 
 are these distinctions ? What is the Moral Ideal the 
 single criterion which shall yield all such distinctions ? 
 
 (2) Intuitionism is a mere re-statement, in philosophical 
 I term's", of the ordinary moral consciousness. The several 
 moral principles are conceived, as they are conceived by 
 unreflective thought, as all equally absolute ; they are not 
 reduced to the unity of a system. Short % of such unity, 
 however, philosophy cannot rest. Further, what is " axio- 
 matic " to Common-Sense is not axiomatic to philosophical 
 reflection. The only axiom of ethical philosophy would 
 be the rationality of the moral life ; but "it is for Ethics 
 to exhibit its rationale. This philosophical articulation of 
 the vague practical sense of mankind is possible only 
 through a definition of the ethical End. But, taken even 
 at its own profession, as a philosophy of " Common-Sense," 
 Intuitionism is easily criticised. For, apart from its im- 
 plicit Utilitarianism, Common-Sense admits exceptions of 
 a large kind to the principles of conduct which it recog- 
 nises. These principles are not to it more than high 
 
188 THE MORAL IDEAL. 
 
 generalisations, which have to be modified, temporarily or 
 permanently, according to circumstances. As Professor 
 Sidgwick has so convincingly shown, " the doctrine of 
 Common-Sense is rather a rough compromise between con- 
 , flicting lines of thought than capable of being deduced from 
 a clear and universally accepted principle." l The morality 
 of Common - sense is sufficiently definite for " practical 
 guidance to common people in common circumstances ; " 
 but " the attempt to elevate it into a system of scientific 
 Ethics " is necessarily a failure. To fix and stereotype its 
 principles, to conceive them as eternally and absolutely 
 valid, is to construct a Common-Sense for mankind to 
 suit a certain theory of it, rather than to interpret it 
 impartially, as Intuitioiiism professes to do. 
 
 Yet we must acknowledge that the Intuitionists have 
 signalised an all-important truth, however they may have 
 misinterpreted it. There is an absolute, an " eternal and 
 immutable " element in morality. The fact that its history 
 is a history of progress, and not of mere capricious varia- 
 tion that there is an Evolution, a definite tendency, to 
 be traced in the ethical process proves the presence and 
 operation, throughout the process, of such an element. 
 But that element lies deeper than individual moral laws or 
 principles, deeper than any given form of moral practice ; 
 for these are always changing. It is nothing less than the 
 Moral Ideal itself. In virtue of the absolute claim and 
 authority of the Ideal, its various changing expressions, 
 the several so diverse paths along which, in different 
 ages, in different circumstances, by different individuals, 
 that Ideal can be reached and realised, derive a claim and 
 
 1 ' Methods of Ethics,' 347 (3d ed.) 
 
RIGORISM. 189 
 
 an authority as absolute as that of the Ideal itself. Their 
 claim is its claim, their authority its authority. Nor is 
 the individual's moral obligation in respect of these laws a 
 whit less absolute than it would be if the pathway to the 
 Ideal were fixed and unchangeable. This is the one path 
 for him, here and now ; and in practice the question does 
 not arise : " And what shall this or that man do, in this or 
 that age, or country, or set of circumstances ? " but only, 
 " What shall / do, in mine ? " But if we are to find the 
 theoretic basis of this absolute and eternal obligation of 
 morality, we must seek it not in the several moral laws 
 themselves, but in the moral Ideal which underlies and 
 gives meaning to them all. The Intuitional school can 
 hardly be said to have done more than, by its insistence 
 upon the Ought of moral life, upon the absolute signifi- 
 cance of the distinction between right and wrong, to have 
 emphasised the fact that there is such an absolute moral 
 End or Ideal. The definition of that Ideal still remains as 
 the task of ethical philosophy. 
 
 10. What, then, in sum, is the service of Eigorism to The service 
 ethical theory ? sm |oeth- 
 
 (1) It signalises the fundamentally important truth / cal theoiy ' 
 that Eeason, rather than Sensibility, is the regulative 
 principle in the life of a rational being. Only, it tends 
 towards the extreme of saying that reason is the constitu- 
 tive as well as the regulative principle, or that the life of 
 man, as a rational being, must be a life of pure reason ; 
 which is to miss the nerve of the moral life, and to identify 
 it with the intellectual, to make man a Thinker only, and 
 not a Doer. This, the characteristic error of Greek phil- 
 
190 THE MORAL IDEAL. 
 
 osophy, has reappeared in modern Eigorism, and notably 
 in the ethics of Kant. 
 
 (2) To the realistic interpretation of Hedonism, Eigor- 
 ism opposes an idealistic view of morality. It signalises 
 the notion of Duty or Obligation, the distinction between 
 the Ought and the Is; or, in short, it asserts that the 
 ethical End is, in its very nature, an Ideal, demanding 
 realisation. It reaches, however, only the Form of the 
 Moral Ideal. The content must come from sensibility, 
 and for Sensibility, Eigorism, as the Ethics of Eeason, has 
 no proper place. 
 
 (3) The assertion, which is repeated again and again 
 in the Eigorist school, of the dignity and independence 
 of man as a rational being, is a sublime and momentous 
 truth. Eor man rises out of nature, and has to assert 
 his infinite rational superiority to nature. Goodness 
 means the subjugation of nature to spirit. The good 
 life is the rational life; the life of mere nature is, in a 
 rational being, irrational. And it may well seem, in the 
 great crises of the struggle, as if all else but the rational 
 self were unworthy to live, and must absolutely die. Yet 
 nature also has its rights ; and the moral life is not so 
 entirely stern and joyless as Stoic and Kantian moralists 
 would say. Even he who was called, by reason of phe 
 greatness of his moral task, "a man of sorrows and ac- 
 quainted with grief," had yet "his joy" the deep and 
 abiding joy that comes of moral victory ; and, according to 
 the measure of his faithfulness, each combatant may share 
 that joy. 
 
 11. In Eigorism, therefore, no more than in Hedonism, 
 
RIGORISM. 191 
 
 do we find the final ethical theory. Eeason must indeed Transition 
 be the governing power in the party warfare of the soul, monism." 
 Without reason's insight, the moral life were impossible ; 
 a rational self-mastery is the very kernel of morality. 
 But such a true self-mastery is not effected by the with- 
 drawal of Eeason from the fray, by its retreat within 
 the sanctuary of peaceful thought and undisturbed philo- 
 sophic meditation. This would be mere Quietism. Life 
 is not thought or contemplation, but strenuous activity ; 
 and the weapons of life's warfare are forged in the furnace 
 of Sensibility, if the hand that wields them must be guided 
 by the eye of Thought. We must either fight with these 
 weapons, or give up the fight; for other weapons there 
 are none in all the armoury of human nature. 
 
 The inevitable confession of the abstractness of a pure 
 Ethic of Eeason led, as we have seen, to the more mod- 
 erate form of Eigorism, with its more or less grudging 
 acknowledgment of the rights of Sensibility. The result 
 was a transition from what we might call an abstract and 
 negative ethical Monism to a concrete and positive ethical 
 Dualism. The hedonistic principle, or the prudential 
 maxim of life, since it can neither be eliminated nor 
 annexed, is co - ordinated with the moral, rational, or 
 virtuous principle. The only possibility of unifying these 
 two principles would seem to be by reducing Virtue to 
 Prudence; but this course would mean, from the stand- 
 point of the theory, the disappearance of Virtue, as the 
 reverse course had already been found to mean the dis- 
 appearance of Prudence. The impossibility of a purely 
 rational ethic is, however, most convincingly displayed -in 
 the case of the extreme Eigorism of Kant. His final 
 
192 THE MORAL IDEAL. 
 
 appeal to Sensibility in the form of " practical interest," 
 or " reverence," is closely parallel to the appeal to Eeason 
 on the part of Hedonists like Mill and Professor Sidgwick. 
 As the latter, hedonists or advocates of Sensibility though 
 they are, are forced in the end to hold a brief for Eeason ; 
 so is Kant, the arch-rationalist of modern Ethics, com- 
 pelled at last to admit to his councils the despised Sensi- 
 bility. The lesson of both events surely is, that neither 
 in Hedonism nor in Eigorism, neither in the Ethics of 
 Sensibility nor in the Ethics of Eeason, but in Eudaa- 
 monism, or the Ethics of that total human Personality 
 which contains, as elements, both Eeason and Sensibility, 
 is the full truth to be found. 
 
193 
 
 CHAPTEE III. 
 
 EUMMONISM, OR THE ETHICS, OF PERSONALITY. 
 
 1. THE preceding discussion has revealed a fundamental 
 dualism in ethical theory, corresponding to a fundamental ism. its 
 
 theoretical 
 
 dualism in the nature and life of man. The task which expression, 
 now meets us is the solution of the problem raised by this 
 dualism in ethical theory and practice ; but, before attempt- 
 ing the execution of that task, it will be well to bring 
 the two sides of the dualism into clear relief. 
 
 Looking first at the theoretical side of the question, we 
 have found the two comprehensive types of ethical theory 
 to be the Ethics of Eeason and the Ethics of Sensibility. 
 On the one hand, it has been felt, from the dawn of ethical 
 reflection, that the true life of man must be a rational life. 
 Eeason, it is recognised, is the differentiating attribute 
 of man, distinguishing him from the animal or merely 
 sentient being. At first, it is true, no cleft was perceived 
 between the life of Eeason and the life of Sensibility. Even 
 to Socrates, the proper life of man is one of sentient satis- 
 faction, although it is essentially a rational life, the appro- 
 priate life of a rational being. The Socratic life is a self- 
 examined and a self-guided life ; the measure of sentient 
 
 N 
 
194 THE MORAL IDEAL. 
 
 satisfaction is set by the reason which is the distinguish- 
 ing attribute of man ; the criteria of goodness are self- 
 mastery and self -consistency. The place of reason in the 
 ethics of Socrates becomes evident in his central doc- 
 trine of the supreme ethical importance of knowledge, of 
 \the identity of knowledge and virtue, or human excellence. 
 The wise man, or the man who, in the entire conduct of 
 his life, follows the voice of reason, is the man who has 
 attained the chief human Good. By Plato and Aristotle, 
 more explicitly and absolutely than by Socrates, the secret 
 of the good life is found in reason, and the life of sensi- 
 bility is condemned as " irrational " (aXoyio-ntcov). Plato, 
 in his doctrine of the #17409, recognises a secondary value 
 in sensibility, but only in so far as it " shares in the 
 rational principle," and is Eeason's " watch-dog." Aris- 
 totle also recognises a higher and a lower virtue, a virtue 
 which is the excellence of a purely rational being whose 
 life is the life of reason itself, and a virtue which is the 
 excellence of a compound nature like man's partly 
 rational, partly irrational or sentient. B&t both -Plato 
 and Aristotle, following in the footsteps of their common 
 master, only going much farther than he had gone, find the 
 ideal Good in the exclusive life of reason, the philosophic 
 or contemplative life. To both, this is the Divine life, 
 some participation in which is vouchsafed to man even 
 now, and in the aspiration after which, as the eternal Ideal, 
 he must seek to be delivered from the bondage of the 
 lower world of sensibility. The Stoics did but accentuate 
 this ascetic and ideal note, so prominent yet so surprising 
 in the moral reflection of the Greeks, this " divine discon- 
 tent " of the human spirit with its lot in the present and 
 
EUDJEMONISM. 195 
 
 the sensuous, this craving for a rational and abiding good 
 behind the shows of sense and time, this sublime inde- 
 pendence of all that suffers shock and change in mortal 
 life. The Kationalism and Asceticism of modern ethics 
 are little more than the echo of this ancient thought, that 
 the only life worthy of a rational being is the life of reason 
 itself. It is this thought that we have found working in 
 the " mathematical " moralists, who seek to demonstrate 
 the "absurdity" of the evil life; in their successors of the 
 Intuitionist school, who maintain the " self-evidence " of 
 moral law and the " self-contradiction " of moral evil ; 
 and in Kant, the greatest of rationalists, to whom the 
 " good will " is the will that takes as the maxim of its 
 choice a principle fit for law universal in a kingdom of 
 pure reason, and in whose eyes the slightest alloy of sen- 
 sibility would corrupt the pure gold of the life of duty. 
 
 On the other hand, the life of Sensibility has never been 
 without its defenders, advocates wjio have shown no less 
 enthusiasm ofl its behalf than their opponents have shown 
 on behalf of Eeason. We have just noted the hedonistic 
 element in the ethical teaching of Socrates. The im- 
 portance of this element, neglected in the main by Plato, 
 was signalised anew by Aristotle, who not only regarded 
 the life of virtue as essentially a pleasant life, but saw in 
 pleasure the very bloom and crown of goodness or well- 
 being. The Epicureans among the Greeks and Eomans,. 
 and the Hedonists among ourselves, have reversed the 
 Aristotelian relation, and have made Keason the servant 
 of Feeling, a minister to be consulted always, and listened 
 to with respect and confidence, but still a minister only 
 and not a ruler in the " party conflict of the soul." While 
 
196 THE MORAL IDEAL. 
 
 the interpretation of " Happiness " has varied so much 
 that it might well have been the watchword of both 
 schools, the hedonistic interpretation of it is always 
 in terms of Pleasure, or of the life of Sensibility. But 
 if we would find the perfectly consistent Hedonism, 
 the thorough-going Ethics of Sensibility (corresponding to 
 the Stoic and Kantian Ethics of Eeason), we must go 
 back to the precursors of the Epicurean school, the early 
 Cyrenaics. So complete is their confidence in Sensibility, 
 that they surrender Eeason to it, or rather resolve Eeason 
 into it. Sensationalists in intellectual theory, in ethics 
 they are Hedonists. Since momentary feeling is the only 
 moral reality, we must, if we would enjoy the Good of 
 life, surrender ourselves to the pleasure of the moments 
 as they pass. 
 
 its prac- 2. This theoretical antinomy has its counterpart in the 
 pression. practical life of man, and in the characteristic attitudes 
 and moods of different ages, countries, and individuals in 
 view of the actual business of life. Moral theory is the 
 reflection of moral practice, and the interest of the high 
 debate that has raged through all these centuries between 
 the rival ethical schools has a practical and not a merely 
 scientific, still less scholastic interest. Party-spirit runs 
 high on the question of the Summum Bonum, for every 
 man has a stake in its settlement, the stake of his own 
 nature and destiny; and the side which each takes, in 
 practice if not in theory, will be found to be the exponent 
 of that nature, and the prophecy of that destiny. Let 
 us look, then, for a moment at the practical expression 
 of this fundamental ethical dualism. 
 
EUD^EMONISM. 197 
 
 It is not only in the philosophic schools, but in actual 
 life, that we find the two moral types the Stoic and the 
 Cyrenaic ; in all ages we can discern the rigorist, ascetic, 
 strenuous temper of life from the impulsive, spontaneous, 
 luxurious the Puritan from the Cavalier spirit, the Man 
 of Eeason, cool and hard, from the Man of Feeling, soft 
 and sensuous. We might perhaps call the two types the 
 Idealistic and the Eealistic. In historical epochs, and in 
 whole peoples, as well as in the individual life, the dis- 
 tinction is illustrated. The Greeks were a sensuous 
 people, but gradually the reason found the life of sen- 
 sibility unsatisfying, and the Greek spirit took its flight 
 to the supersensible and ideal to the world of pure 
 reason. The result is found in Platonism, Stoicism, and 
 Neo-Platonism. This mystic yearning after a satisfac- 
 tion which the sensible world will not yield, this 
 "home-sickness" of a rational being, is at the heart 
 of Mediaeval Christianity, with its monastic life and 
 its anxious denial of the flesh for the sake of the spirit's 
 life. The Byronic temper represents the other extreme. 
 Man regards himself as a creature of sensibility, of im- 
 pulses, of enthusiasms and exaltations, of weariness and 
 depression, a kind of mirror that reflects the changes 
 of his life, or a high-strung instrument that vibrates in 
 quick responsiveness to them all. The Realism of con- 
 temporary fiction represents the same one-sided assertion 
 of the rights of Sensibility, and the luxuriousness and 
 material comfort of our modern life, the "practical" 
 utilitarian spirit that threatens ideal aims, minister to 
 the same result. But the two forces are always present 
 and in conflict. 
 
198 THE MOKAL IDEAL. 
 
 Attempts 3. Each of these sides of our nature has its rights, just 
 dilation, because both are sides of our nature, and, as Aristotle said, 
 "life" and "virtue" must be in terms of "nature." In 
 actual life, we find either the sacrifice of one to the other, 
 or a rough and ready, more or less successful, compromise 
 between their rival interests. The task of ethical philoso- 
 phy, as it is the task of the moral life itself, is the recon- 
 ciliation of these apparently conflicting claims the full 
 recognition both of the rights of Eeason and the rights of 
 Sensibility, and their reduction, if possible, to the unity of 
 a common life governed by a single central principle. 
 This task of reconciliation was attempted long ago by 
 Plato, who, after condemning sensibility as " irrational," 
 yet described virtue as essentially a "harmony" of all 
 man's powers, a complete life in which every part of the 
 nature, the lowest as well as the highest, should find its 
 due scope and exercise, all in subjection to the supreme au- 
 thority of reason. Aristotle, too, though he reasserted the 
 Platonic distinction of the " rational " and " irrational," 
 conceived of man's well-being as a full-orbed life, which, 
 while it was " in accordance with right reason," embraced 
 sensibility as well. The same kind of reconciliation has 
 been attempted in modern times, only in view of a deeper 
 realisation of the width of the cleft than the Greek con- 
 sciousness had attained. Hegel, in particular, has sought, 
 in the ethical as in the metaphysical sphere, to correct 
 the abstractness and formalism of the Kantian theory, by 
 vindicating the rights of sensibility, and harmonising them 
 with the rights of reason, which Kant had so exclusively 
 maintained. As, in the intellectual sphere, Hegel attempts 
 to vindicate the rights of sensation and to demonstrate the 
 
K EUD^MONISM. 199 
 
 essential identity of sensation and thought, so, in the 
 ethical sphere, he seeks to prove the essential rationality 
 of the life of sensibility. In both spheres he offers a con- 
 crete content for the abstract and barren form of the 
 Kantian theory, for he holds that in both spheres "the 
 real is the rational." This reconciliation has been so 
 clearly and impressively set forth by the late Professor 
 Green in his ' Prolegomena to Ethics ' that it is needless to 
 reproduce it here. But, in order that the reconciliation 
 may be successful, the conflict must first be felt in all its* ' 
 intensity ; and if the ancient moralists tended to exag- 
 gerate the sharpness of the dualism, the modern disciples 
 of Hegel may perhaps be said to underestimate it. In 
 that life of Sensibility which the ethical rationalists had 
 condemned as the " irrational," the Hegelian idealist sees 
 the image and superscription of Keason. Are not both 
 interpretations a trifle hasty and impatient ? Were it not 
 better to follow the workings of the moral life itself, and 
 see there how the antithesis is pressed until it yields the 
 higher synthesis ? If, even in the intellectual life of man, 
 there is labour, the " labour of the notion," still more so is 
 there in the moral life ; and an adequate ethic must take 
 account of, and interpret, this labour. The defect of the 
 Hegelian interpretation of morality is, that it is not faith- 
 ful enough to the Hegelian method of dialectical progress 
 through negation to higher affirmation. The " Everlasting 
 Nay " must be pressed to the last, before we can hear 
 the "Everlasting Yea" of the moral life. 
 
 The solu- 
 
 4. In Christianity we find the antithesis at its sharpest, tion of 
 It is just because Christianity recognises, and does full tianity. 
 
200 THE MOEAL IDEAL. 
 
 justice to, both sides of our nature, and because it asserts 
 with a unique emphasis the conflict between them, that 
 its interpretation of human life has been felt to be most 
 adequate. The Greek ideal was one of Moderation or the 
 Mean, a " measured" sensuous life. Christianity widens 
 the breach between the spirit and nature, between the 
 mind and the flesh, widens it that at last it may be 
 overcome. The rights of the spirit are emphasised to the 
 negation (in comparison with them) of the rights of the 
 flesh. The flesh must be crucified, the natural man must 
 die, the old man must be put off. The result is such a 
 struggle between the flesh and the spirit, between the 
 " two men " in each man, that the victory seems uncer- 
 tain, and the bitter cry is wrung from the weary wrestling 
 spirit : " wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me 
 from the body of this death ? " But this widening of the 
 moral breach is the necessary first step in the life of good- 
 ness. The ascetic note is the primary and fundamental 
 one, self-sacrifice must precede and make possible self- 
 fulfilment, the moral life is mediated by death. For man 
 rises out of nature, and must assert his superiority to 
 nature, as a spiritual or rational being. That it may 
 guide and master sensibility, reason must first assert itself 
 to the negation of sensibility. The true self is rational 
 and spiritual, and that it may live, the lower, fleshly, sen- 
 suous self must die. Only through this " strait gate " is 
 the entrance to the pathway of the spirit's life. 
 
 But Christianity is no merely ascetic or mystic system. 
 It does breed in its disciples a profound sense of dis- 
 satisfaction with the actual life, it does lead to the dis- 
 paragement of nature and sensibility ; but it does so just 
 
EUDJ^MONISM. 201 
 
 because it inspires in them the conviction of an ideal of 
 which the actual for ever falls short, and shows man how 
 much more and greater he is than nature. The sunny 
 gladness of the Pagan spirit had to be darkened by the 
 shadow of this prophetic discontent ; but a new gladness 
 came with Christianity. There can be no literal " re- 
 naissance " or re-birth of Paganism. The spiritual his- 
 tory of man does not repeat itself, there is no return to 
 former stages of moral experience. The human spirit has 
 been born anew, and has learned in Christianity lessons 
 about its own dignity and task and destiny which it can 
 never more unlearn. And in view of the fundamental 
 lesson of Christianity, of the infinite, eternal, and divine 
 worth of the human spirit, it may well seem as if all else 
 were unworthy to live, and must absolutely die. The 
 good life is a rational life, a life in which reason, the 1 
 same in God and man, must guide and be master. Yet 
 nature has its rights, though they are not independent of' 
 the supreme rights of the spirit ; and Christianity recog-*^ 
 nises the rights of nature. For each there is a crown of 
 joy, though the way to it lies through the pain and toil 
 and death of the Cross. As in the victorious march of 
 the Eoman arms, the vanquished territory of " nature " is 
 not ravaged and laid waste ; the conquering reason an-' 
 nexes nature ; the kingdom of nature and " the flesh " 
 becomes the kingdom of the rational spirit. The whole 
 man is redeemed from evil to goodness ; the " old " be- 
 comes " new." There is a re-birth of the entire being ; 
 nothing finally dies, it dies only to "rise again" to its 
 true life. All lives in the new, transfigured, spiritual life ; 
 all becomes organic to the one central principle, an ele- 
 
202 THE MORAL IDEAL. 
 
 ment in the one total life. The " world * becomes part of 
 the " kingdom of God." All other, separate and rival, in- 
 terests die, because they are all alike superseded, tran- 
 scended, and incorporated in this one interest. Nay, the 
 individual self, in so far as it insists upon its separate and 
 exclusive life, upon its own peculiar and private interests, 
 must die. The " world " is indeed just the sphere of 
 this narrow selfish self, and both together must be super- 
 seded. " It is no more I that live." But the narrow 
 and selfish self dies that the larger and unselfish self 
 may live. Only he that so loseth his life shall truly 
 find it. 
 
 All this is symbolised in Christianity in the incarna- 
 tion, death, and resurrection of its Founder. The idea of 
 Incarnation the root-idea of Christianity is a splendid 
 and thoroughgoing protest against the ascetic view of 
 Matter as in its very essence evil, a mere prison-house of 
 the soul, to be escaped from by the aspiring spirit, some- 
 thing between which and God there can be no contact or 
 communion any more than between light and darkness. 
 Christianity sees in matter the very vehicle of the divine 
 revelation, the transparent medium of the spiritual life, 
 the great opportunity for the exercise of virtue. "The 
 Word was made Flesh." 'O Ao709 adpj; eyevero. Nor, 
 in word or life, does Jesus suggest any aloofness of spirit 
 from the things of this world, any withdrawal from its 
 affairs, as dangerous to the soul's best life, any superi- 
 ority to its most ordinary avocations. " The Son of Man 
 came eating and drinking," sharing man's common life, 
 and realising the divine ideal in it. Even so, by his 
 lowly and willing acceptance of human life in the entirety 
 
EUD^MONISM. 203 
 
 of its actual relations, did he transfigure that life, by turn- 
 ing to divine account all its uses and occasions, by making 
 of each an element in the life of goodness. This trans- 
 figuration of human life was no single incident or crisis 
 in the career of Jesus ; men did not always see it, but his 
 life itself was one continuous Transfiguration. Nay, the 
 life of goodness always is such a transfiguration ; every- 
 thing is hallowed when it becomes the vehicle of the 
 divine life in man, nothing is any more common or un- 
 clean. Yet the persistent holding to the ideal good of 
 this earthly life means suffering and death ; only so can 
 the earthly nature become the medium of the divine. 
 There are always the two possibilities for man, the 
 lower and the higher; and that the higher may be 
 realised, the lower must be denied. "From flesh into 
 spirit man grows;" and the flesh has to die, that the 
 spirit may live. The eager, strenuous spirit has to crucify 
 the easy, yielding flesh. But the good man dies only to 
 live again ; his death is no clef eat, it is perfect victory 
 victory signed and sealed. From such a death there 
 must needs be a glorious resurrection to that new life 
 which has been purchased by the death of the old. 
 
 5. The conclusion to which we are forced by the facts' The eth- 
 of the moral life is, that the true and adequate interpreta- lem : the 
 tion of it must lie, not in the exclusive assertion of either seif-reai- 
 side of the dualism, but in the discovery of the relation of 
 the two sides to one another. In order to the statement 
 of this relation, we must have recourse to a fundamental 
 principle of unity. In other words, we are led to consider 
 the meaning of Self-realisation. 
 
204 THE MORAL IDEAL. 
 
 As the watchword of Hedonism may be said to be Self- 
 satisfaction or Self-gratification, and as that of Eigorism is 
 apt to be Self-sacrifice or Self-denial, so the watchword of 
 Eudaemonism may be said to be Self-realisation or Self- 
 fulfilment. It seems, however, almost a truism to say 
 that the End of human life is Self-realisation. The aim 
 and object of every living being, of the mere animal as 
 well as of man nay, of the thing as well as the animal 
 and the person may be described as Self-preservation 
 and Self-development, or in the single term Self-realisa- 
 tion. In a universe in which to " exist " means to 
 " struggle," self - assertion, perseverare in esse suo, may 
 be called the universal law of being. Moreover, every 
 ethical theory might claim the term " Self-realisation," as 
 each might claim the term " Happiness." The question 
 is, What is the " Self " ? or Which Self is to be realised ? 
 Hedonism answers, the sentient self ; Rigorism, the ra- 
 tional self ; Eudaemonism, the total self, rational and sen- 
 tient. The ethical problem being to define Self - realisation, 
 is, therefore, in its ultimate form the definition of Self- 
 hood or Personality. When we wish to describe the 
 characteristic and peculiar End of human life, we must 
 either use a more specific term than Self-realisation, or we 
 must explain the meaning of human Self-realisation by 
 defining the Self which is to be realised. And since man 
 alone is, in the proper sense, a " self " or " person," we are 
 led to ask, What is it that constitutes his personality, and 
 distinguishes man as a " person " from the so-called animal 
 or impersonal self ? The basis of his nature being animal, 
 how is it lifted up into the higher sphere of human 
 personality ? 
 
EUDJEMONISM. 205 
 
 6. Self-hood cannot consist in mere Individuality ; for Definition 
 
 , T . ^T^. of Person - 
 
 the animal, as well as the man, is an individual self a'aiity: the 
 
 self that asserts itself against other individuals, that and the 
 
 excludes these latter from its life, and struggles with them 
 
 for the means of its own satisfaction. Man is a self in 
 
 this animal sense of self -hood ; he is a being of impulse, a 
 
 subject of direct and immediate wants and instincts which 
 
 demand their satisfaction, and prompt him to struggle 
 
 with other individuals for the means of such satisfaction. 
 
 These impulsive forces spring up in man as spontaneously 
 
 as in the animal, their " push and pull " is as real in the 
 
 one case as in the other. And jif might were right, these 
 
 forces in their total workings/ would constitute the man, 
 
 as they seem to constitute tne animal ; and the resultant 
 
 of their operations would be the only goal of the former, 
 
 as of the latter life. But might is not right in human 
 
 life ; it is this distinction that constitutes morality. As 
 
 the Greeks said, man is called upon to " measure " 
 
 his impulses in Temperance or Moderation lies the 
 
 path to his self-fulfilment ; and the " measure " of impulse 
 
 is found in " right reason." That is to say, man, as a 
 
 rational being, is called upon to bring impulse under the 
 
 law of the rational self ; man is a rational animal. Butler 
 
 and Aristotle agree in their definition of " human nature " 
 
 and in their view of human life. In Aristotle's opinion 
 
 that which differentiates man from other beings is his 
 
 possession of reason, and the true human life is a life 
 
 " according to right reason. " The distinctive characteristic 
 
 of man, according to Butler, is that he has the power of 
 
 " reflecting " upon the immediate animal impulses which 
 
 sway him, and of viewing them, one and all, in relation to a 
 
206 THE MORAL IDEAL. 
 
 permanent and total good. In this critical and judicial 
 " view " of the impulsive and sentient life, consists that 
 Conscience which distinguishes man from the animal crea- 
 tion, and opens to him the gates of the moral life, which 
 are for ever closed to it. 
 
 It is this Self - consciousness, this power of turning 
 back upon the chameleon - like, impulsive, instinctive, 
 sentient or individual self, and gathering up all the 
 scattered threads of its life in the single skein of a 
 rational whole, that constitutes the true Self-hood of man.. 
 This higher and peculiarly human Self-hood we shall call 
 Personality, as distinguished from the lower or animal 
 self -hood of mere Individuality; and, in view of such 
 a definition of the Self, we may say that Self-realisation 
 means that the several changing desires, instead of being 
 allowed to pursue their several ways, and to seek each its 
 own good or satisfaction, are so correlated and organised 
 that each becomes instrumental to the fuller and truer life 
 of the rational human self. This power of rising above 
 the impulse of the moment, and of viewing it in the light 
 of his rational self-hood ; this power of transcending the 
 entire impulsive, instinctive, and sentient life, and of 
 regarding the self which is but the " bundle of impulses " 
 as the servant of the higher rational self, is what makes 
 man (ethically) man. It is this endowment that con- 
 stitutes Will. We do not attribute Will to the animal, 
 because, so far as we know, it cannot, as we can, arrest the 
 stream of impulsive tendency, but is carried off on the 
 back ' of present impulse. That is a life " according to 
 nature " for it ; in such a life it realises the only " self " it 
 has to realise. But man, as we have seen, can take the 
 
EUD^MONISM. 207 
 
 larger view of reason, and can act in the light of that 
 better insight. It is given to him to criticise the im- 
 pulsive " stream," to arrest and change its course, to sub- 
 due the lower, animal, natural self to the higher, human, 
 rational self ; to build up out of the plastic raw material 
 of sensibility, out of the data of mere native disposition, 
 acted upon by and reacting upon circumstances or " envi- ' 
 ronment," a stable, rational character. We do not attri- , 
 bute "character" to the mere animal; its life is a life - 
 of natural and immediate sensibility, unchecked by any 
 thought of life's meaning as a whole. In its life there is 
 no conscious unity or totality. But for man, the rational 
 animal, the natural life of obedience to immediate sensi- 
 bility is not a " life according to nature," according to his 
 higher and " proper" nature as man. All his natural 
 tendencies to activity, all the surging clamant life of 
 natural sensibility, has to be criticised, judged, approved 
 or condemned, accepted or rejected, by the higher insight 
 of reason which enables him to see his life in its meaning 
 as a whole. His life is not a mere struggle of natural 
 tendencies ; he is the critic, as well as the subject, of such A 
 promptings ; and it is as critic of his own nature that he 
 is master of his own destiny. Just in so far as he makes 
 impulse his minister, as he is master of impulse, or is 
 mastered and defeated by it, does man succeed or fail in 
 the task of Self-realisation. 
 
 7. Thus interpreted, the business of Self-realisation The ration- 
 might be described as a work of moral synthesis. Since sonai^sSf : 
 the time of Kant, Epistemology has found in rational Actual and 
 synthesis the fundamental principle of knowledge. Green ethlcal 
 
208 THE MORAL IDEAL. 
 
 functions has elaborated the parallel, in this respect, between know- 
 ledge and morality, and shown us the activity of the 
 rational Ego at the heart of both. Professor Laurie, in 
 his conception of " Will-reason," has also emphasised the 
 identity of the process in both cases. The task of the 
 rational Ego is, in the moral reference, the organisation 
 of Sensibility, as, in the intellectual case, it is the 
 organisation of Sensation. Impulses and feelings must, 
 like sensations, be " challenged " by the Self, criticised, 
 " measured," and co-ordinated or assigned their place in 
 the Ego's single life. The insight of reason is needed 
 for this work of organisation or synthesis, as Plato and 
 Aristotle saw. As, in the construction of the percept 
 out of the sensation, the Ego recognises, discriminates 
 between, selects from, and combines the sensations pre- 
 sented, and thus forms out of them an object of know- 
 ledge ; so, in the construction of the End out of the 
 impulse, we find the same recognition, discrimination, 
 selection, and organisation of the crude data of sensi- 
 bility. Only through this synthesis of the manifold of 
 sensibility, through this reduction of its several elements 
 to the " common measure " of a single rational life, can 
 the Ego constitute for itself moral ends, and a supreme 
 End or Ideal of life. 
 
 Following the cue of the epistemological parallel, we 
 find that Hedonism in Ethics rests upon the same kind 
 of psychological " atomism " as that which forms the 
 basis of the sensationalistic or empirical theory of know- 
 ledge. Hedonism rests upon the " atomism " of the sep- 
 arate individual feeling or impulse, as Sensationalism 
 rests upon the " atomism " of the separate individual 
 
EUD^MONISM. 209 
 
 sensation. A thorough - going empiricism, whether in 
 ethics or in epistemology, fails to see the need of rational 
 synthesis or " system." The empiricist seems to think 
 that the " atoms " of sensation or of sensibility will mass 
 themselves, he endows them with a kind of dynamical 
 property. And it is true that sensibility, like sensation, 
 already contains within itself a kind of synthesis, that 
 there is a certain continuity in the sentient as in the 
 sensational life ; that each is to be regarded rather as a 
 " stream " than as the several links of a " chain " not yet 
 in existence. But this elementary synthesis must be 
 supplemented in either case by the higher and completer 
 synthesis of reason, if we would pass from the level of the 
 animal to the higher level of human life. Feeling gives 
 a " fringe " or margin, narrower or broader, but " system " 
 comes with Eeason. 
 
 The answer of Kant to epistemological Empiricism may 
 therefore be extended to ethical Empiricism. Psychology 
 itself suggests the Kantian answer, and helps us to cor- 
 rect it. Feelings and impulses are not, any more than 
 sensations, separate and atomic, but, even in their own 
 nature, they form parts in the continuous " stream " of 
 the mental life. But the life of feeling and impulse, as a 
 whole, is " loose " or " separate," and has to be " apper- 
 ceived," * or made an element in the life of the rational 
 Ego. The dualism of reason and sensibility is very real. 
 The life of the spirit is never smooth and easy, like the _ 
 life of nature ; there is always opposition, an intractable 
 " matter " to be subdued to spiritual " form." And the 
 labour and effort of the spirit is greater, the " matter " 
 
 1 In the Kantian sense of that term. 
 
 
210 THE MORAL IDEAL. 
 
 is more intractable, and the struggle with it harder, in the 
 moral than in the intellectual life. 
 
 The sen- 8. But while we thus extend to the ethical life the 
 individual transcendental or Kantian answer to empiricism, we must 
 be careful not to go to the other extreme, and lose the 
 truth of Hedonism. Ethical, like intellectual empiricism, 
 contains an important truth. Adopting Kant's termino- 
 logy, we may say that ethical Personality constitutes itself 
 through the subsumption of the empirical or sentient Ego, 
 by the transcendental or rational Ego. Neither in the 
 life of the empirical Ego alone, as the Hedonists maintain, 
 nor in that of the transcendental Ego alone, as the ethical 
 Eationalists maintain, but in the relation of the one to 
 the other, or in the " synthetic unity of Apperception," 
 does morality consist. We must conserve the real, as 
 well as the ideal, side of the moral life. The error of 
 transcendentalism whether Kantian or Hegelian is 
 that it sacrifices the real (ethically as ontologically) to 
 the ideal, that it sublimates the life of feeling into the 
 life of reason. This is precisely the error of the ancient 
 Greek moralists, the error of sacrificing the moral life, 
 with all its concrete reality of living throbbing human 
 sensibility, on the altar of intellect or cool philosophic 
 reason. We must insist that the Person is always an In- 
 dividual ; his personality acts upon, and constitutes itself 
 out of, his individuality. The doctrine of the abstract 
 universal, of pure rational self -hood, or form without 
 content, is no less inadequate than the doctrine of the 
 abstract particular, of mere individual sensibility, of con- 
 tent without form. In the moral as in the intellectual 
 
EUD^EMONISM. 211 
 
 sphere, the " real " is concrete, the universal in the par- 
 ticular, such a unity of both as means the absolute sacri- 
 fice of neither. Such a " moral Eealism " at once recog- 
 nises the truth of Idealism (Kantian or Hegelian) and 
 supplements it by a more adequate interpretation of 
 ethical fact. For, morally as intellectually, "the indi- 
 vidual alone is the real." 
 
 9. The key to the ethical harmony, then, is: Be #"BeaPer- 
 Person constitute, out of your natural Individuality, 
 the true or ideal self of Personality. The difference be- 
 tween the life of man and that of Nature is, that while 
 nature is under law, man has to subject himself to law. 
 The law or order is, in both cases, the expression of 
 reason; but the reason which shows itself in nature as- 
 Force, shows itself in man as Will. "Will is the power 
 of self-government which belongs to a rational being, or, 
 as Kant said, "practical reason." For, while the entire 
 life of man is permeated by feeling, and may even be 
 regarded as the outcome and expression of feeling, the 
 Law of that life, the Law of feeling itself, is found 
 not in feeling, but in reason. Feeling must become 
 organic to reason, the life of the former must become 
 an element in the life of the latter, not vice versd. For 
 feelings do not control themselves, as Mill said the 
 "higher" control the "lower," and as Spencer says 
 the " re - representative " control the " representative," 
 and they in turn the " presentative." The " represen- 
 tative " or " higher " feelings have not, gud feelings, 
 any authority over, or superiority to, the " presentative " 
 or "lower." It is the rational Self which interprets 
 
212 THE MOEAL IDEAL. 
 
 all feelings by its self - reference, or by its synthetic 
 activity upon them, and which, by such self-reference, 
 makes them "higher" and "lower," assigns to each its 
 place and value. 
 
 Here we find the true " Autonomy " of the moral life. 
 The Law of his life, the criterion of the manner and the 
 measure of the exercise of each impulse, is the proper 
 " nature " or rational Self -hood of the man. He cannot, 
 without ceasing to be man, abjure this function of Self- 
 legislation, or cease to demand of himself a life which 
 shall be the fulfilment of his true and characteristic 
 nature as man. Virtue is not a spontaneous growth, 
 still less an original endowment, of Nature. Man has to! 
 constitute himself a moral Person : slowly and laboriously, 
 out of the raw material of individual feeling and impulse, 
 he has to raise the structure of ethical manhood. We 
 have seen that, even in the animal life, there is an organ- 
 isation of impulse ; but we regard it as the result of in- 
 stinct, because it is not self-planned and self-originated, 
 as in man's case, who can say " A whole I planned." It is 
 the privilege and dignity of a rational being to have the 
 ordering or systematising of impulse in his own hands, 
 to construct for himself the order and system of reason 
 in the life of sensibility. For, as Aristotle truly said,, 
 nature gives only the capacity, and the capacity she 
 gives is rather the capacity of acquiring the capacity ! 
 of virtue, than the capacity of virtue itself. The best 
 reward of virtue is the capacity of a higher virtue ; " as 
 it is by playing on the harp that men become good 
 harpers, so it is by performing virtuous acts that men 
 become virtuous, and as at a race it is not they who 
 
EUD^EMONISM. 213 
 
 stand and watch, but they who run, who receive the 
 prize," so is the life of virtue rewarded with the crown 
 of a future that transcends its past. 
 
 10. But the course of true virtue, like that of true love, " Die to 
 never did run smooth. Its path is strewn with obstacles, Meaning of 
 
 . , . ,, . -,-,. , T . i " Self-sao 
 
 and its very life consists, as Fichte perceived, in the rifice." 
 struggle to overcome them. The subjection of the indi- 
 vidual, impulsive, sentient self to the order of reason is a 
 Herculean taski The immensity, the infinity, of the task 
 is not indeed to be misinterpreted, as if sensibility were a 
 surd that cannot be eliminated from the moral life. Sen- 
 sibility is not to be annihilated in that case the moral 
 task would be an impossible and futile one but co- 
 ordinated or harmonised with the rational nature, made 
 the vehicle and instrument of the realisation of the true 
 or rational self. But this co-ordination is also a sub- 
 ordination ; sensibility must obey, not govern. Here we 
 find the relative truth of Asceticism, and the deeper truth 
 of the Christian principle of Self-sacrifice. The higher or] 
 personal self can be realised only through the death of/ 
 the lower or individual self, as lower and merely indi4 
 vidual. In its separateness and independence, the sentientl 
 self must die; for there may not be two lives, or two 
 selves. Individuality must become an element in the life 
 of personality. I must die, as an individual subject of 
 sensibility, if I would live as a moral person, the master 
 of sensibility. I must crucify the " flesh " (the Pauline 
 term for the "natural," impulsive, and sentient or uii- 
 moralised man), if I would live the life of the spirit. I 
 must lose my lower life, if I would find the higher. With 
 
214 THE MORAL IDEAL. 
 
 the Law of the rational spirit comes the consciousness, 
 and the fact, of sin or moral evil that is, of subjection to 
 mere animal sensibility ; this condemnation, by reason, of 
 the life that is not brought into subjection to its Law is 
 a condemnation unto death. But as the life of the lower 
 is the grave of the higher self, so from the death of 
 the lower comes forth, in resurrection glory, the higher 
 and true Self. "Except a corn of wheat fall into the 
 ground and die, it abideth alone ; but if it die, it bringeth 
 forth much fruit." Each selfish impulse (and all impulses, 
 even the benevolent, are selfish, in the sense that each 
 seeks " its own," and disregards all other claims) must be 
 denied, or brought under the Law of the life of the total ' 
 rational self. The " Everlasting Nay " of such self-sacri- 
 fice precedes and makes possible the " Everlasting Yea " of 
 a true self-fulfilment. The false, worthless, particular, 
 private, separate self must die, if the true self, the rational 
 Personality, is to live. 
 
 I have said that this struggle, with its pain and death, 
 precedes the joy and peace of the higher life. But the 
 sequence is logical rather than chronological ; for in truth 
 the process of death is always going on, simultaneously 
 with the process of life, or rather death and life are two 
 constant elements negative and positive in the life of 
 virtue as we know it. Even the good man " dies daily," 
 daily crucifies the flesh anew. Daily the " old " or " nat- 
 ural man " is being " put off," and the " new " or " spiritual 
 man" "put on." There is a daily and hourly death of 
 nature, and a daily and hourly new birth and resurrection 
 of the spirit. As in the life of a physical organism, disin- 
 tegration mediates a higher integration. La vie c'est la 
 
EUD^MONISM. 215 
 
 mort. 1 Always, therefore, there is pain ; but always be- 
 neath the pain, in the depths of the moral being, there 
 is a joy stronger and more steadfast even than the pain, 
 in the assurance that " old things are passing away, and 
 all things are becoming new." For " the inward man is 
 being renewed day by day," and, in the joy of that renewal, 
 all the " pity " of the pain and sorrow that make it pos- 
 sible sinks out of heart and mind, or lends but a deeper 
 and a graver note to the joy which it has purchased and 
 made possible. So ever with the negative goes the posi- 
 tive side of the ethical life. The spirit has ever more 
 room and atmosphere, and its life becomes richer and 
 fuller; as the flesh becomes a willing instrument in its 
 hands, it finds continually new and higher ends for which 
 to use it. 
 
 And the goal of the moral life, the ideal after which it \ 
 strives, is a spontaneity and freedom and " naturalness " 7 
 like that of the life of original impulse. As Aristotle said, 
 virtue is first " activity " (Ivepyeui), then " habit " (ef^) ; \ 
 evepyeua leads to SvvajjLis, the originally indefinite poten- 
 tiality the potentiality of either vice or virtue, becomes 
 a definite capacity for virtue in the established character 
 of the good man. This " second nature," which makes 
 virtue so far easy, is virtue's best reward. There is all the 
 difference in the world between the mere " rigorist " or 
 negatively good man, who thinks out his conduct, whose 
 life is a continual repression, and the positively good man, 
 who knows the expulsive power of a new affection, whose 
 goodness seems to bloom spontaneously, like the flower, 
 
 1 Cf. Professor Royce's article on " The Knowledge of Good and Evil " 
 (' International Journal of Ethics,' Oct. ] 893). 
 
216 THE MOEAL IDEAL. 
 
 with a life that, " down to its very roots, is free." The one 
 life is stiff, stereotyped, artificial; the other breathes of 
 moral health, and commends goodness to its fellows. 
 
 "Pleasure" 11. Such a complete moral life we have called Self- 
 P?ness." ap realisation or Self -fulfilment. We might have called it 
 by Aristotle's name of Happiness, and thus reclaimed 
 the word from the exclusive possession of the Hedonists. 
 Only, in that case, we must distinguish, as Aristotle did, 
 between Happiness and Pleasure. The name contains a 
 reference to pleasure, but pleasures, even in their " sum/' 
 do not constitute Happiness. Happiness is not the sum 
 or aggregate of pleasures, it is their harmony or system. 
 The distinction between Happiness and Pleasure, even 
 within the sphere of feeling, could hardly be better 
 stated than by Professor Dewey : 1 " Pleasure is transi- 
 tory and relative, enduring only while some special activ- 
 ity endures, and having reference only to that activity. 
 Happiness is permanent and universal. It results only 
 when the act is such a one as will satisfy all the interests 
 of the self concerned, or will lead to no conflict, either 
 present or remote. Happiness is the feeling of the whole 
 self, as opposed to the feeling of some one aspect of self." 
 As Misery or Unhappiness is not pure pain, or even a 
 balance of pain over pleasure, but lies in the discord of 
 pleasures, so Happiness lies in the harmony of pleasures, 
 or in the reference of each to the total Self. Happiness 
 is, in a word, the synthesis of pleasures. And, since 
 pleasure is the concomitant of activity, Happiness, or the 
 synthesis and harmony of pleasures, depends upon and is 
 
 1 'Psychology,' 293. 
 
EUDJSMONISM. 217 
 
 constituted by the synthesis of activities, and ultimately 
 by that supreme activity of " moral synthesis " which we 
 have been considering. We thus ascertain the true place 
 of feeling in the life of goodness, and the truth of He- 
 donism as ethical theory. "We may regard pleasure, with 
 Aristotle, as the bloom of the virtuous life, as the index 
 and criterion of moral progress. The End of life is neither 
 to know nor to feel, but to be. The life of man's^ total Self- / 
 hood is its own End, a doing which is the expression of 
 being, and the medium of higher and fuller being, of a 
 deeper and richer unity of thought and sensibility. In 
 so far as we attain that end, we learn to " think clear, feel 
 deep, bear fruit well." The life of Personality is, in its 
 very essence, a completely satisfying life. 
 
 " Resolve to be thyself ; and know, that he 
 Who finds himself, loses his misery." 
 
 12. This interpretation of Self-realisation enables us to Egoism and 
 co-ordinate and unify not merely the several elements of 
 the individual life, but also the several individual lives. 
 Since each is not a mere individual, but a person, in the '. 
 common personality of man is found the ground of the 
 conciliation and harmony of the several individual lives. 
 As Kant put it, each being, in virtue of his rationality, an 
 end-in-himself, and each self-legislative, there is found a 
 common Law : " So act as if thou couldst will the prin- 
 ciple of thine act law universal." Every other Person is, 
 as a Person, an end-in-himself, equally with me ; my atti- 
 tude to him must therefore be essentially the same as my 
 attitude to myself. The Law or Formula that expresses 
 both his life and mine is that we are to be regarded 
 
218 THE MORAL IDEAL. 
 
 (whether by ourselves or by one another) always as ends, 
 never as merely means or instruments. He cannot, any 
 more than I, accept a law which does not find its sanction 
 in his own nature as a rational self. Here we find a com- 
 mon ground and meeting-place : however we may differ in 
 our individuality, yet in our deepest nature or in our 
 rational personality we are the same. We are the same 
 in the Form of our nature, and therefore in the Law of 
 our life, however diverse may be its content. 
 
 When we submit ourselves to the common law of Per- 
 sonality, we cease to be a number of separate, competing 
 or co-operating, individuals ; we together constitute a 
 society, a " system " or " kingdom of ends." Individuality 
 separates us ; personality unites us with our fellows. It 
 is as persons that we are fellows. The only strictly com- 
 mon or social Good is a personal Good the Good of 
 Persons. The hedonistic or sentient Good is subjective 
 and individual the good of the feeling subject or individ- 
 ual. The common Good must be the product of reason, 
 not as excluding feeling, but as containing its regulative 
 form and law ; of personality, as including and domi- 
 nating individuality. Here, in the general as in the 
 individual case, we find the clue to the harmony and 
 co-ordination of sensibility. Feeling, being made organic 
 to rational personality in each, comes under the wider as 
 well as under the narrower law. Since man cannot, as a 
 rational person, separate himself from his fellows, and 
 shut himself up in his own individual being, he cannot do 
 so even as a sentient individual, or as a subject of sensi- 
 bility. For he is not two selves but one ; his personality 
 has annexed his individuality. This is the real unity and 
 
EUD^EMONISM. 219 
 
 solidarity of mankind. We are joined to one another, and 
 breathe the same atmosphere, in the deeper things of the 
 rational spirit, and therefore also in the lesser matters of 
 our daily life. Our life is one, because our nature is one* 
 From the true ethical standpoint, there is no cleft between 
 egoism and altruism, as there is none between reason and I 
 sensibility. We are at once Egoists and Altruists in every 1 
 moral action. Each is an Ego, and each sees in his brother 
 ) an " Alter Ego." The dualism and conflict here, as in the 
 individual case, arises from the " rebellion " of the individ- 
 ual against the person. The claims of individuals con- 
 flict, always and necessarily ; the claims of persons never* 
 The moral task, therefore, on its social as well as on its 
 individual side, lies in effecting the subjugation of individ- 
 uality to personality, or in obeying the Law of reason, 
 which embraces the lives of our fellows as well as our 
 own : " Be a person, and respect others as persons ; " 
 subject your own clamant individuality to your abiding 
 rational personality : 
 
 " To thine own self be true, 
 And it must follow, as the night the day, 
 Thou canst not then be false to any man." 
 
 13. The conception of Law, prominent in the ethical Theeth- 
 reflection of Plato and the Stoics, and farther emphasised cance of 
 by Christianity, has been made a corner-stone of modern meaning of 
 ethical theory by Butler and Kant. Not only in Intu- u y ' 
 itionism and Transcendentalism, but even in Hedonism 
 and Evolutionism, the conception plays an important part. 
 What significance can we attach to it from the standpoint 
 of Personality ? 
 
 The foregoing discussion has partly anticipated the 
 
220 THE MORAL IDEAL. 
 
 answer to this question. We have seen that the moral 
 task of man is the co-ordination or organisation of im- 
 pulse into a system of rational ends, and that the co- 
 ordinating or organising principle is the idea of rational 
 Self -hood or Personality. In this idea of tru human 
 | Self -hood is found the Law of man's life./ It is a law 
 I universal ; for while the content of these personal ends 
 will vary with the individuality of the sensible subject, 
 and with the stimuli that excite such individual ^sensi- 
 bility, their form will be the same in all, being con- 
 stituted by the common rational Ego iit each. We thus 
 avoid, on the one hand, the formalism of the Intuitional 
 and Kantian Ethics, with their insistence upon mere 
 obedience to rational, and therefore universal, Law ; and, 
 on the other hand, the subjectivity and particularism of 
 Hedonism, which finds the moral criterion in the feeling 
 of the individual subject. The interpretation of Person- 
 ality as including individuality provides for the form of 
 reason a content of sensibility, and thus secures a con- 
 crete view of the moral life : it shows us the universal 
 in the particular. I am different from you, for we are 
 both individuals ; and since our individuality must colour 
 our respective ideals of life, these ideals are, so far, 
 different. But while it is the individual self that has 
 to be realised, it is the complete Self or Personality of the 
 individual, into whose common life the individuality of 
 each must be taken up and interpreted as an element ; 
 and this secures a common ideal for all. 
 
 The peculiar form or category of moral experience is 
 thus seen to be Law, Duty, or Obligation. The difference 
 between moral or spiritual and natural Law is just the 
 
EUD^EMONISM. 221 
 
 difference between the life of a being that shares con- 
 sciously in reason and one that does not so share. The 
 universe being rational through and through, the " Law " 
 or Formula of all phenomena, of all occurrences, is ra- 
 tional. But that Law may be expressed consciously or 
 unconsciously, ly the being or merely through the being. 
 Now, the Law of the life of a rational being must be 
 Autonomy: moral self-realisation is "realisation of Self 
 by Self." The Law of Nature's life is Heteronomy; it 
 is part of a larger system, and comes under the Law of 
 that system. But a rational being is an End-in-himself, 
 and can find nowhere save in his own nature the Law of 
 his life. This is the prerogative of Eeason to legislate 
 for itself, to be at once subject and sovereign in the moral 
 kingdom, as it is at once teacher and scholar in the intel- 
 lectual school. *S 
 
 The transition from the " innocence," or non-moral con- Animal 
 dition, of the animal or the child, which has not yet cenee** and 
 broken with Nature, but remains in unconscious subjec- iedgeof 
 tion to its Law, to the moral status, in which " Law " 
 asserts itself in the very consciousness of a possible and 
 actual disobedience to it, thus creating the distinction 
 between good and evil, has been naively represented by 
 the imagination of early man as a "Fall" from a pre- 
 vious state of bliss. A Fall, and yet also an ascent in 
 the scale of being; a fall from Holiness, but an ascent 
 from Innocence. "Ye shall be as gods, knowing good 
 and evil ; " " lest they eat of the fruit of the tree of the 
 knowledge of good and evil, and become as one of us." 
 Christianity has touched and changed this yearning after 
 a Golden Age in the past experience of the race into a 
 
222 THE MORAL IDEAL. 
 
 yearning after a future Golden Age. The conception of 
 Evolution also teaches us to regard human history as a 
 progress, not a regress. And we have ourselves seen that 
 the consciousness of the breach between the ideal and the 
 actual, of the dualism between nature and spirit, is the 
 essential condition of a finite Self -consciousness and Self- 
 realisation. It may be that we cannot explain the origin 
 of evil ; but, evil being there, we can understand its moral 
 significance. Evil is the shadow cast by the moral Ideal 
 upon the actual life. The sense of Failure comes with the 
 consciousness of an ideal; nature never " fails," man always 
 does. And so long as the breach continues between the 
 actual and the ideal, so long must the element of Law 
 or Obligation enter into the substance of the moral 
 consciousness. 
 
 Various But Law or Obligation) assumes different aspects at 
 Law. the successive stages of the moral life of the individual. 
 It is first external, then internal ; first " Do this," 
 then " Be this." It is first the outer Law or Command, 
 accompanied by Coercion, whether of reward or punish- 
 ment, of the parent, of the State, of social opinion, a 
 kind of pressure of his environment, moulding the indi- 
 vidual from without. This is the stage of "Abstract 
 Right," as Hegel terms it, the stage of passive and un- 
 critical acquiescence by the individual in the conven- 
 tional morality in whose atmosphere he has grown up. 
 As he advances to moral manhood, the individual passes 
 from this allegiance to the outer law to the severer rule 
 of the law which he finds written in his own heart. 
 This is the stage of Moralitat, of the reign of the inner 
 Law of the individual " Conscience," of the assertion of 
 
EUD^EMONISM. 
 
 the "right of private judgment" in the moral sphere, 
 the stage at which the life, become a "law unto itself," is 
 full of introspective " conscientiousness," and liable, in its 
 revolt from the morality of custom and convention, to 
 become the prey of individual or sectarian enthusiasms 
 and fanaticisms. Necessary as this stage is, and per- 
 manent as, in a sense, it may necessarily be for the 
 individual, he yet must seek to escape from its subjec- 
 tivity and limitation, and to reach the insight into the 
 partial, if not complete, identity of the outer and the 
 inner Law the stage of "Ethicality" or " Sittlichkeit." 
 Still, the critical point in the moral history of the indi- 
 vidual is that at which the Law passes from the outer 
 to the inner form. The outer Law is always, in truth, 
 from an ethical standpoint, the reflection of the inner ; 
 it is the deepest Self of humanity that makes its con- 
 stant claim upon the individual man, and demands its' 
 satisfaction. And the continual criticism of the outer \ 
 by the inner Law, of convention and custom by Con- I 
 science, is the very root and spring of all moral progress. 
 Indeed the breach between the inner and the outer is 
 never entirely healed ; the ideal State is never reached. 
 
 The inner demand is absolute, a " categorical impera- its abso- 
 lve." Its unyielding " Thou shalt " is the voice of the luteness 
 ideal to the actual man, and the ideal admits of no 
 concession, no " give and take," no compromise with the 
 actual. This demand of the rational and ideal Self is not 
 to be misinterpreted, as if its absoluteness meant the 
 annihilation of feeling or " nature." The demand is for 
 such a perfect mastery of the impulsive and sentient, 
 or "natural" self, that in it the true self, which is 
 
224 THE MORAL IDEAL. 
 
 fundamentally rational, may be realised ; that it may 
 be the rational or human, and not the merely sentient 
 or animal self, that lives. What produces the constant 
 contradiction between ideal and attainment is not the 
 presence of feeling, as a surd that cannot be eliminated. 
 It is that the harmony of a life in which feeling is 
 subdued to reason must become ever more perfect, the 
 life of the true Self must become ever more complete, 
 as moral progress continues. 
 
 For the demand of the inner Self for realisation is 
 an infinite demand. The Self never is fully realised, it 
 remains always an ideal demanding realisation. Here, 
 in the constant ethical antinomy, the perpetual contra- 
 diction between ideal and attainment, is the source of 
 the undying moral consciousness of Law or Obligation. 
 Ever as we attain in any measure to it, the Ideal seems 
 to grow and widen and deepen, so that it is still for us the 
 unattained. One mountain-path ascended only reveals 
 height after height in the great Beyond of the moral life. 
 It is those that stay on the plane of a superficial and con- 
 ventional morality who think they can see the summits of 
 its hills. Those who climb know better. It is they who 
 scale the mountain-tops of duty who know best what 
 heights are yet to climb, and how far its high peaks 
 penetrate into God's own heaven. It is the infinity of 
 the ideal Self that makes it, in its totality, unrealisable, 
 and the life of duty inexhaustible, by a finite being. No 
 improvement in environment, physical or social, can effect 
 the entire disappearance of the contradiction between the 
 Ideal and its attainment. For the Idea 1 originates, not 
 without but within ourselves, in "the abysmal deeps of 
 
EUD^MONISM. 225 
 
 personality," and the fountain of those deeps is never 
 dried up. The Ideal is always being realised, it is true, 
 in fuller and richer measure. But " to have attained " or 
 " to be already perfect " would be to have finished the 
 moral life. Such an absolute coincidence of the ideal and 
 the actual is inconceivable, just because the Good is the 
 Ideal, and not a mere projection of the actual. The latter 
 interpretation of the Good would make it finite, and 
 attainable enough by human weakness. But to limit 
 the Ideal were to destroy it. The man inspired with a 
 loyal devotion to the Good is willing to see the path 
 of his life stretch ever forward and upward, to lift up 
 his eyes unto the eternal hills of the divine Holiness 
 itself. For he knows that he has laid the task upon 
 himself, and that, if failure and disappointment come 
 inevitably to him in the attempt to execute it, his is 
 also the dignity of this "high calling," and his too a 
 success which, but for the Ideal and the failure which 
 faithfulness to it implies, had been for him impossible. 
 He would not exchange this human life, with all its pain 
 and weariness, with all its humiliation and disappoint- 
 ment, for any lower. Better surely this noble human 
 dissatisfaction than the most perfect measure of animal 
 content. Is not such failure "only the other side of 
 success ; " is not such " discontent " indeed " divine " ? 
 
 To seek to rise above Duty or Law is, as Kant said, 
 " moral Fanaticism." It is the peculiar category of human 
 life, of the life of a being at once finite and infinite ; it is 
 the expression of the dualism of Form and Matter, of 
 Eeason and Sensibility. Certainly we shall not overcome 
 the dualism by minimising it ; rather it must be pressed 
 
 p 
 
226 THE MORAL IDEAL. 
 
 until, it may be in another life or in prophetic glimpses in 
 the religious life even now, it yields the higher unity and 
 peace for which our spirits crave. Meantime, it is no 
 ignoble bondage ; if the spirit is imprisoned, it is ever 
 breaking through the bars of its prison-house. Man lays 
 the law upon himself ; it is because he is a citizen of the 
 higher world that he feels the obligation of its law, and 
 the bondage of the lower. And when he recognises the 
 source of the law, it ceases, in a sense, to be a burden ; or 
 it becomes one which he is willing and eager to bear, 
 and which becomes lighter the longer and the more faith- 
 fully it is borne. The yoke of such a service is indeed 
 easy, and its burden light. 
 
 Expres- 14. It may help to the understanding as well as the 
 
 Eudse? vindication of the general position above described, to 
 JoJinPhil- glance at one or two of the most striking expressions of 
 Mophy. Eudaeinonism in philosophy and in literature. In philo- 
 sophy, I will select rather from the Greeks than from 
 the moderns, partly because their contribution to ethical 
 theory is less familiar, or at any rate less appreciated, and 
 partly because the modern statements are in a great 
 measure dependent upon the ancient, and can be fully 
 understood only in the light of the latter. Among the 
 moderns, we owe the most adequate expressions of 
 Butler. Eudsemonisni to Butler and to Hegel. From the sketch 
 already given of Butler's ethical theory, it will have been 
 observed how much he owes to the Greeks. His leading 
 conceptions of human nature as a civil constitution, of the 
 authoritative rank of the rational or reflective principles, 
 of the harmony which results from the just division of 
 
EUD^MONISM. 227 
 
 labour among the various elements of our nature, and the 
 discord which comes from their mutual interference and- 
 the insurrection of the lower against the rule of the higher 
 all this we already find in Plato. And Aristotle had, like 
 Butler, discovered the secret of human virtue in that reason" 
 which is the differentiating attribute of human nature. 
 
 It is Hegel who, of all modern philosophers, has given Hegel, 
 most adequate expression to the essential principle of the 
 ethical life, alike on its negative and on its positive side. 
 With Kant he recognises the full claim of reason, but he 
 insists upon correlating with it the rightful claim of sensi- 
 bility. In ethics as in metaphysics, Hegel finds the uni- 
 versal in the particular, the rational in the sensible. In 
 the evolution of the moral as of the intellectual life, he 
 discovers the dialectical movement of affirmation through 
 negation, of life through death ; in the one as in the other 
 phase of human experience, " that is first which is natural, 
 and afterward that which is spiritual." The life of nat- 
 ural sensibility is only the raw material of the moral 
 life ; to be moralised, it must be rationalised. In the 
 words of Dr Hutchison Stirling i 1 "To Hegel, then, even 
 the body, nay, the mind itself, require to be taken posses- 
 sion of, to become in actuality ours. Culture, education, 
 is required for both. The body, in the immediacy of its 
 existence, is inadequate to the soul, and must be made its 
 ready organ and its animated tool. The mind, too, is at 
 first, as it were, immersed in nature, and requires en- 
 franchisement. This enfranchisement is in each subject 
 the hard labour against mere subjectivity of action, and 
 against the immediacy of appetite, as against the subjec- 
 
 1 'Philosophy of Law,' 42. 
 
 THK 
 
 
 
228 THE MORAL IDEAL. 
 
 tive variety of feeling and the arbitrariness or caprice of 
 self-will. But through the labour it is that subjective 
 will attains to objectivity, and becomes capable and worthy 
 of being the actuality of the idea. For so particularity is 
 wrought into universality, and through universality be- 
 comes the concrete singular." 
 
 Yet this " concrete singular " of the universalised par- 
 ticular or the rationalised sensibility is not, for Hegel, the 
 Person ; for him Personality is only a provisional category, 
 not the ultimate category of the moral life. Hegel's Per- 
 son is the legal person, subject of rights, not the moral 
 person, strictly objective and rational. Hence the prin- 
 ciple, " Be a person, and respect others as persons," is for 
 him only a stage in the ethical life, to be transcended in 
 its perfect development. It is of the essence of his pan- 
 theistic metaphysic to sink the Personality of man in the 
 universal Life of God, and to conceive human life as ulti- 
 mately modal and impersonal rather than as substantive 
 and personal. Yet Hegel does much for the conception 
 of Personality both in the intellectual and in the moral 
 reference, and, if we sit loose to his final metaphysical 
 construction, we shall find in his philosophy as striking 
 and adequate ethical statements as are to be found any- 
 where. Take, e.g., this statement of the distinction between 
 the individual and the person : " In personality, indeed, it 
 lies that I, as on all sides of me, in inward desire, need, 
 greed, and appetite, and in direct outward existence, this 
 perfectly limited and finite individual, am yet, as person, 
 infinite, universal, and free, and know myself, even in my 
 finitude, as such." But our indebtedness to Hegel and his 
 school for the position we have reached is so large as to 
 
EUD^EMONISM. 229 
 
 have necessarily forced itself upon the reader's attention, 
 and to render superfluous any further illustrations from 
 that quarter at the present stage. Let us turn, then, to 
 the Greeks, to whom Hegel would be the first to acknow- 
 ledge his own indebtedness. 
 
 Whether one takes Plato's psychology or his ethics Plato, 
 and they are inseparable one is equally surprised at the 
 completeness of his apprehension of the eudsemonistic 
 interpretation of the moral life. He distinguishes three ele- 
 ments in human nature reason, spirit, and appetite (\6yos, 
 Ovfjbos, TO eTriOvfjirjTiKov). Eeason is a unity, so also is 
 spirit, but appetite is a manifold. Further, while both 
 spirit and appetite are impulsive in their nature, their 
 relation to reason is not the same. Appetite is antagon- i 
 istic to reason, and is strictly irrational (TO akoyicmKov) ; ' 
 spirit is reason's natural ally, reason's watch-dog sent 
 forth to curb the alien force of appetite, and again re- 
 called and kept in check by its master reason. Here we * 
 find a recognition, first, of the dependence of reason upon J 
 sensibility for the execution of its own ends, and, secondly, 
 of the seeds in the human soul alike of harmony and dis- 
 cord with the ends of reason. The various elements have 
 in them the possibility of harmony as well as of discord, 
 and it is for reason, which possesses the key to the har- 
 mony, to use the force provided to its hand in the impul- 
 sive nature for the harmonising of these diverse elements. 
 The figure of the Charioteer has the same lesson. The 
 Charioteer is the rational Self, whose function it is to 
 guide the journey of the soul. But the Charioteer were 
 helpless without the steeds ; his is the guidance only, it 
 is theirs to perform the journey. And, again, there are 
 
230 THE MORAL IDEAL. 
 
 two steeds ; and while the one is rebellious, like the horde 
 of ungoverned appetites that would disturb the fair order 
 of reason in the life of the soul, the other is, like the 
 rationally minded spirit, apt to obey the rein of the wise 
 Charioteer. " Let our figure be of a composite nature a 
 pair of winged horses and a charioteer. Now the winged 
 horses and the charioteer of the gods are all of them 
 noble, and of noble breed, but our horses are mixed: 
 moreover, our charioteer drives them in a pair ; and one 
 of them is noble and of noble origin, and the other is 
 ignoble and of ignoble origin ; and the driving, as might 
 be expected, is no easy matter with us." That soul " which 
 follows God best and is likest to him lifts the head of the 
 Charioteer into the outer world, and is carried round in 
 the revolution, troubled indeed by the steeds, and with 
 difficulty beholding true being; while another rises and 
 falls, and sees, and again fails to see, by reason of the 
 unruliness of the steeds. The rest of the souls are also 
 longing after the upper world, and they all follow, but not 
 being strong enough they are carried round in the deep 
 below, plunging, treading on one another, striving to be 
 first ; and there is confusion and the extremity of effort, 
 and many of them are lamed, or have their wings broken 
 through the ill-driving of the charioteers." l But let the 
 Charioteer only do his driving well, holding the rein tightly 
 over the unruly steed of earthly passion, and it, too, will 
 be guided into the upward path, and will at last become 
 the other's fellow there. " For the food which is suited to 
 the highest part of the soul comes out of that meadow, and 
 the wing on which the soul soars is nourished with this." 
 
 1 ' Phsedrus,' 248 ( Jowett's transl. ) 
 
EUD^EMONISM. 231 
 
 And, once more, the highest life of the soul, the life of 
 philosophic contemplation, so far from being a passionless 
 life of pure thought, is itself an intensely passionate life. 
 For the supremely true and good is also the supremely 
 beautiful, and the soul that is weaned from the beauties] 
 of the merely sensible world is rapt in the passion of that j 
 Beauty absolute and eternal, which is imparted to the 
 ever-growing and perishing beauties of all other things. 
 " He who, under the influence of true love, rising upwards 
 from these, begins to see that beauty, is not far from the 
 end. And the true order of going or being led by another 
 to the things of love, is to use the beauties of earth as steps 
 along which he mounts upwards for the sake of that other 
 beauty, going from one to two, and from two to all fair 
 forms, and from fair forms to fair practices, and from fair 
 practices to fair notions, until from fair notions he arrives 
 at the notion of absolute beauty, and at last knows what 
 the essence of beauty is. This ... is that life above all 
 others which man should live, in the contemplation of 
 beauty absolute. . . . What if man had eyes to see the 
 true beauty the divine beauty, I mean, pure and clear 
 and unalloyed, not clogged with the pollutions of mor- 
 tality, and all the colours and vanities of human life 
 thither looking, and holding converse with the divine 
 beauty, divine and simple ? Do you not see that in that 
 communion only, beholding beauty with the eye of the 
 mind, he will be enabled to bring forth, not images of 
 beauty, but realities (for he has hold not of an image but 
 of a reality), and bringing forth and nourishing true virtue, 
 to become the friend of God and be immortal, if mortal 
 man may." And Socrates adds, that "in the attainment of 
 
232 THE MORAL IDEAL. 
 
 this end human nature will not easily find a better helper 
 than love. And therefore, also, I say, that every man 
 ought to honour him, as I myself honour him, and walk 
 in his ways, and exhort others to do the same, and praise 
 the power and spirit of love, according to the measure of 
 my ability now and ever." 1 For the loves of earth are 
 our schoolmasters to bring us at last, when all the tem- 
 pest of the soul is laid, and all its passions purified and 
 ennobled, unto the heavenly Love, . the Love of God 
 Himself. 
 
 Plato's central ethical conception is cast in the mould 
 of his psychology. It is that of a perfect harmony of all 
 the elements of the soul. (' The good life is for him the 
 musical life ; the life of a soul perfectly attuned to reason! 
 
 * \J 
 
 cannot but " make music." His favourite figure is that of 
 the State ; the soul, like the true State, ought to act as a 
 unit, the sovereign will of the whole being accepted by 
 each of the parts. The sovereign element in the soul is, 
 of course, reason, whose insight into the Good of the 
 whole fits it to plan for the whole and to compose the 
 symphony of its common life. But if there is to be 
 sovereignty, there must also be subjection and sub- 
 mission ; and the subject-class is the brood of " appetites," 
 the artisans and labourers of the city of the soul, to 
 be "kept under" and controlled, for they have no self- 
 control. The " spirit " fulfils the military and executive 
 office, enforcing the behests of reason in the sphere of 
 sensibility. Thus the harmony has two sides a negative 
 and a positive ; it is at once Temperance or self-control 
 and Justice or self-realisation. If the order of reason is 
 
 1 'Symposium/ 210-212 (Jowett's transl.) 
 
EUD^EMONISM. 233 
 
 to be maintained, the disorder of sensibility must be put 
 down ; if the good of the whole is to be attained, the in- 
 surrection of the parts against the whole must be quelled. 
 Temperance, or the non-interference of any part with 
 the proper work of another part, is no less essential 
 than Justice, or the doing of its own work by each part 
 of the soul. The essential evil in this spiritual city is 
 the claim of the part to be the whole the evil of dis- 
 integration. The unjust life is the intemperate or re- 
 bellious, the discordant life. Justice is " the health and 
 beauty and well-being of the soul," the integrity of the 
 nature ; injustice is the " disease and deformity " which 
 come from the uprising of the part against the whole, of 
 the inferior against the superior principle. The life of 
 righteousness is the life of the integrated and harmonised * 
 nature, which has reduced itself from a " mere manifold " 
 of sensibility to the unity of rational system (cva yevopevov ' 
 e/c TToXAwz'), and attained to friendship with itself ($L\ov 
 yevo/jievov eavra)). But we have seen that there are in 
 human nature the seeds of discord as well as of har- 
 mony, of war as well as of peace, of disease as well as 
 of health ; and its true welfare must be reached through 
 stern discipline and hard struggle. This struggle is the 
 fight of clear reason against blind irrational impulse ; and 
 victory conies with the opening of the eyes of impulse to 
 see that larger rational good which includes its own. 
 
 Aristotle's term for the Good is evScu/movia, and the Aristotle, 
 entire spirit of his ethics is eudsemonistic. I will here 
 signalise only one or two of his fundamental ethical ideas, 
 and suggest their interpretation in the line of the theory 
 here called by his own name, Eudaemonism. 
 
234 THE MORAL IDEAL. 
 
 In the first place, Aristotle recognises the difference 
 between the moral and the natural development or self- 
 realisation, between the ethical and the physical process. 
 In both cases we have the actualisation of the potential, 
 but the manner of the actualisation is different in the two 
 cases. In nature the potentiality is a single and necessary J 
 one, the acorn can only become the oak, the boy the man. 
 In morality there is always a double or alternative poten-{ 
 tiality, a man may become either virtuous or vicious. It 
 is, moreover, by doing the same things, only in a different 
 way, that either of the alternative potentialities is actual- 
 ised. As it is by playing on the harp that men become 
 either good or bad harpers, by playing well that they be- 
 come good, by playing ill that they become bad musicians, 
 so is it with all the activities of life ; in the same activi- 
 ties are the beginnings of both good and evil habits, of 
 both the virtues and the vices. Whether a man shall be- 
 come virtuous or vicious, depends on the manner of these 
 activities. 
 
 Whether, however, he becomes virtuous or vicious, he 
 has only actualised the character which already existed in 
 him potentially. The seeds of the particular vice or virtue 
 which reveals itself in his character lay in his original 
 nature and the circumstances of his lot. For it is not in 
 the choice of the absolute Mean, but of the Mean relative 
 to the individual, that virtue lies. Virtue is universal and 
 not of private interpretation, for it is always " according 
 to right reason " ; but it is also particular, and constituted 
 by individual temperament and concrete circumstances 
 (the latter being called by Aristotle " furniture of fortune "), 
 or " as a prudent man would decide." Virtue and vice are 
 
EUD^EMONISM. 235 
 
 the correlates of the individuality and its opportunities of 
 actualisation ; nor does Aristotle hold that these elements 
 of idiosyncrasy can be eliminated, or the concrete life of 
 man contained within the limits of an exact mathematical 
 formula. If his moral Ideal is, in a sense, universal and 
 absolute an Ideal of reason, it is also, in a sense, par- 
 ticular and relative an Ideal of sensibility. 
 
 The doctrine of the Mean is itself most significant of 
 its author's regard for the life of sensibility as well as 
 for that of reason. Vice consists in excess or defect of 
 that which, in itself and in its appropriate measure, is 
 good. And if in reason he finds the " common measure " 
 of sensibility, he yet admits, as we have just seen, that 
 this rational measure must be modified by a fresh refer- 
 ence to sensibility itself ; that, in a way, sensibility also 
 is a measure. 
 
 In his psychology Aristotle may be said to anticipate 
 the distinction between the individual and the person in 
 his distinction between the irrational (or non-rational), 
 passive, nutritive and animal soul, on the one hand, and 
 the rational, active, creative soul, on the other, as well as 
 in his interpretation of the latter as the true being and 
 perfect actualisation of the former. But the real psycho- 
 logical basis of Aristotle's ethical Eudsemonism is to be 
 found in his conception of the relation of the soul to the J 
 body. The soul is for him the Entelechy of the body, 
 its perfect fulfilment and actualisation, ~ its final Form, 
 its very Essence, Truth, and Being. This conception 
 necessitates a revision, and a new interpretation, of 
 Aristotle's own division of human nature into " rational " 
 and " irrational " elements. From this standpoint there 
 
236 THE MORAL IDEAL. 
 
 can be no finally " irrational " element in man, any more 
 than in the universe. For, in man as in the universe, all 
 " matter " is quick with " form " ; the one is the poten- 
 tiality, the other the actuality of Form. Everywhere we 
 have the promise and pot'ency of reason : the " irrational " 
 is but reason in the making, in the slow process of its 
 increasing manifestation. Nothing is irrational, since in 
 all things are the seeds of reason ; everything is irrational, 
 in so far as it is yet urfactualised potentiality, or mere 
 "matter" not yet formed. 
 
 The Soul or the Self is, then, the Logos of the body, the 
 articulate expression of the body's total Meaning, its End 
 and its true Being (TO TL^V elvai). The soul's true life 
 
 ^ . 
 
 must, therefore, be the summation of all the possibilities of 
 the body, such an activity as shall be the perfect expression 
 of every element and the evolution of that nature in its 
 totality, the final and perfect Form which is "without 
 matter" because it has taken up into itself all the "matter," 
 and expressed it, leaving nothing out. The only evil, the 
 only " irrational " life, would be that in which the process 
 of the victorious reason was arrested, and in which that 
 was accounted as Form which was not yet the final form, 
 but, to him who had seen its form, only " matter " after all. 
 The essence of evil would be to act as if we had already 
 attained or were already perfect, instead of pressing to- 
 ward the mark of our nature's perfection. Filled with this 
 aspiration, the virtuous man is unwilling to stereotype any 
 of virtue's forms, however fair, knowing that to stay the 
 process of the life of reason is to kill that life. 
 
 15. Let us look, in closing, at one or two of the most 
 
EUD^EMONISM. 237 
 
 striking and comprehensive literary expressions of the (6) in Lit- 
 erature, 
 ethical dualism and of the process by which, in the ethical 
 
 life, it is overcome. Take first the Faust story one of the 
 most remarkable of these expressions in Goethe's treat- 
 ment of it. The temptation of Faust is to sacrifice the 
 life of thought, the fruits, won by hard labour, of the 
 scholar's life, for a career of merely sensuous satisfaction. 
 Why " scorn delights and live laborious days " ? Why 
 miss the pulse-beats of life's keenest joys ? Both lives he 
 cannot live ; he must make his choice between them, and, 
 once made, the choice shall be irrevocable. The problem 
 comes to Faust as the representative of the conflict be- 
 tween the spirit of the elder and the newer time. His 
 has been the life of the mediaeval scholar, a life of thought 
 apart from the world of real present interests and events, 
 and, in the keen realisation of the emptiness of such a 
 life, he longs for contact with reality, with nature, with 
 human passion, with life in all its forms. The revolt of 
 his eager unsatisfied spirit sends him forth into the un- 
 tried world of common human experience, to seek there 
 the satisfaction which has eluded him in his scholar-life 
 of seclusion and stern thought. The new way is easy 
 enough ; it is the broad smooth path of sensuous delight, ' 
 and crowded with the multitude. If Faust can deliber- 
 ately choose this life of carnal pleasure, if in it he can 
 find the perfect satisfaction of his being and accept it as 
 his portion, it will be the definitive choice of evil, the 
 critical surrender of the higher to the lower nature. For 
 if such sensuousness of life as that which Faust is now , 
 to put to the proof leads inevitably to sensuality and 
 what is commonly called " vice," the evil lies in the 
 
238 THE MORAL IDEAL. 
 
 sensuousness itself, of which the sensuality is but the 
 full-blown flower. That a being capable of, and there- 
 fore called to, a life of rational and strenuous activity, 
 because of the pain and toil and disappointment implied 
 in such a life, should choose the immediate and effortless 
 delights of sensibility, " herein is sin." But for Faust 
 there is no satisfaction in the new life of which he is 
 represented as making trial. When, first as a black 
 poodle, and then as Mephistopheles himself, the spirit of 
 evil appears, we feel that it is only the manifestation 
 and externalisation of the lower, undisciplined, irrational 
 nature which, in Faust as in every man, is struggling for 
 the mastery with the rational and higher Self : 
 
 " Zwei Seelen wohnen, ach ! in meiner Brust, 
 Die eine will sich von der andern treimen ; 
 Die eine halt, in derber Liebeslust, 
 Sich an die Welt, mit klammernden Organen ; 
 Die andre hebt gewaltsam sich vom Dust 
 Zu den Gefilden holier Ahnen." 
 
 But though all the glory of the world is spread out be- 
 fore Faust, and he tastes of the lust of the flesh and the 
 lust of the eye and the pride of life, the moment never 
 comes when he can say of it : 
 
 " Verweile doch ! du bist so schoii ! " 
 
 And deeply though he falls, we feel that, even at the 
 lowest, he has fallen only to rise again, and, learning 
 the deeper dissatisfaction of this new life, to choose at 
 last, with a new decision wrought by the strong hand 
 of a bitter experience, the higher way of the victorious 
 spirit. The lesson of the legend, or, at any rate, of the 
 drama, surely is, that if a virtue cloistered and untried 
 
ECJD^EMONISM. 239 
 
 is no virtue at all, yet all virtue contains self-sacrifice at 
 its heart, and the only true and complete self-fulfilment 
 is mediated and made possible by self-renunciation. 
 
 " Und so lang <lu das nicht hast, 
 
 Dieses ; stirb und werde ! 
 Bist du nur em trtiber Gast 
 Auf der dunklen Erde." 
 
 The imperfection of the Faust representation is that the 
 choice is pictured as one between the life of knowledge and 
 the life of sensuous pleasure, though the idea of effort or 
 labour as implied in the former type of life is strongly 
 emphasised. In Wagner's music-drama of Tarmhauser, 
 we have, in this respect, a more adequate portrayal of the 
 actual moral conflict. Here, again, the choice is between 
 activity and the delights of sensibility. As in the old 
 Homeric story, the Siren-music of the sensuous life sounds 
 in the hero's ears, and he is lulled to sleep and forgetful- 
 ness of duty in the arms of earthly love. The escape is 
 made with bitterest anguish and regret ; again and again, 
 as the magic song of the Venus-berg sounds in his ears, 
 and its voluptuous strains silence the solemn music of the 
 pilgrim-choir, must the conflict be waged anew, until at 
 last the decisive victory is won, and the hard steep way 
 of the pilgrims of the Cross becomes the final choice. 
 
 And from the first this has been the lesson of the pro- 
 phets and didactic moralists to their fellows. The lesson 
 of Ecclesiastes as well as of Carlyle is the lesson of Work, 
 the lesson that in activity, in deeds, in the chastening of 
 natural impulse to the obedience of a rational purpose, 
 lies man's only Good. The ethical necessity of self-dis- 
 cipline has always been recognised. The Greeks, though 
 
240 THE MORAL IDEAL. 
 
 they did not feel the bitterness of the struggle as we do, 
 yet recognised it in their central conception of Temperance 
 or Self-control, of the essentially rational character of the 
 virtuous life, of the " limit " which the gods have set to 
 the career of man. In the popular reflection of the 
 classical world, we find the same thought naively ex- 
 pressed in the myths of Fauns and Satyrs, strange half- 
 brute, half-human creatures, non-moral, and yet, through 
 their external resemblance to humanity, shedding a grim 
 ironical light over human life. We have an impres- 
 sive recognition of the same fundamental necessity in 
 the ancient Hebrew story of Esau, who, stung by animal 
 appetite, sells his birthright for a mess of pottage, and 
 finds no place of repentance, though he seeks it carefully 
 with tears. The Christian conception of temptation, which 
 finds such abundant expression in modern literature, is one 
 grand illustration of it. The character of Tito in George 
 Eliot's ' Eomola/ the story of the evolution of a life that 
 has surrendered itself to momentary impulse and desire, 
 of Markheim in Mr E. L. Stevenson's little sketch, and 
 many anojbher " psychological study " in the fiction of our 
 own and of previous times, might be mentioned in drama- 
 tic illustration of the possibilities (and the certainties) of 
 evil that lie in an " undisciplined " nature. Shakespeare 
 has given us a unique and classical picture of such a 
 being. The character of Caliban in the " Tempest " seems 
 to me to be a kind of reductio ad absurdum of the life of 
 untrained irnpulse. Caliban is an impersonation of a 
 human animal, such a monster as the ancient myths por- 
 trayed, half man, half beast ; only, his deformity is rather 
 moral than physical. He is a " thing " rather than a man, 
 
EUD^MONISM. 241 
 
 a " thing of darkness," " as strange a thing as e'er I look'd 
 on." " He is as disproportionate in his manners as in his 
 
 shape"; an 
 
 " Abhorred slave, 
 
 Which any print of goodness will not take, 
 Being capable of all ill." 
 He is 
 
 " A devil, a born devil, on whose nature 
 Nurture can never stick. . . . 
 And as, with age, his body uglier grows, 
 So his mind cankers." 
 
 Prospero has taught him language : 
 
 " You taught me language, and my profit on't 
 Is, I know how to curse." 
 
 So savage, rank, and repulsive, so full of all manner 
 of darkness and evil, is undisciplined " nature " not 
 beautiful and richly luxurious as physical nature is, 
 when left untended and untrained. An untrained man 
 Shakespeare would seem to teach us is a " monster " of 
 humanity, not worthy of the name, something between 
 man and beast rather than a man. If sometimes we dis- 
 parage the effects of civilisation and education, and long 
 for " a touch of nature " in its simplicity and untrained 
 directness, let us remember that human nature, left to 
 itself, in its native spontaneity, is a barren wilderness that 
 yields but tares and thorns, and cannot be made to bring 
 forth better fruits, but with the sweat of our brow, and 
 the hard labour of the spirit ; 
 
 " That life is not as idle ore, 
 But iron dug from central gloom, 
 
 And heated hot with burning fears, 
 
 And dipt in baths of hissing tears, 
 And batter'd with the shocks of doom 
 
 Q 
 
242 THE MORAL IDEAL. 
 
 To shape and use. Arise and fly 
 The reeling Faun, the sensual feast ; 
 Move upward, working out the beast, 
 
 And let the ape and tiger die." l 
 
 Or, as another of " our own poets " has finely expressed 
 the contrast between Nature's life and man's : 
 
 " With aching hands and bleeding feet 
 We dig and heap, lay stone on stone ; 
 We bear the burden and the heat 
 Of the long day, and wish 'twere done. 
 
 Not till the hours of light return, 
 
 All we have built do we discern. 
 
 Then, when the clouds are off the soul, 
 
 When thou dost bask in Nature's eye, 
 
 Ask, how she viewed thy self-control, 
 
 Thy struggling, task'd morality 
 
 Nature, whose free, light, cheerful air, 
 Oft made thee, in thy gloom, despair. 
 
 And she, whose censure thou dost dread, 
 
 Whose eye thou wast afraid to seek, 
 
 See, on her face a glow is spread, 
 
 A strong emotion on her cheek ! 
 
 ' Ah, child ! ' she cries, that strife divine, 
 Whence was it, for it is not mine ? " ; 
 
 Yet " Nature " has her rights ; the moral Person is to ' 
 the end an individual or subject of sensibility. Nature is 
 to be disciplined, not annihilated. And if nature has to 
 be moralised, it is not in itself immoral ; it does not even 
 necessarily conflict, with morality. It is only because it 
 is part of a higher " nature " in us that it is not itself 
 the guide. The lower nature is really the "footstool of 
 
 1 Tennyson, 'In Memoriam,' 118. 
 
 - Matthew Arnold, 'Poems' : "Morality." 
 
EUD^EMONISM. 243 
 
 the higher." It is in its rebellion against the law of 1 
 the higher nature that evil consists ; evil is, as Plato 
 taught, a rebellion or insurrection of the lower and 
 subject element against the higher and sovereign part 
 of the soul. It is when the citadel of our nature capitu- 
 lates to the enemy within the city of Mansoul that evil 
 is done ; it is when reason becomes the slave of passion 
 that we lose our crown, and sell our birthright. The 
 Eomanticists, the Eealists, the Sentimentalists of litera- 
 ture have, as George Meredith says, 1 got hold of a half- 
 truth, " the melodists upon life and the world " who " set 
 a sensual world in motion " and " ' fiddle harmonics on the 
 strings of sensualism,' to the delight of a world gaping for 
 marvels of musical execution rather than for music." As 
 some one has said of M. Zola, he "sees in humanity la 
 b&e liumaine. He sees the beast in all its transforma- 
 tions, but he sees only the beast." For the music and 
 deep harmony of human life has its keynote in reason, 
 and, like all other harmonies, is reached through discord. 
 " Our world is all but a sensational world at present, in 
 maternal travail of a soberer, a braver, a brighter-eyed. 
 Peruse your Eealists really your castigators for not 
 having yet embraced philosophy. As she grows in the 
 flesh, when discreetly tended, Nature is unimpeachable, 
 flower-like, yet not too decoratively a flower; you must 
 have her with the stem, the thorns, the roots, and the fat 
 bedding of roses." The secret of true human living, the 
 heart of ethical Truth, lies in " the right use of the Senses, 
 Eeality's infinite sweetness. There is in every one of us 
 a Caliban nature, an unfailing aboriginal democratic old 
 
 1 Introduction to ' Diana of the Crossways. ' 
 
THE MORAL IDEAL. 
 
 monster, that waits to pull us down ; certainly the 
 branch, possibly the tree ; and for the welfare of Life 
 we fall. . . . You must turn on yourself, resolutely track 
 and seize that burrower, and scrub and cleanse him." 
 Civilisation contributes to the cleansing process; it at 
 least keeps the " monster " well out of sight. But Nature 
 must be moralised, and the process of moralisation is one 
 of sore pain and travail. It may mean the cutting off of 
 a right hand and the plucking out of a right eye, that so 
 we may enter, even halt and maimed, into the kingdom 
 of the Good. It means the passing through the fiery 
 furnace, by which Nature is purified of dross and " hard- 
 ened into the pure ore." It means, as Plato already 
 said, " conversion," or " the turning round of the eye of 
 the soul, and with it the whole soul, to the Good." Man's 
 life is like that of the Phoenix, that rises out of its own 
 ashes ; if he would live the true human life, he must be 
 " born again from above." Into every element of natural 
 impulse and desire must be breathed the new life of the 
 rational spirit. 
 
 " The petals of to-day, 
 To-morrow fallen away, 
 Shall something leave instead, 
 To live when they are dead ; 
 When you, ye vague desires, 
 Have vanished ; 
 A something to survive, 
 Of you though it derive 
 Apparent earthly birth, 
 But of far other worth 
 Than you, ye vague desires, 
 Than you." l 
 
 1 A. H. Clough. 
 
EUD^EMONISM. 245 
 
 The same lesson, that " from flesh unto spirit man grows/' 
 is finely enforced by Matthew Arnold : 
 
 " Know, man hath all which Nature hath, hut more, 
 And in that more lie all his hopes of good. 
 Man must begin, know this, where Nature ends ; 
 Nature and man can never be fast friends. 
 Fool, if thou canst not pass her, rest her slave ! " 
 
 Perhaps one of the completest descriptions of the 
 ethical life, at least in English literature, is that which 
 Browning has given us in his famous " Eabbi Ben Ezra." 
 In this poem, it will be remembered, age is represented 
 as taking account of the total gain and loss of life, reckon- 
 ing up its final significance under the illumination of 
 
 " The last of life, for which the first was made." 
 And the element of value is found just in that doubt 
 and strife, that failure and pain, which had been such 
 mysteries to youth with its eager thirst for pleasure and 
 the satisfaction of the moment : 
 
 " Eather I prize 
 Low kinds exist without, 
 
 Finished and finite clods, untroubled by a spark. 
 Poor vaunt of life indeed, 
 Were man but formed to feed 
 On joy, to solely seek and firfd and feast ; 
 Such feasting ended, then 
 As sure an end to men ; 
 Irks care the crop-full bird? Frets doubt the maw-crammed 
 
 beast ? 
 
 Then welcome each rebuff 
 That turns earth's smoothness rough, 
 Each sting that bids not sit nor stand but go ! 
 Be our joys three-fourths pain! 
 Strive, and hold cheap the strain; 
 Learn, nor account the pang ; dare, never grudge the throe ! " 
 
 V 
 
246 THE MORAL IDEAL. 
 
 And as, in the quiet evening light, he meditates upon 
 the meaning of that life whose day is now far spent, its 
 real worth breaks in clear and definite outline upon his 
 vision : 
 
 " He fixed thee 'mid this dance 
 Of plastic circumstance, 
 
 This Present, thou, forsooth, wouldest fain arrest : 
 Machinery just meant 
 To give thy soul its bent, 
 Try thee, and turn thee forth, sufficiently impressed." 
 
PART II. 
 
 THE MORAL LIFE 
 
THE MORAL LIFE. 
 
 THE chief forms into which the good life differentiates introduc- 
 itself are called by the ancients the cardinal virtues, by tues'and 
 the moderns the table of duties. These two terms, Virtue The nitty 
 
 and Duty, are two modes of describing the same thing ; Life 
 
 the former emphasises the inner character and its funda- 
 
 mental excellences, the latter the expression of character 
 
 in conduct and the primary forms of that expression. 
 
 Whether we look at the moral life from the standpoint 
 
 of character or of conduct, we find it necessary to inter- 
 
 pret it as an indissoluble unity. One cannot have any 
 
 of the virtues without possessing in that measure all 
 
 the others, one cannot fulfil any duty without fulfil- 
 
 ling in that measure all the other duties. The several 
 
 virtues and duties are simply the several aspects of the 
 
 good life, the various colours into which the perfect spec- 
 
 trum of character or conduct can be analysed ; or, at the 
 
 most, they are the several stages in the development 
 
 of character and conduct, and each leads inevitably be- 
 
 yond itself to the next as the goal of its own perfection. 
 
 Two main aspects of the moral life may be emphasised 
 
 the individual and the social ; but the unity of these is 
 
250 THE MORAL LIFE. 
 
 apparent when we remember that both may be subsumed 
 under the common term " personal." The individual can- 
 not be true to his own personality without being true to 
 the personality of all whom his conduct in any way affects. 
 To stand in the right relation to oneself is to stand in 
 the right relation to one's fellows ; to realise one's own 
 true self is to help all others to the same self-realisation. 
 Again, we may divide the virtues and the corresponding 
 duties into negative and positive groups. From the stand- 
 point of the individual, the moral life may be regarded as 
 a life at once of Self-discipline and of Self-development, 
 resulting in the virtues of Temperance and of Culture. 
 But the perfectly temperate or self-disciplined man would 
 be also the man of perfect culture or self-development. 
 Similarly, from the standpoint of society, we may distin- 
 guish the negative aspect of morality from the positive, 
 the duty of Freedom or non-interference with the self- 
 realisation of others, with the corresponding virtue of 
 Justice, from the duty of Fraternity or the positive 
 helping of others in their efforts after their own perfec- 
 tion, with the corresponding virtue of Benevolence. Here 
 again it is obvious that we have only two aspects of a 
 single life, that Justice imperceptibly glides into Be- 
 nevolence, Freedom into Fraternity ; that the one is the 
 seed, the other the full-blown flower of the same ethical 
 quality. Without Justice there can be no true Benevo- 
 lence, and Justice made perfect is already Benevolence in 
 
251 
 
 CHAPTEE I. 
 
 THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE. 
 
 I. Temperance or Self -discipline. 
 
 1. THIS is the first necessity of the moral life; it is itsfunda- 
 
 essential to the constitution of Virtue. The very essence portance. 
 
 of morality is, we have seen, the establishment of the 
 
 order of reason in the chaos of natural impulse; and 
 
 the reign of reason means the subjection and obedience 
 
 of sensibility. Character is " nature " disciplined. The 
 
 mastery of natural impulse by reason, in such wise 
 
 that this original " stream of tendency " may become 
 
 the dynamic of rational purpose; the conversion of the 
 
 original irrational energy into an energy of reason itself ; 
 
 " the organisation of impulse into character," this may 
 
 be said to be the essential business of the moral life from 
 
 first to last. Out of our natural individuality we have 
 
 each to form a moral personality. The original or natural 
 
 self is non-moral, and must be moralised. To be moralised, 
 
 it must be disciplined, regulated, subdued ; for only so can 
 
 it be organised into the structure of a rational life. If 
 
 the sphere of sensibility is to be finally annexed by reason, 
 
 it must first be conquered, and this conquest of the self 
 
252 THE MORAL LIFE. 
 
 of natural sensibility by the rational self is Temperance. 
 For the heedless, partial, natural self is apt to rebel against 
 the regulation of reason, it wants to rule ; and the " right " 
 of reason has to become the " might " of a rationalised 
 sensibility. The interest of the total Self, which reason 
 alone can discover, has to be asserted and maintained 
 against the interest of the partial, fleeting, but clamant 
 self of sensibility. This general Purpose or End, chosen 
 deliberately and reflectively, must be resolutely main- 
 tained against the particular, momentary or habitual, im- 
 pulsive tendencies which would swamp it in the flood- 
 tide of their power, and, if unchecked, would make us 
 act as if that Purpose did not exist, and had not been 
 chosen. Intemperance is disintegration, or disorganisa- 
 tion ; it is the rule of unorganised or disorganised sensi- 
 bility. Its watchword is self-gratification or self-indul- 
 gence. The temperate life, on the contrary, is a whole 
 in its every part ; if you take a " section " of it at any 
 point, you discover in it the structure of the whole, the 
 partial expression and realisation of its total purpose. 
 All its energies are controlled from a common centre, 
 they are the different manifestations of one great energy 
 of goodness. Such a life is consistent and harmonious 
 with itself; it has the calm strength of a resolute and 
 even Purpose. But this harmony and strength are the 
 reward of a resolute self-denial and self-sacrifice. 
 
 No natural impulse is in itself evil, no element of 
 sensibility is, as such, immoral. Evil or immorality 
 arises only when the government of conduct is given 
 to on-moralised sensibility. Sensibility needs the edu- 
 cation of reason, before it is capable of government; it 
 
THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE. 253 
 
 must itself be governed, before it is fitted to govern. Not 
 that there may not be a certain system in a life controlled 
 by uneducated sensibility. The life of the miser or of 
 the man who is ambitious for mere power is, so far, a 
 systematic and coherent life, though it is under the 
 dominion of a single uncontrolled passion. But its 
 system, we recognise at once, is not the true system; 
 even the man himself would hardly acknowledge it as 
 the system of his life, and his deeper and better nature 
 will probably assert itself occasionally, and break up the 
 little system of his short-sighted purpose. In such a life 
 the part has claimed to be the whole ; and the result is 
 necessarily partial, " abstract," contradictory. The true 
 whole is the unity of all the parts ; and that it may be 
 constituted, every selfish impulse must submit to the 
 control of the rational Self, which alone can estimate the 
 relative and permanent value of each. Most commonly, 
 the absence of such true system and completeness is 
 revealed in the obviously and painfully self-contradictory, 
 fragmentary, and inconsistent character of the intem- 
 perate life, in its too evident want of unity. The main 
 stream of its Purpose is drained off into side currents and 
 eddies, and many a time is checked and turned by an 
 undercurrent running in the opposite direction. 
 
 2. The virtue of Temperance or the duty of Self-disci- its nega- 
 
 tive aspect. 
 
 pline has two aspects a negative and a positive. First, 
 negatively, it is the subjection of all impulse to the rule 
 of rational choice, the not being brought under the power 
 of any tendency of our nature, the setting to each its 
 measure and limit by making it an element in a coherent 
 
254 THE MORAL LIFE. 
 
 and systematic rational life. In general, however, one 
 particular impulse or set of impulses represents the prin- 
 ciple of disintegration in the individual ; the forces of the 
 rebel nature are concentrated at some one point or at 
 a few points. That impulse represents evil for the man ; 
 at that point the battle must be fought, there it must be 
 lost or won. The struggle is not with evil in general, or 
 with nature in the abstract ; it is with this particular form 
 of evil, it is with our own nature, or " besetting sin." The 
 drunkard's struggle is with the appetite for drink; he 
 must master that appetite, or it will master him. The 
 miser's struggle is with cupidity, the lazy and luxurious 
 nature's is with its love of ease. In other words, the 
 task is always one of self-conquest, and as the natural 
 self of each is different from that of his neighbour, the 
 moral task is always quite concrete and individual. What 
 is temperance for one is intemperance for another; the 
 Mean for one is for another excess ; where one walks in 
 perfect safety, another may not trust himself to walk at all. 
 Here we see the truth of Asceticism. Self-discipline is, 
 for each, self-denial or self-sacrifice. The individuality 
 must be subdued to the rational personality, and the per- 
 fect subjection of individuality may, and often does, mean 
 the absolute denial, at some point, of its right to live. If 
 a natural impulse claims us as exclusively its own, en- 
 slaves us, and its indulgence at all means for us its im- 
 moderate indulgence if, unless it is kept below its normal 
 level it will inevitably rise above it, the necessity is laid 
 upon us to deny that impulse, to starve it, and, it may 
 be, even to kill it outright. Better to enter into the moral 
 life halt and maimed, if we cannot enter whole and sound, 
 
THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE. 255 
 
 than not to enter at all ; it may be profitable for us that 
 one of our members perish, that some particular passion 
 or appetite be denied indulgence altogether, because mod- 
 erate indulgence of it is for us impossible. Thus, while 
 Temperance is moderation, not abstinence, abstinence may 
 be to the individual the only means to moderation ; and 
 the ascetic principle of " keeping the body under," lest it 
 rebel against the rule of reason, is a safe ethical maxim 
 for the average man. 
 
 The concrete and individual character of self-discipline 
 illustrates the importance, and even the necessity, of self- 
 knowledge. A man is his own worst enemy. None can 
 do him such dire injury as that which he can inflict upon 
 himself. If he would discover the enemy in his ambush, 
 therefore, he must carefully explore and spy out the secret 
 places of his own nature. He must discover his peculiar 
 bias, and watch keenly its growing or decreasing strength. 
 He must often "recollect himself," and reckon up the 
 gain and loss, the victory and defeat, in this inner com- 
 bat with himself. And he must act in the light of this 
 knowledge, with all the prudence of a general who cal- 
 culates nicely the forces of the enemy and compares their 
 numbers with his own. 
 
 3. This negative side of self-discipline, this work of Relation of 
 mere subjection of natural sensibility, is, we all know, a positive as- 
 much larger part of some lives than of others. In some p 
 the sensibility seems so to lend itself from the first to the 
 wise control of reason that there is little consciousness of 
 struggle or control at all. Such a moral career seems a 
 pretty even tenor of goodness ; its fair Elysian fields are 
 
256 THE MORAL LIFE. 
 
 never stained with the blood of battle, its quiet peace is 
 hardly broken with the noise of tumult or rebellion. Such 
 well-tempered natures have the more energy to spare for 
 the task of positive virtue ; and to whom much is given, of 
 them is much required. Others wage a bitter and life- 
 long struggle against some natural tendency which, with 
 their utmost efforts, they can only keep in subjection ; 
 these have little energy left for positive virtue. Tor them, 
 however, to whom so little is given, a little of positive 
 accomplishment may be much ; for moral accomplishment 
 is achieved in the sphere of character, and its significance 
 is necessarily relative and individual. 
 
 Nor is it to be forgotten that positive and self- 
 forgetting activity, the devotion of one's entire energy 
 to some disinterested end, is one of the best means of 
 deliverance from the slavery of individual impulse. 
 The true self - discipline is inevitably positive as well 
 as negative. The most perfect mastery of impulse 
 comes with the guidance of all its energy into the 
 path of our positive life-purpose. Temperance is not 
 mere negation or annihilation of impulse, it is its 
 co-ordination and control : and the characteristic im- 
 pulsive energy of the individual ought to be utilised in 
 the interest of the total purpose of the life. The only 
 final subjugation of sensibility comes with its transmutation 
 into the enthusiasm of some great end. Sensibility has 
 then become organic to reason, it is then the dynamic of 
 the rational life, and the danger of insurrection has almost 
 disappeared. It is from idle impulse that there is danger ; 
 impulse which has its work assigned it by reason soon 
 becomes reason's willing servant. The strongest natures 
 
THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE. 257 
 
 are always natures of strong impulse, mastered and sub- 
 dued to the unity of a purpose which has possessed their 
 entire being. The individuality has all passed into the 
 personality ; the fire of a consuming purpose has purified 
 the dull ore of all their natural sensibilities. The search 
 for truth is the passion of a Socrates and a Newton ; all 
 the energy of a Luther's nature goes into the task of 
 reformation. Not till the depths of the moral being are 
 thus stirred, and all the energy of its native passion 
 captivated by rational purpose, is the work of self-dis- 
 cipline made perfect. 
 
 4. Thus we have reached the second and positive aspect its positive 
 of Temperance viz., concentration or unity of purpose, ^ 
 self -limitation. Our natural impulsive energy must be 
 guided along a single path ; the original tendency to 
 diffusion must be checked. Diffusion means waste, 
 economy of power implies limitation and definiteness of 
 direction. The strong and effective man is always the 
 man of one idea, of one book, the specialist, whether in 
 the intellectual or in other activities, the man who has 
 one consuming interest in life a master-interest and en- 
 thusiasm which has subdued all others to itself. Unity, 
 simplicity, singleness of purpose the correlation and in- 
 tegration of all the tendencies of the individual nature 
 this is the mark of a perfectly temperate, a thoroughly 
 disciplined life. The forces of the nature are not merely 
 checked and conquered ; they are engaged in the service of 
 an end which can utilise them all, and whose service is 
 perfect freedom from the bondage of mere unregulated 
 impulse. Here again we see the need of self-knowledge ; 
 
258 THE MORAL LIFE. 
 
 we need to know the positive, as well as the negative, 
 significance of our individuality. And such a knowledge 
 of what we can do is at the same time a knowledge of what 
 we cannot do : a knowledge of our individual capacity is at 
 the same time a knowledge of our individual limitation. 
 
 II. Culture or Self -development. 
 
 its funda- 5. The fundamental " importance of a man to himself " 
 portenee. " has been made the corner-stone of their theory of life by 
 all the great moralists, as it has been made the recurring 
 note in the preaching of all the great moral teachers. 
 Socrates insists hardly less strenuously than Jesus upon 
 the supreme value of the individual soul and the prime 
 duty of caring for it. It was Christianity, however, that 
 first brought home to the general consciousness of man- 
 kind the idea of the salvation of the Self, not from punish- 
 ment, but from sin ; the conviction that the true Good is to 
 be found in inner excellence of character ; the thought of 
 the treasure which is laid up " where neither moth nor 
 rust doth corrupt," in the inner chambers of the spiritual 
 being. What a hold this idea took of the Middle Age, and 
 how it produced the monastic life, with its preoccupation 
 with the anatomy of spiritual states, its morbid self-con- 
 scious pietism, we all know. We are also familiar with 
 the narrower and more superficial self-consciousness of 
 the man of " culture " and the aesthete, as well as with 
 the equally foolish self-concern of the pedant who would 
 fain be a scholar. These are instances of the obvious 
 over-development of self-consciousness and self-concern. 
 Better far to forget oneself than to be thus ever mind- 
 
THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE. 259 
 
 ful ; better to be caught nodding, like Jove himself, than 
 to be always thus painfully on the alert. There is an 
 unconscious self-development which is often the best. 
 But these are only exaggerations of the essential and 
 fundamental virtue, the common root of all the rest. 
 We must never really forget, in all the various "busi- 
 ness " of life, that man's " proper business " is with 
 himself, that his grand concern is the culture of his own 
 nature, the development of his best and total Self. And 
 since all so-called " business " is, in this sense, more or less 
 distracting, we have need of leisure from its care and 
 trouble for self-recollection, leisure to be with ourselves, 
 to ~be ourselves. For we are not to perfect ourselves merely 
 as instruments for the production of results, however good. 
 A man's true " work " is that " activity of the soul " 
 (evepyeta ^f%?? 9 )> which is its own sufficient end, the 
 actualisation and development of the man's true "soul" 
 or self. The ir utilitarian" estimate of education is essen- 
 tially superficial ; it is the estimate of the Philistine who 
 asks always for the " practical " value of culture, and 
 thereby shows that he does not know what culture is. 
 The true " practice " of a human being is not that in which 
 he discharges best a task which has no essential relation 
 to himself ; it is that which calls forth and develops all his 
 human powers, the man in the man. 
 
 6. I have said that it is the total Self that is to be de- Meaning of 
 veloped, the intellectual, the emotional, and the active or 
 volitional elements, each in its perfection, and all in the 
 harmony of a complete and single life. Culture means 
 not merely the cultivation of the several capacities, but 
 
260 THE MOEAL LIFE. 
 
 the symmetrical development of all. As in the physical 
 organism the health of each member depends upon the 
 health of the organism as a whole, so the true development 
 of any part of our nature implies the concurrent develop- 
 ment of all the other parts. The defective character of the 
 " intellectual " man, whose emotional nature is atrophied 
 and whose undue reflection has wellnigh incapacitated him 
 for practical activity ; of the " man of feeling," who has 
 forgotten how to think or to act ; of the " practical " man, 
 who has no time for thought, and to whom, perhaps, the 
 emotional life seems a weakness or a luxury which he can- 
 not afford himself is matter of common observation. It is 
 perhaps not so commonly realised that true intellectual cul- 
 ture itself implies the culture of the emotions, if not also 
 of the will, that true aesthetic culture implies the culture 
 both of will and intellect, and, above all, that the best 
 activity is the outcome of the largest thought and the 
 deepest and warmest sensibility. In all spheres, the key- 
 note of true culture is symmetrical self -development. 
 
 The place 7. The relation of physical to ethical well-being is apt 
 culture. 10 * to be misconceived. It is that of means to end ; physical 
 well-being is not an integral part of the ethical End, 
 though it is perhaps the most important means towards 
 the realisation of that End. Health is the basis of the 
 moral life, it is no part of that life itself. The body is 
 only the instrument or organ of a life which is, in its 
 essence, spiritual. It becomes a duty to care for the body, 
 but this care is only part of our care for the soul or the 
 spiritual Self. My body is mine, it is not /. To make 
 physical well-being an end-in-itself, is to forget that animal 
 
THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE. 261 
 
 perfection is no worthy end for a rational being. It is the 
 ends for which the human mind can use the body that 
 give the human body its peculiar dignity; and if man 
 makes the mind the minister of the body's perfection, he 
 is reversing their true ethical relation. Matthew Arnold 
 has wisely and well criticised the popular estimate of 
 physical health as an end-in-itself ; 1 it is that for the mere 
 animal, but it cannot properly be that for man. " Physical 
 culture " is not an integral part of " ethical culture." 
 
 As a means towards the attainment of the ethical End, 
 as the basis of the moral life, the importance of physical 
 well-being can hardly be exaggerated. Self-preservation 
 and self-development are, in this sense, always primarily 
 the preservation and development of the physical life. I 
 must live, in order to live well ; and my power of realis- 
 ing my moral purposes will be largely determined by my 
 physical health. The ethical value of life, both in its 
 length and in its breadth, in the duration and in the 
 richness of its activities, is to a considerable extent within 
 our own power, being determined by our care or neglect 
 of the body. To despise the body, or to seek to escape 
 from it, as the ascetic does, is as wrong as it is futile. 
 The body is the main condition of the moral life, its very 
 element and atmosphere ; and the athletic exaggeration of 
 the importance of the body, like the estimate of " clean- 
 liness" as not even "next to godliness," is probably, in 
 the main, a not unnatural reaction from the ascetic ex- 
 treme of contempt and neglect fostered by Puritan tra- 
 dition. Above all, it is obvious that if care for the body 
 is an important although an indirect duty, the destruction 
 
 1 See 'GlS!S=Skd Anarchy,' 21. 
 
262 THE MORAL LIFE. 
 
 of the physical life, or suicide, is an exceeding great sin. 
 Our moral life being physically conditioned, the destruc- 
 tion of the body is an indirect attack upon that life 
 itself. Suicide, being self-destruction (so far as that is 
 possible to us), must always contradict the fundamental 
 ethical principle of self-development. 
 
 Health is only part of that individual good which is, 
 as such, subordinate to the personal good, and has only 
 an instrumental value. Like money and position, social 
 or official, it is part of our moral " opportunity." But we 
 have seen that the prudential life, whose concern is with 
 the opportunity rather than with the exercise of virtue, 
 does not coexist alongside the life of virtue, but is 
 organic to that life. It would perhaps be helpful to 
 clear ethical thinking to make the term Prudence cover 
 the instrumental or the "occasional" those aspects of 
 human life which, like physical health, pecuniary affairs, 
 worldly position, or office, have in themselves no moral 
 significance, but acquire such a significance through their 
 being the physical basis of the virtuous life. 
 
 8. We have seen that self - development means the 
 tare of sett- development of individuality into personality, that the 
 person is always an individual. It is essential to true 
 self - development, therefore, that the individuality be 
 conserved, not destroyed. Many factors of our modern 
 civilisation tend to substitute monotonous and dead uni- 
 formity for the living and interesting diversity of indi- 
 vidual nature. Specialisation is apt to dwarf the individ- 
 uality ; political and other forms of social organisation 
 tend in the same direction. We are much more apt than 
 
THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE. 263 
 
 our forefathers to imitate others, and to be unwilling to 
 be ourselves. Yet it is clear that vocation is determined 
 chiefly by individual aptitude, though modified by the 
 pressure of circumstances. The true " career " for a man 
 is that which shall most fully realise his individuality. 
 Fortunate indeed is he to whom a thorough understanding 
 of his own nature and an appropriate course of circum- 
 stances open up the path of such a career. To too many 
 their so-called career is a mere routine, a " business " for 
 their hands which leaves their deeper nature idle and 
 unoccupied, longing for a life more satisfying than is 
 offered by the activities which consume its weary days, 
 finding something of that true life it may be elsewhere, 
 in some pursuit which has no relation to the daily avoca- 
 tion, There is a pathos in some men's " hobbies " ; they 
 indicate that the " soul " is not dead, but sleeping, and 
 needs but the touch of an understanding sympathy to 
 rouse it from its sleep. For the only true " life " is evepyeia 
 -^1^7)9, activity of the Soul or Self. Happiest is he who' 
 can put his whole soul, all the energies of his spirit, into 
 each day's work. His work, even as work, as sheer pro- 
 duct, will have a different value. It will be honest work, 
 the best work. It seems as if brute matter itself took 
 the impress of the soul that moulds it ; we feel, for ex- 
 ample, that Carlyle's appreciation of his father's masonry 
 is essentially a true appreciation. 1 And as the means of 
 
 1 " Nothing that he undertook but he did it faithfully, and like a true 
 man. I shall look on the houses he built with a certain proud interest. 
 They stand firm and sound to the heart all over this little district. Not 
 one that comes after him will ever say, Here was the finger of a hollow 
 eye-servant. They are little texts for me of the gospel of man's free will." 
 ' Kemim'scences, ' 5, 6. 
 
264 THE MORAL LIFE. 
 
 spiritual expression and expansion, the difference between 
 nominal and real "work" is incalculable. How many 
 imprisoned, unexpressed, unfulfilled souls behind the 
 bleared, indifferent faces of the world's workers ! For in 
 every man there is a soul, a self, unique and interesting, 
 waiting for its development; and sometimes, even from 
 the deadest man, in the home among his own who under- 
 stand him, or touched to life by some sign of brotherly 
 interest in another, the soul that had slept so long will 
 suddenly leap forth and surprise you. 
 
 The true doing is that doing which is also a being, and 
 the medium of better and fuller being, of a higher self- 
 development. But such doing is as unique as such being ; 
 the measure of it is found in the individuality of the 
 worker. Each man, like each planet, has his " appointed 
 course," appointed him by his nature ; " so starts the 
 young life when it has come to self-discovery, and found 
 out what it is to do by finding out what it is" Here 
 positively, for self -development, as already negatively for 
 self-discipline, we see the need for self-knowledge. Hav- 
 ing found the end or purpose of our life, the course of our 
 self - development, and holding to this course steadily 
 through all the storm and stress of passion and of cir- 
 cumstance, through the fiery time of youth and the 
 deadening effect of years, we cannot fail of the complete- 
 ness, fulness, and symmetry of our appointed life. 
 
 Such a care for our own true culture or self -develop- 
 ment in all our work is the true " self-love," and at the 
 opposite pole from selfishness. We ought not to be always 
 trying to " do good " ; the first requisite for doing good is 
 to be good. Philanthropy or benevolence will grow out 
 
THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE. 265 
 
 of this self-development, as its flower and fruit. But self- 
 culture is fundamental, and the unconscious and indirect 
 philanthropy of faithfulness to ourselves is often the best 
 and farthest-reaching. Such self-culture fits us for service 
 to others ; when the time comes, the man is ready. More- 
 over, we must first live the true life ourselves, if we would 
 help others to live it too ; it is thus we get the needed 
 understanding. We must "be, ourselves, before we can 
 help others to be. It is because God is all that we would 
 be, that we say and feel, " Thou wilt help us to be." So it 
 is that, though we are separate from one another, separate 
 by the very fact of Personality, each " rounded to a separ- 
 ate whole," and though each man's single life, each man's 
 " own vineyard," needs constant and exclusive care, yet the 
 good man feels no cleft, as there is none, between the egois- 
 tic and the altruistic sides of his life. Egoism, in the sense 
 explained, is fundamental, but it is the presupposition of 
 an enlightened and genuine altruism. No narrowness is 
 possible for him who cares for and develops his own true 
 life ; in himself he finds the moral microcosm. The best 
 ambition a man could cherish, both for himself and for his 
 fellows, is that he and they alike may, each in himself, and 
 each in his own way, so reflect the moral universe that 
 none may have cause to travel beyond himself to find 
 the fellowship of a common life and a common Good. 
 
 9. Yet it is necessary to transcend our individuality ; Necessity 
 personality is essentially universal. " Whatever truly de- 
 serves to be held up as a worthy object of man's striving 
 
 and working, whether it be the service of humanity, of JJj; ideal 
 one's country, of science, of art, not to speak of the service 
 
266 THE MORAL LIFE. 
 
 of God, is far beyond the sphere of individual enjoyment." 
 It is this inherent universality that gives life its note of 
 nobility. The personal life is never merely particular 
 and individual ; its atmosphere is always the objective 
 and universal, whether it be the intellectual pursuit of 
 the true, the artistic pursuit of the beautiful, or the 
 religious pursuit of the good. All these pursuits lift the 
 individual out of the sphere of the particular and transi- 
 tory into that of the universal and the abiding, out of the 
 " finite " into the " infinite relations." This is the touch 
 that transfigures human life, and lends to it a divine and 
 absolute significance. For a full self-development it is need- 
 ful that we thus escape from the " Cave " of the particular, 
 above all, from the Cave of our own individuality, into 
 the freer atmosphere of the infinite and ideal, and let its 
 winds blow about the soul ; they are the very breath of its 
 higher life. This is equally true of all three sides of our 
 nature, the intellectual, the aesthetic, and the volitional. 
 
 How the horizon of the mind lifts with the apprehen- 
 sion of Truth, how the pursuit of it takes a man out of 
 himself, how faithfulness to it delivers him from self- 
 seeking and narrow aims, how the scientific and the 
 philosophic life are essentially disinterested, and how 
 educative of the Personality is such a course of pure in- 
 tellectual activity, on all this there is little need to 
 insist in a scientific age like the present, which has been 
 accused of the " deification of Truth." It was with no 
 little moral insight, as well as with Greek partiality for 
 the things of the mind, that Plato and Aristotle de- 
 - scribed the highest life of man as a purely intellectual 
 activity, as the speculative life. That the contemplation of 
 
THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE. 267 
 
 the Beautiful in nature and in human life, the apprehen- 
 sion of " the light that never was on sea or land," is also 
 uplifting and enlarging to the soul ; that the companion- 
 ship of the graceful and harmonious makes the soul itself 
 harmonious and graceful, the Greeks at least knew well. 
 To them the true education was " musical." The man who 
 has seen the beautiful is easily recognised, his face shines 
 with the light of that divine vision, his footsteps move to 
 noble numbers, he is delicate and tender, and about him 
 there is a gentleness and grace which you miss in the 
 hard practical man, and even in the mere intellectualist. 
 The beauty of the world has "passed into his face." 
 Least of all can we be ignorant of the influence of the 
 contemplation of the ideal Good. The soul that believes 
 in, and lives in communion with, Goodness absolute, is 
 touched to goodness as a soul that sees only the poverty 
 of the actual cannot be. The moral value of an ethical 
 Religion is an undoubted fact, acknowledged by every 
 one. Nor is the essence of Eeligion mere constraint, its 
 sanction of goodness mere fear of punishment or hope of 
 reward. Far more powerful, though more subtly exer- 
 cised, is the purifying influence of the divine Vision itself. 
 The Hebrews felt this so deeply that they were afraid 
 of that vision which we have learned to call "beatific." 
 " No man can see God's face and live." Evil cannot live 
 in the presence of utter Holiness. Even among men, we 
 know how stern to the impure is the silent rebuke of 
 purity, how humiliating to the worldly and selfish soul 
 the contact with unselfishness and generosity; and we 
 can understand something of the meaning of the words, 
 " Our God is a consuming fire." 
 
268 THE MORAL LIFE. 
 
 Therefore it is well and healthful for the soul that each 
 should breathe at times the pure atmosphere of the in- 
 finite and ideal, should lift up his eyes unto the hills from 
 whence cometh his aid, should retire into Plato's "ideal 
 world," and gaze upon the archetypal Truth and Beauty 
 and Goodness of which the actual shows us but the faint 
 reflection. Some must, and by natural vocation will, con- 
 secrate themselves to the more direct and immediate 
 service of these ideals. The man of science and the phil- 
 osopher, the artist poet, painter, sculptor, musician the 
 priest or minister of religion, these are, in a peculiar 
 sense, the servants of the ideal. But they are only the 
 representatives of our common humanity in that supreme 
 service and consecration. And if these live habitually 
 " within the veil," in the inner sanctuary of the Infinite, 
 it is needful that they whose preoccupation with the 
 world's business detains them in the outer courts of the 
 finite world, if they would preserve their manhood and 
 draw strength for life's casual duties, should sometimes 
 enter too. 
 
 Dangers of 10. Yet we must never, in our devotion to the ideal and 
 idealism, infinite, neglect the paramount claims of the actual finite 
 world. We must always return even the ministers of 
 the ideal in art, in science, and in religion, must return to 
 the secular life, to the finite world and its relations. Nor 
 must the vision of the infinite and ideal ever be allowed 
 to distort our vision of the finite and actual. Emancipa- 
 tion from the " Cave " of the finite brings with it its own 
 new danger, it tends to unfit man for the life of the Cave. 
 Those who have lived in the upper air, and have seen the 
 
THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE. 269 
 
 absolute Eeality, are apt to be blinded by the darkness of 
 the Cave in which their fellows spend their lives, and, 
 knowing how shadowy and illusory are all its concerns, to 
 lose their interest in them. They are apt, as Plato said, to 
 be awkward and easily outwitted, for their souls sit loose 
 to this world and dwell apart. The peculiar temptation of 
 genius, moral, aesthetic, or intellectual, the peculiar tempta- 
 tion of those whose lives are spent habitually in the in- 
 finite relations, is to minimise the finite, and fail to see the 
 Infinite shining through it. Gazing at the stars, they are 
 in danger of falling into the well. So it is that " respect- 
 ability " is often on a higher ethical plane than " genius " 
 and "saintship." Even Plato said that we must bring 
 the travellers back to the Cave, and force them to take 
 their part in its life. Idealist and transcendentalist though 
 he was, he saw that most men must live in the Cave. For, 
 as a contemporary writer has well said, " to finite beings 
 recognition of the finite occupation with, or even absorp- 
 tion in it is quite as necessary as is the recognition of 
 what transcends it." 1 No service of the ideal will atone 
 for unfaithfulness in the actual. "He that is unfaith- 
 ful in that which is least is unfaithful also in much." 
 The individual's duty is determined and defined by his 
 "station," or his place in the actual finite relations, and 
 even his cultivation of the ideal must be regulated by the 
 imperious claims of this moral " station." "We know how 
 inexorably severe were Carlyle's judgments of self-con- 
 demnation for his failure in the little services of domestic 
 piety, how, if these judgments were even in a measure 
 true, his " spectral " view of life, his preoccupation with 
 
 1 Professor Knight, ' Aspects of Theism,' 205. 
 
270 THE MORAL LIFE. 
 
 "immensities and eternities," shut out from his field of 
 vision the duty that lay next him. Carlyle's uncorrupted 
 moral insight finds in his " genius " (which was perhaps 
 as much moral as intellectual in its quality) no excuse for 
 shortcoming in the " minor moralities " of life. Nor does 
 the " world's " keen moral judgment find in the peculiar 
 religious attainments of " professing Christians " any ex- 
 cuse for such obvious moral defects as malice and ill- 
 temper. In such cases the severity of our judgment is 
 apt to be intensified by the very height of the ideal to 
 which the life professes its devotion. The highest and 
 completest the sanest natures recognise most fully 
 this claim of the actual, and most willingly surrender 
 themselves to the burden of its fulfilment. In this 
 meekness and lowliness of spirit Wordsworth sees the 
 crown of Milton's virtue : 
 
 " Thy soul was like a star and dwelt apart ; . . , 
 
 Pure as the heavens, majestic, free, 
 So didst thou travel on life's common way, 
 
 In cheerful godliness ; and yet thy heart 
 The lowliest duties on herself did lay." 
 
 And Tennyson, in the " Idylls of the King," sings in a like 
 strain of the ideal life : 
 
 " And some among you held that if the King 
 Had seen the sight, he would have sworn the vow ; 
 Not easily, seeing that the King must guard 
 That which he rules, and is but as the hind 
 To whom a space of land is given to plough, 
 Who may not wander from the allotted field 
 Before his work be done." 
 
 So must each man be content, king or subject, genius or 
 day-labourer, to go forth unto his labour until the evening; 
 
THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE. 271 
 
 for in this world each has his appointed task, and if he do 
 it not, it will be left undone. Even if our duty be to 
 consecrate ourselves in Science, in Art, or in Eeligion, to 
 the peculiar service of the ideal the noblest service that 
 life offers, and that which calls for the highest aptitudes 
 we still must not forget that, in respect of our duties in 
 the actual, we stand on the common level. The priest, 
 the artist, and the philosopher are also " ordinary men," 
 and have no exemption from the common domestic, social, 
 and civil duties. Such exemption would unfit them for 
 their own great task the discovery of life's ideal mean- 
 ing and its interpretation to their fellows. NOT must 
 any man allow his excursions into the ideal world to dull 
 the edge of his interest in the ordinary business of life. 
 It is true that we all have need of leisure from the very 
 finite occupations of life, for such communion with the 
 Infinite ; for in that communion the soul's best life is 
 rooted, and it will wither if not well tended. The world 
 of Knowledge, of Art, of Eeligion, does claim us for itself, 
 and our visits to it ought to be all the more frequent be- 
 cause our actual world is apt to be so meagre and con- 
 fined. But our acquaintance with the splendours of its 
 " many mansions " must never breed in our souls contempt 
 for the narrowness and the mean appointments of the 
 house of our earthly pilgrimage. It is a danger and 
 temptation neither unreal nor unfamiliar. Let us take 
 two illustrations of it. 
 
 The artistic temper is apt to be impatient of the 
 cornmonplaceness of its daily life ; we are wont, indeed, 
 to attribute to it a kind of practical irresponsibility. Led 
 by visions of the beautiful into the romantic country of 
 
272 THE MORAL LIFE. 
 
 the imagination, the spirit is loath to return to the 
 prosaic fields of ordinary daily duty. Its emotions are 
 ideal, and find no issue in action on the earthly plane ; 
 and more and more it is felt that there is no scope for 
 such emotions in the actual world. That other world 
 the world of the imagination is so much more interest- 
 ing and exciting, that, by comparison with it, the actual 
 world of daily life, where duties lie, seems "stale, flat, 
 and unprofitable." It is the Quixotic temper that we all 
 know in childhood. Nothing will satisfy us but knight- 
 errantry, slaying giants, and rescuing fair ladies. The life 
 of the Middle Ages would have suited us much better 
 than that of the Nineteenth Century. It was so much 
 more picturesque, there was so much more colour, the 
 lights were brighter and the shadows deeper; life was 
 "romantic" then. But, in reality, life is always the 
 same; it presents always the same moral opportunities. 
 The elementary realities do not change, the Alphabet 
 of human life is the same from age to age. The imag- 
 ination is always apt to picture the Golden Age of life's 
 great opportunities of action either in the Past or in the 
 Future, while really, if we had eyes to see them, they 
 are always in the Present. The pattern of man's life 
 may be very different in different ages, its colours may 
 be brighter or more sombre ; but its warp and woof, 
 its inner texture, is always the same, and is wrought 
 of the threads of good and evil, virtue and vice, faith- 
 fulness and unfaithfulness to present duty. 
 
 Or take the " Saint " who, with his eye fixed on the 
 Beyond, abstracts himself from this earthly life, either 
 physically as in mediaeval Monasticism, or actually and 
 
THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE. 273 
 
 in the inner temple of the heart, like many a modern 
 Protestant, mingling with his fellows as if he were not of 
 them, not in hypocrisy or pride, but in real rapt abstrac- 
 tion of spirit, afraid lest he soil his hands with the world's 
 business and render them unfit for the uses of the heavenly 
 commerce. Such a life not only misses the influence it 
 might have exerted on the world, but proves itself un- 
 worthy of, and unfit for, the higher just in the measure 
 that it fails in the lower duties. The peculiar human , 
 way to the ideal is through utter faithfulness to the ' 
 actual ; and the reason why we need to leave the actual 
 at all is just that we may get the inspiration which will 
 enable us to see the ideal in it. It requires an eye that 
 has seen the ideal shining in its own proper strength, to 
 detect it in the disappointing surroundings of the actual. 
 In activity, not in passive contemplation, lies man's 
 salvation. " This is Christianity, as distinguished from 
 Buddhism;" it is also modern, as distinguished from 
 mediaeval, Christianity. The ideal must be found, after all, 
 in the actual, the things unseen and eternal in the things 
 which are seen and temporal ; the infinitely true and 
 beautiful and good in the finite relations of daily life. 
 It is the function of the chosen servants of the ideal to 
 open the eyes of their fellows that they may see life even 
 on "this bank and shoal of time," sub specie ceternitatis ; 
 and thus to make the secular for them henceforth sacred, 
 the commonplace infinitely interesting and significant. 
 
 11. But the supreme category of the moral life is the Ethical 
 
 /^ i -IT i iii supremacy 
 
 Good, not as excluding, but as containing in itself, the of the 
 Beautiful and the True. To make either the True or the ideal. 
 
 s 
 
274 THE MORAL LIFE. 
 
 Beautiful the containing notion leads to moral misap- 
 preciation. JEstheticism and Intellectualism are both 
 ethically unsatisfactory ; the former is weak, as the latter 
 is hard and cold. He who so gives himself to Science or 
 to Philosophy as to intellectualise himself, or reduce his 
 entire nature to terms of the True, does not even reach 
 the highest Truth. He who so gives himself to Art or 
 the culture of the Beautiful as to sink the ethical in the 
 aesthetic, must miss the vision of the highest Beauty. 
 These failures teach us that the fundamental term of our 
 life is the Good ; in so far as we attain to this ideal, we 
 shall inevitably attain the others also. Greek philosophy 
 illustrates the inadequacy alike of the intellectual and of 
 the aesthetic ideal. For both Plato and Aristotle the ideal 
 life was a life of speculation or intellectual contemplation, 
 in which no place was found for practical activity or the 
 play of the ordinary sensibilities. For Plato's artistic 
 nature, again, as for the Greeks generally, the temptation 
 always was to conceive the Good under the form of the 
 Beautiful, and, as Mr Pater has remarked, for Plato " the 
 Beautiful would never come to seem strictly concentric 
 with the Good." But until we see the three circles as 
 concentric, we do not see any one of them as it really is. 
 The Greeks were perhaps too intellectual to be conscious 
 of the danger that lay in a too exclusive devotion to the 
 intellectual life ; they certainly do not betray such a con- 
 sciousness. But Plato, poet and artist though he is, shows 
 a nervous apprehension of the dangers for the individual 
 and the State that lie in ^Estheticism. He has no place 
 for the poets in his ideal State. His quarrel with them, 
 
THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE. 275 
 
 it is to be noted, is a characteristic Greek one ; the poets 
 are condemned in the interests of Truth, rather than of 
 Goodness. Where truth and beauty do not coincide, Plato 
 would seem to say, truth must be preferred to beauty. 
 Art the poetic art at least being in its essence imitative, 
 substitutes fiction for reality, and its fiction is apt to be 
 a misrepresentation of the real. Therefore, though none 
 has a higher appreciation of literary art than Plato, 
 though none finds a more honourable place for " music " 
 in the education of the ideal man and citizen, he finds 
 himself compelled, in loyalty to the higher interests of 
 Truth, to banish the poets lest they corrupt the State by 
 making its citizens believe a lie. It is an impressive 
 instance of the war of ideals, and of faithfulness to the 
 highest knowledge. And if for us the war has ceased 
 to exist, and the circles of our life's interests have become 
 concentric, it is not so much perhaps because we have 
 reached a truer appreciation of the function of Art than 
 Plato knew, as because we have learned to include both 
 the aesthetic and the intellectual life as elements in the 
 undivided life of Goodness. Let us separate any one of 
 these three ideals from the others, and all alike are in 
 that measure impaired and misunderstood. We can see 
 that even the Greek devotion to the True is not the 
 highest or completest devotion of human life ; our devo- 
 tion to the True, as well as to the Beautiful, must, if we 
 are to be " perfect," be part of our supreme devotion to the 
 Good. Hence the supreme value of the religious life, as 
 compared with the other avenues to the universal and 
 the Infinite. Our deepest thought of God is Righteousness, 
 
276 THE MOKAL LIFE. 
 
 and by reason of this, its ethical basis, the religious ideal 
 not only includes the others, but also comes nearest to 
 actual life, touching the otherwise commonplace and 
 trivial duties of the finite relations and transfiguring 
 them, shedding over the actual the light of the ideal life. 
 
 Culture 12. Hence also it is in the service of our fellows that 
 
 anthropy. we find the continual emancipation from the prison-house 
 of our individual self -hood, in philanthropy that we find 
 the surest and most effective method of our self-develop- 
 ment. The lower and selfish self, because it is selfish, 
 cannot serve; the very life of the true and higher Self 
 consists in ministry. Nor is there danger, in such a life, 
 of Quixotic knight-errantry or abstract moral Idealism, of 
 our failing, through our devotion to the ideal, in our duty 
 to the actual. The most commonplace service, " the cup 
 of cold water," any deed done fof another, takes us quite 
 out of ourselves, idealises our life, breaks down its limita- 
 tions. For a true ministry to any human need implies a 
 perfect sympathy and identification of ourselves with the 
 needy one, and we know the enlargement of the spirit's 
 life that comes from such a sympathy. It opens up other 
 worlds of experience the world of poverty, of sickness, 
 of sorrow, of doubt, of temptation, of sin ; it unlocks the 
 secret chambers of the human heart. 
 
 How much the man misses who, with miserly greed, 
 
 hoards up his little selfish life and will not share it with 
 
 \ his fellows, how miserably poor and valueless even to 
 
 himself his life becomes, Butler has described in his 
 
 strong clear didactic manner in his ' Sermons,' and George 
 
THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE. 277 
 
 Meredith has pictured in his powerful story ' The Egoist.' 
 Such a picture George Eliot has given us in ' Silas 
 Marner/ adding, with consummate skill, the companion- 
 picture of the deliverance that came with the first out- 
 goings of the poor shrunken heart towards its fellows, 
 and how there was born in the spirit of Silas Marner, 
 through the love of a little child, a new and larger life. 
 The specialist in science, the business man, the profes- 
 sional man, all alike need the expansion that comes from 
 such a contact with the universal human heart and its 
 universal needs. The least apparently significant duty 
 to our fellows, to be adequately done, calls forth the 
 whole man, intellectual, emotional, active ; and it is most 
 wholesome for the " specialist " and more and more we 
 all, in some sense, are specialists to be distracted from 
 a too entire preoccupation with his peculiar calling by the 
 common everyday duties of our human life. Many illus- 
 trations might be offered of how truly the service of 
 others is a service of our own best selves. "What a 
 force, for example, in self-development is the faithful 
 and adequate discharge of any office or responsibility; 
 men grow to the dignity of their calling, and duties which 
 at first almost overpowered them become in the end no 
 burden at all. The expectation of others, silent it may 
 be and undefined, is an incalculable force in steadying 
 and elevating a nature which might otherwise have been 
 unstable and even have become ignoble. To feel that we 
 stand to another in any measure for the ideal, as the parent 
 stands to the child, the teacher to the pupil, the preacher 
 to his people, and friend to friend, is a tremendous spur to 
 
278 THE MORAL LIFE. 
 
 us to live up to and justify, not disappoint, these expecta- 
 tions. Is not this one of the secrets of greatness ? To 
 stand, like the prophet and reformer, to a whole people 
 in this relation, must be an immeasurable stimulus to 
 faithfulness to the responsibility thus created. Chris- 
 tianity has done much to bring home to the human mind 
 the essential dignity and the high privilege of service, and 
 to teach us how, in serving our fellows and in bearing 
 one another's burdens, we may find the path of a perfect 
 self-realisation. Here we find the bridge from the indi- 
 vidual to the social virtues, the essential identity of 
 altruism with the higher egoism. In this also lies the 
 Christian idea of moral greatness, the greatness of humil- 
 ity and self-sacrifice, as opposed to the greatness of pride 
 and self-assertion, the Pagan vanity and pomp of indi- 
 viduality. If we wish to feel the contrast of the Pagan 
 and the Christian ideals of greatness, we have only to 
 compare the Aristotelian picture of the /jLeyahotyvxos, the 
 proud aristocrat who lives to prove his independence and 
 superiority, with that other picture of a Life that poured 
 itself out in the service of others, that came not to be 
 ministered unto but to minister, that was willing, for the 
 sake of such a ministry, even to be misunderstood. This 
 picture has touched the heart of the world as the other 
 never could have touched it. For it is a revelation of the 
 blessedness that lies in escape from the prison-house of 
 the " private " and selfish life, and feels throbbing within 
 it the universal life of humanity itself. 
 
 13. Yet it is never to be forgotten that the moral life 
 
THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE. 279 
 
 remains always a personal, and even an individual life ; Seif-rever- 
 
 PT1PP TllG 
 
 it never becomes impersonal or " self-less." The unselfish dignity 
 life is not self -less or impersonal ; rather, as we have just tucUMrf" 
 seen, the life of Self is enlarged and enriched in direct pro- 
 portion to the unselfishness of that life. Even the indi- 
 viduality is not, in such self -development any more than 
 in self-discipline, negated or annihilated; it is taken up 
 into, and interpreted by, this larger social Good. 
 
 Nor must we forget that the fundamental and essential 
 attitude of a man towards himself is one of self-respect, 
 what Milton calls " the inward reverence of a man towards 
 his own person," reverence for the humanity which he 
 represents. This is the true " greatness of soul " which is 
 perfectly consistent with the utmost humility as to our 
 actual achievements and individual desert, with remorse 
 and shame and bitter self-condemnation. For such self- 
 reverence is reverence for the ideal and potential manhood 
 in oneself, and means the chastisement of the actual by 
 comparison. This noble self-consciousness should enable 
 a man to preserve his dignity in all the affairs of life, and 
 make him, in the true sense, sufficient unto himself, his 
 own judge and his own approver. We are told that 
 Goethe had no patience with " over-sensitive people," with 
 those " histrionic natures," who " seem to imagine that 
 they are always in an amphitheatre, with the assembled 
 world as spectators ; whereas, all the while, they are play- 
 ing to empty benches." Doubtless, if we filled the benches 
 with the great and good of all ages, as with a " great cloud 
 of witnesses," and brought our actions to the penetrating 
 gaze of their clear judgment, such a consciousness would 
 
280 THE MORAL LIFE. 
 
 be most beneficial and worthy. But we are far too apt to 
 be play-acting instead of living, contented if only we suc- 
 ceed in playing a certain role, and appearing to be what 
 we are not. Such a " histrionic " life is the very antithesis 
 of the good life ; and, when detected, it is rightly named 
 " hypocrisy." But oftener it passes undetected, and gains 
 the applause for which it has striven. And even those 
 who are not consciously masquerading, for whom life is 
 real and earnest, are too apt to be dependent upon the 
 judgment of others, and to forget that a man is called upon 
 to be his own judge, and in all things to live worthily of 
 himself. The general level of moral opinion subtly insin- 
 uates itself into our judgments of ourselves, we lose our 
 independence, and sink below our own true level. 
 
 All strong natures are self-contained ; it is the secret 
 of moral peace and calm, the mark -of the wise and good 
 of every age. " Such a man feels that to fail in any act 
 of kindness and helpfulness would be foreign to his 
 nature. It would be beneath him. His sense of honour 
 forbids him to stoop to anything selfish, petty, or mean." 
 The " opulent or royal soul that has felt itself to be one 
 with the great human life about it, would feel itself 
 narrowed, and thus dishonoured, by any act through 
 which it should cut itself off from these larger rela- 
 tions." 1 It would feel like a prince deposed. " In this 
 sense it is that we may speak of stooping to a selfish act, 
 or may say that such an act is not only foreign to the 
 nature, but is unworthy of it and beneath it." 2 So sub- 
 limely independent, so nobly self-contained, is the life of 
 
 1 C. C. Everett, ' Poetry, Comedy, and Duty,' 245. - Ibid., 246. 
 
THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE. 281 
 
 personality. The good man is at home with himself, and 
 his real life is an inner rather than an outer life. 
 
 " The world is too much with us ; late and soon, 
 Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers." 
 
 The moral weakling lives always, or for the most part, 
 abroad, and never retires within himself, to find behind 
 the veil of his own inner being that vision of the perfect 
 life for which the spirit yearns. For the lowly and con- 
 trite heart is His temple who dwelleth not in temples 
 made with hands, and the pure and upright soul is his 
 continual abode. But this truly " sacred place " must be' 
 kept sacred, and it cannot be, if it is opened to all the 
 riot and confusion of the market-place. " Solitude is to 
 character what space is to the tree." The loneliness of 
 personality is never to be forgotten ; " the heart knoweth 
 its own bitterness, and a stranger intermeddleth not there- 
 with." In a deep sense, we are separate from one another, 
 and each man must bear his own burden. The walls of 
 personality shut us in, each within the chamber of his 
 own being and his own destiny. It is therefore good and 
 most necessary for a man to be alone with himself. It 
 was one of the most genial and social-hearted of men who 
 said : " If the question was eternal company, without the 
 power of retiring within yourself, I should say, ' Turnkey, 
 lock the cell.' " l But, happily, that is not the alternative. 
 In the solitary places of the human heart, in the deep 
 quiet valleys and on the high mountain-tops of our moral 
 being, is to be found the " goodly fellowship " of the great 
 
 1 Scott, Journal. 
 
THE MORAL LIFE. 
 
 and noble of all the ages of man's long history nay, the 
 fellowship of the Universal Spirit, the meeting-place of 
 man with God. We must cherish the solitude, even as 
 we would cherish that fellowship. 1 
 
 1 Archbishop Trench has given fine expression to this feeling in the 
 following sonnet : 
 
 "A wretched thing it were, to have our heart 
 Like a thronged highway or a populous street ; 
 Where every idle thought lias leave to meet, 
 Pause, or pass on, as in an open mart ; 
 Or like some roadside pool, which no nice art 
 Has guarded that the cattle may not beat 
 And foul it with a multitude of feet, 
 Till of the heavens it can give back no part. 
 But keep thou thine a holy solitude, 
 For he who would walk there, would walk alone ; 
 He who would drink there, must be first endu.-d 
 With single right to call that stream his own ; 
 Keep thou thine heart, close-fastened, unrevealed, 
 A fenced garden, and a fountain sealed." 
 
283 
 
 CHAPTEE II. 
 
 THE SOCIAL LIFE. 
 
 I. The Social Virtues: Justice and Benevolence. 
 
 1. MAN has social or other-regarding, as well as individual The rela- 
 tion of the 
 or self-regarding, impulses and instincts. By nature, and social to 
 
 even in his unmoralised condition, he is a social being ; vidual life, 
 but this sympathetic or altruistic nature must, equally 
 with the selfish and egoistic, be formed and moulded into 
 the virtuous character. The primary feeling for others, 
 like the primary feeling for self, is only the raw material 
 of the moral life. And the law of the process of moralisa- 
 tion is the same in both cases ; the virtuous attitude to- 
 wards others is essentially the same as the virtuous atti- 
 tude towards oneself. For in others, as in ourselves, we 
 are called upon to recognise the attribute of Personality. 
 They, too, are ends in themselves ; their life, like our own, 
 is one of self-realisation, of self-development through self- 
 discipline. We must treat them, therefore, as we treat 
 ourselves, as Persons. The law of the individual life is 
 also the law of the social life, though in a different and a 
 wider application. Virtue is fundamentally and always 
 personal; and when we have discovered the law of the 
 
284 THE MORAL LIFE. 
 
 individual life, we have already discovered that of the 
 social life. Since men are not mere individuals, but the 
 bearers of a common personality, the development in the 
 individual of his true self-hood means his emancipation 
 from the limitations of individuality, and the path to self- 
 realisation is through the service of others. Not that we 
 serve others, the better to serve ourselves : we may not 
 regard another person as the instrument even of our own 
 best self-development. They, too, are ends-in-themselves : 
 to them is set the self-same task as to ourselves, the task 
 of self-realisation. The Law of the moral life, the Law 
 of Personality, covers the sphere of social as well as of in- 
 dividual duty ; the Law is : " So act as to treat humanity, 
 whether in thine own person or in that of another, always as 
 an end, never as a means to an end." We may use neither 
 ourselves nor others. Truly to serve humanity, therefore, 
 is to realise oneself, and at the same time to aid others in 
 the same task of self-realisation. In serving others, we 
 are serving ourselves ; in serving ourselves, we are serving 
 others. For, in both cases, we serve that Humanity which 
 must ever be served, and which may never serve. 
 
 The life of virtue, even on its social side, is still a per- 
 sonal, not an impersonal life. This is apt to be over- 
 looked, owing to the illusion of the term " social " and the 
 antithesis, so commonly emphasised, between the indi- 
 vidual and the social life. The individual and the social 
 are in reality two aspects of the one undivided life of 
 virtue, and their unity is discovered with their reduction 
 to the common principle of Personality. The social life 
 is, equally with the individual life, personal ; and the per- 
 sonal life is necessarily at once individual and social. We 
 
THE SOCIAL LIFE. 285 
 
 must not be misled by the phrase "social life," as if 
 society had a life of its own apart from its individual 
 members ; society is the organisation of individuals, and 
 it is they who live, not it. Apart from its individual 
 members, society would be a mere abstraction ; but we 
 are too apt, here as elsewhere, to hypostatise abstractions. 
 In reality, society is not an " organism," but the ethical 
 organisation of individuals. Obviously, we must not 
 isolate the organisation or the relation from the beings 
 organised or related; this would be a new case of the 
 old Scholastic Eealism, or substantiation of the universal. 
 Moral reality, like all finite reality, is, in the last analysis, 
 individual. But while the life of virtue is always indi- 
 vidual, it is not merely individual : to be personal, it must 
 be social. If in one sense each lives a separate life, yet 
 in another sense " no man liveth unto himself." A common 
 personality is to be realised in each, and in infinite ways 
 the life of each is bound up with that of all. Only, the 
 individual may never lose himself in the life of others. 
 As a person, he is an end in himself, and has an infinite 
 worth. He has a destiny, to be wrought out for himself ; 
 the destiny of society is the destiny of its individual mem- 
 bers. The " progress of the race " is, after all, the progress 
 of the individual. The ethical End is personal, first and 
 last. As the individual apart from society is an unreal 
 abstraction, so is society apart from the individual. The 
 ethical unit is the person. 
 
 Thus we can see that there is no necessary antagonism 
 between Individualism, truly understood, and Socialism, 
 truly understood. Nay, the true Socialism is the true 
 Individualism, the discovery and the development of the 
 
286 THE MORAL LIFE. 
 
 person in the individual. Society exists for the indi- 
 vidual, it is the mechanism of his personal life. All 
 social progress consists in the perfecting of this mechan- 
 ism, to the end that the ethical individual may have 
 more justice and freer play in the working out of his 
 own individual destiny. The Individualism of the mere 
 individual means moral chaos and is suicidal ; such a life 
 is, as Hobbes described it, " poor, nasty, dull, brutish, and 
 short." But the Individualism of the person is, in its 
 idea at least, synonymous with the true Socialism. For 
 social progress does not mean so much the massing of 
 individuals as the individualising of the social " mass " ; 
 the discovery, in the " masses," of that same humanity, in- 
 dividual and personal, which had formerly been discerned 
 only in the " classes." The " socialistic " ideal is to make 
 possible for the " many " nay, for all, or better for each 
 that full and total life of personality which, to so large 
 an extent, is even still the exclusive possession of the 
 few. Social organisation is never an end in itself, it is 
 always a means to the attainment of individual perfection. 
 
 Social vir- 2. We have seen that social or altruistic impulse, like 
 nature and individual or egoistic, is only the raw material of virtue, 
 5 llmlt> part of that " nature " which has to be moralised into 
 " character." Mere " good-will " or " sociality " is not 
 the virtue of Benevolence; the natural inclination to 
 help others needs guidance, and may have to be re- 
 strained. So true is Kant's contention that mere un- 
 guided impulse or inclination has, as such, no ethical 
 value. We have also seen that the law, in the one case 
 as in the other, is found in personality. Each man, being 
 
THE SOCIAL LIFE. 287 
 
 an Ego or Person, has the right to the life of a Person. 
 The true ethical attitude of other persons to him, there- 
 fore, is the same as his attitude towards himself; and 
 accordingly social, like individual, virtue has two sides, a 
 negative and a positive. The attitude of the virtuous 
 man towards his fellows is first, negatively, the mak- 
 ing room for or not hindering their personal life, and 
 secondly, the positive helping of them to such a life, the 
 removing of obstacles from their way, and the bringing 
 about of favourable conditions for their personal develop- 
 ment. Here, with the conditions of the moral life in our 
 fellows, we must stop ; no man can perform the moral 
 task for another, there is no vicariousness in the moral 
 life. Not even God can make a man good. Goodness, by 
 its very nature, must be the achievement of the individual ; 
 each must work out his own salvation. The individual 
 must fight his own battles, and win his own victories, 
 and if he is defeated, lie must suffer and strive through 
 suffering to his final perfection. The moral life is essen- 
 tially a personal life; in this sense all morality is "private." 
 Life lies for each in " the realisation of self by self " ; 
 that is our peculiar human dignity and privilege and 
 high responsibility, and it is not allowed that any man 
 come between us and our " proper business." But every- 
 thing short of this moral interference and impertinence, 
 we may do for our fellows. " Environment " counts for 
 much, especially the social environment, and we can im- 
 prove the moral environment of those whom we wish to 
 aid. The will can be stimulated by suggestions from 
 another, though no amount of pressure can coerce it. 
 Ideals are potent, and, once accepted, seem to realise 
 

 THE MORAL LIFE. 
 
 themselves; and we can suggest, especially by our own 
 practice and example, true moral ideals to others. In 
 such ways, society can stimulate in the individual, and in- 
 dividuals can stimulate in their fellows, the life of virtue. 
 Only, we cannot take the moral task out of the hands 
 of the individual, we cannot even strictly " co-operate " 
 with him in the execution of that task. Such is the 
 solitariness of the moral life. 
 
 its two 
 negative 
 
 BeneT- 
 
 tfonsand 
 spheres iVe 
 
 3. Social virtue, on its negative side, we may call Jus- 
 tice, with its corresponding duty of Freedom or Equality ; 
 on its positive side, we may call the virtue Benevolence, 
 an( l the duty Fraternity or Brotherliness. I use these 
 terms, of course, very generally, to cover much more than 
 c ^ c excellence in the one case, and than what is ordin- 
 ari1 ^ called " Philanthropy " in the other. Whenever I do 
 ' not repress another personality, but allow it room to 
 develop, I am Just to it; whenever, in any of the 
 senses above suggested, I help another in the fulfilment 
 of his moral task, I exercise towards him the virtue of 
 Benevolence. 
 
 There is the same kind of relation between Justice 
 and Benevolence in the social life as between Temper- 
 ance and Culture in the individual. As self-discipline 
 is the presupposition of a true self -development, so is 
 Justice the presupposition of a true Benevolence. This 
 logical priority is also a practical priority. We must be 
 just before we can be generous. We earn the higher 
 power by our faithful exercise of the lower. This is 
 obvious enough in the case of political action ; the phil- 
 anthropy of the State must be founded in Justice, the 
 
THE SOCIAL LIFE. 289 
 
 interests of Security form the basis of the interests of 
 Well-being. Indeed, the Benevolence of the State is 
 really a higher Justice. But the principle is not less 
 true of the relations of individuals to one another ; here, 
 too, Benevolence is only Justice made perfect. When 
 the parent, out of a full heart and without a thought of 
 self-interest, does his best for his child, when friend acts 
 thus by friend, or teacher by scholar, what is each doing 
 but striving to mete out to the other the full measure of 
 a perfect Justice ? More or higher than that, no man can 
 ask from another and no man can give to his fellow. The 
 distinction, though so convenient, is artificial ; it is one 
 of those division-lines which, since they do not exist in 
 reality, disappear with a deeper insight into the nature 
 of things. Most pernicious have been the effects of the 
 neglect of the true relation of priority in which Justice 
 stands to Benevolence. The Christian morality, as actually 
 preached and practised, has been largely chargeable with 
 this misinterpretation. " Charity " has been magnified as 
 the grand social virtue, and has been interpreted as a 
 " giving of alms " to the poor, a doing for them of that 
 which they are unable to do for themselves, an allevia- 
 tion, more or less temporary, of the evils that result from 
 the misery of their worldly circumstances. But this 
 " charity " has coexisted with the utmost injustice to 
 those who have been its objects. Instead of attacking the 
 stronghold of the enemy the poverty itself, the shameful 
 inequality of conditions the Church as a social institution, 
 and individuals in their private capacity or in other forms 
 of association, have apparently accepted the evil as per- 
 manent and inevitable, or have even welcomed it as the great 
 
 T 
 
290 THE MORAL LIFE. 
 
 opportunity of the moral life. It has been assumed that we 
 must always have the poor with us, and their poverty has 
 been regarded as a splendid field for the exercise of the 
 virtue of benevolence. Yet a moment's reflection will 
 convince us that this virtue cannot find its exercise in the 
 field of injustice : the only field for its development is one 
 which has been prepared for it by the sharp ploughshare 
 of a thoroughgoing justice. Injustice and Benevolence 
 cannot dwell together; and when justice has done its 
 perfect work, there will be little left for the elder " phil- 
 anthropy" to do, and "charity" will be apt to find its 
 occupation gone. When the causes of distress have been 
 removed, the distress itself will not have to be relieved, 
 and benevolence will find its hands free for other and 
 better work. When all have justice, those who now need 
 help will be independent of it, and men will learn at last 
 that the best help one can give to another is " to help him 
 to help himself." It is because we have really given our 
 fellows less than justice that we have seemed to give them 
 more. 
 
 For what is Justice ? Is it not to recognise in one's 
 fellow-man an Alter Ego, and to love one's neighbour as 
 oneself ? Is it not the principle of moral equality that 
 each shall " count for one, and no one for more than one" ? 
 And when we remember that the reckoning is to be made 
 not merely in terms of physical life or of material well- 
 being, but in terms of personality; that we are called 
 upon to treat our fellow-man as literally another " self," 
 and to take towards him, as far as may be, his own atti- 
 tude towards himself, do we not find that such Equality 
 is synonymous with Fraternity, that others are in very 
 
THE SOCIAL LIFE. 291 
 
 truth our " fellows " and our " brothers " in the moral 
 life? Might it not be less misleading to speak only of 
 Justice in the social relations of negative and positive 
 Justice than of Justice and Benevolence ? 
 
 The fact of the essential identity of Justice and Benev- 
 olence suggests that they have a common sphere. That 
 sphere is the social, and more particularly the political 
 life. Yet here also there is a distinction within the 
 identity. While both virtues may be exercised in the 
 political sphere, it is of the genius 'of Justice to spend 
 itself upon the community, of Benevolence to single out 
 the individual. The peculiar sphere of Benevolence or 
 the highest justice is that of private and domestic life, 
 and of the non-political association of individuals. The 
 characteristically individual nature of this aspect of 
 virtue was recognised by the Greeks, whose name for it 
 was " Friendship." So far is the conception carried that 
 Aristotle is led to question whether one can have more 
 than one true " friend," whether it is possible to stand 
 in this relation of perfect fellowship to more than one 
 individual ; for hardly shall we find more than one alter 
 ego, happy indeed are we if we find even one. The 
 modern conception is that of universal Love or " Human- 
 ity." But the essence of the virtue is the same in both 
 cases, " brotherliness " or " fellowship." This conception 
 signalises that intimateness of the relation which converts 
 Justice into Benevolence or imperfect into perfect Justice. 
 Where Justice insists upon the " equality " of men in 
 virtue of their common personality, Benevolence seizes t 
 the individuality in each. Benevolence is more just than * 
 Justice, because it is enlightened by the insight into that 
 
292 THE MORAL LIFE. 
 
 " inequality " and uniqueness of individuals, which is no 
 less real than the " equality " of persons. 
 
 4. It is in the case of Benevolence especially that we 
 realise the necessity of the regulation or moralisation of 
 the original natural impulse or affection. Whether we 
 take the promptings of the parent, of the friend, of the 
 patriot, or of the philanthropist, we see that altruistic 
 impulse is originally as blind as egoistic, and needs, no 
 less than the latter, the illumination of reason. "We need 
 the wisdom of rational insight into the Good of another, 
 if we are to aid him in any measure in the attainment of 
 it, and all our benevolent activity must be informed and 
 directed by this insight. Without such guidance, we can- 
 not be really " kind " to another. Unwise kindness is not 
 kindness, that, for example, of the " indulgent " parent, 
 teacher or friend, of blind philanthropy, of indiscriminate 
 charity. The vice of such conduct is that it destroys 
 the self-reliance and self-dependence of the individual 
 so blindly "loved." The only true benevolence is that 
 which helps another to help himself, which, by the very 
 aid it gives, inspires in the recipient a new sense of his 
 own responsibility, and stirs him to a better life. 
 
 It is amazing how potent for good is such a true benevo- 
 lence. It seems to touch the very springs of the moral 
 life. By this intimate apprehension of a brother's nature 
 and a brother's task, it may be given to us to stir within 
 him the dying embers of a faith and hope blighted by 
 failure after failure, and to reawaken in him the old high 
 purpose and ideal of his life. The fact that some one 
 else has a real and unwavering confidence in him, sees still 
 
THE SOCIAL LIFE. 293 
 
 in him the lineaments of a complete and noble manhood, 
 will inspire such a man with new strength, born of a new 
 hope. There was once a Purpose in his life, but it has 
 long ago escaped his grasp, and seems for ever frustrated ; 
 what once was possible seems possible no longer, his life 
 is broken and can never again be whole. But one comes 
 who reminds him of that former and truer Self, and 
 reawakens in him the old ideal. The way back may be 
 long and difficult, but the sight of the goal, even at such 
 a distance and up such steeps, will give the traveller 
 strength for the journey. What does he not owe to him 
 who shows him the open path ? Zaccheus, the " publican 
 and sinner," owed his " salvation " so far as this can be 
 a debt to him who reminded him that, in his deepest 
 nature and best possibility, he was still a " son of Abra- 
 ham " ; and others who had fallen lowest, when they heard 
 from the same wise and tender lips, instead of the scath- 
 ing condemnation they had feared, the words of a deeper 
 insight and a larger hope, " Neither do I condemn thee," 
 were filled with a new strength to obey the authoritative 
 command : " Go, and sin no more." It must have been 
 this grand insight, this hand of brotherly sympathy and 
 sublime human hope, stretched out to raise a fallen 
 humanity to his own ideal of it, that made tolerable that 
 Teacher's scathing exposure of every hidden evil. 
 
 And even in the ordinary course and less grave occa- 
 sions of human life, we must acknowledge the power for 
 good that lies in a sympathetic appreciation of another's 
 task, and of his capabilities for its discharge. The parent 
 may thus discover in the child possibilities which had else 
 remained undiscovered an^j^realised. The teacher may 
 
294 THE MORAL LIFE. 
 
 thus discover in the pupil the potential thinker, scholar, 
 artist, and awaken in him the hope and ambition which 
 shall be a lifelong inspiration. Here is the moral value 
 of optimism and enthusiasm as contrasted with pessimism 
 and cynicism. If we would help another, in this high 
 sense of helpfulness, we must believe deeply, and hope 
 strenuously, and bear courageously the disappointment 
 of our expectations and desires. The gloomy severity of 
 condemnation, unlit by any ray of hope of better things, 
 which marks the Puritanical temper, will crush a life which 
 might otherwise have been lifted up to a higher plane. 
 What many a struggling soul needs most of all is a little 
 more self-reliance and buoyancy of hope, and the know- 
 ledge that another had confidence in him would breed 
 a new confidence in himself. Why leave unspoken the 
 word of encouragement or praise which might mean so 
 much of good to him, out of the foolish fear of nourishing 
 in him that quality of self-conceit which may be entirely ab- 
 sent from his character ? Aristotle's observation was that 
 most men suffered from the opposite fault of " mean-spirit- 
 edness," and a deficient appreciation of their own powers. 
 This true benevolence means getting very near to our 
 fellow-man, becoming indeed his fellow, identifying our- 
 selves with him. It means the power of sympathy. We 
 are apt to be so external to one another, and " charity " is 
 so easily given : we must give ourselves. We must put 
 ourselves alongside our fellow, enter into his life and 
 make it our own, if we would understand it. For such 
 understanding of another's life, such a right appreciation 
 of another's task, is not easy. It is apt to seem a gift of 
 moral genius rather than a thing which may be learned. 
 
THE SOCIAL LIFE. 295 
 
 The perfection of it is found in love and in true friend- 
 ship, where a man finds an alter ego in another, and 
 perhaps, as Aristotle says, it is only possible to have one 
 such friend. But there is a great call for the quality, in 
 some measure of it, in all the relations of life ; without it 
 no true benevolence is possible. 
 
 5. Such benevolence implies self-sacrifice; we cannot Benevo- 
 lence and 
 thus serve others, and at the same time always serve our- Culture. 
 
 selves. The altruistic principle of life does sometimes con- 
 flict with the egoistic, even in its highest form. The ques- 
 tion, therefore, inevitably arises, How far ought self-sacrifice 
 to go ? How far ought devotion to the interests of others 
 to supersede the individual's devotion to his own highest 
 interest ? This is a peculiarly modern difficulty, and arises 
 from the new spirit of altruism which Christianity has 
 brought into our ethical life and thought. To the Greeks 
 the question did not arise at all. They did not contemplate 
 the possibility of any real conflict between the individual 
 and the social Good ; for them it was an axiom of the 
 moral life that the individual received back with interest 
 that which he gave to the State. In the Hellenic State, 
 of course, many gave without receiving; but they were 
 not regarded as citizens, nor did their life enter into the 
 ethical problem. The many existed for the few, but the 
 few existed for themselves. A life of complete self- 
 culture was the Greek ideal, and one could never be 
 called upon to sacrifice any part of this life for the sake 
 of " doing good " to his fellow-men. But Christianity, 
 with its watchwords of " service " and " philanthropy," has 
 forced us to realise with a new intensity and rigour of 
 
296 THE MORAL LIFE. 
 
 conviction the claim of others upon our life, and has 
 left no part of our life exempt from the claim. Self- 
 sacrifice, rather than self-realisation, has become the prin- 
 ciple of life, and the relation of the one principle to the 
 other has become the most baffling problem of ethical 
 thought. How far shall self-sacrifice be carried, and how 
 far does a loyal and thorough-going self-sacrifice interfere 
 with a true and faithful self-realisation ? 
 
 In the case of devotion to the State, we must say that, 
 while the life of true citizenship may mean for the indi- 
 vidual a willingness to die for his country's good, and 
 while the rightful service of the citizen must always far 
 transcend the limits of a virtue which calculates returns, 
 yet the State can never legitimately demand of the indi- 
 vidual a moral sacrifice, or ask him to be false to his own 
 ideals of life. The State, being an ethical institution, can- 
 not, without contradicting its own nature, contradict the 
 ethical nature of the individual. And what is true of the 
 State is true of all other institutions, as the Family and 
 the Church. In the case of all institutional life, however, 
 the same question arises as in the individual relations 
 viz., How far is the individual called upon to sink his 
 own well-being in that of others ? That all may have the 
 opportunity of true self-culture, many an opportunity of 
 self-culture must be sacrificed by the few. The very possi- 
 bility of social progress implies such sacrifice on the part of 
 the existing society for the sake of the generations to come. 
 And often friend must be willing to make this sacrifice for 
 friend, and parent for child, and teacher for scholar, and 
 neighbour for neighbour. Whether the sacrifice shall ulti- 
 mately be compensated in a richer and completer life for 
 
THE SOCIAL LIFE. 297 
 
 the individual who has made it, is a question which proba- 
 bly must remain unanswered ; but the willingness to make 
 the sacrifice, without the certainty or even the likelihood 
 of compensation, would seem to be of the very essence 
 of the highest goodness we know. That the dualism be- 
 tween the good of others and of self must remain per- 
 manently unsolved, we can hardly think. In part, indeed, 
 we have already seen that the best service to others is the 
 true service of ourselves, that the most effective method of 
 doing good is to le good, that the truest care for others is 
 to keep carefully the vineyard of our own nature. We 
 must also recognise that since service implies the " gift " 
 to serve, and there is an endless " diversity of gifts," he 
 who finds his peculiar work and mission for others finds 
 that into which he can put himself, the channel for the 
 expression of his individual capacities, the sphere of his 
 self-realisation. And when we remember that the Good of 
 the moral life is not a merely individual and exclusive 
 Good, but universal and identical in all, the postulate of an 
 ultimate harmony between the life of Benevolence and the 
 life of Culture becomes a datum of our faith in the reason- 
 ableness of things. 
 
 II. The Social Organisation of Life : the Ethical Basis and 
 Functions of the State. 
 
 6. The moral life, on its social side, organises itself in The social 
 certain external forms generally described as the ethical tion of life: 
 institutions e.g., the Family, the State, the Church. The mstitu- 
 total social organisation may be called Society, and the c iety and" 
 most important of its special forms that which in a sense tt 
 
298 THE MORAL LIFE. 
 
 includes all the others is the political organisation, or the 
 State. Since man is by nature and in his ethical life a 
 social being, he is inevitably also a " political " being (tyov 
 iroKiTiKov). The question is thus raised, What is the true 
 form of social organisation ? and, more particularly, What 
 is the ethical basis and function of the State ? How far 
 should society become political ? 
 
 The classical world, we may say, had no idea of a non- 
 political society ; to it Society and the State were synony- 
 mous terms, the social life was a life of citizenship. The 
 distinction between Society and the State is a modern one. 
 The Greek State was an adequate and satisfying social 
 sphere for the individual ; he wanted no other life than that 
 of citizenship, and could conceive no perfect life for him- 
 self in any narrower social world than that of the State. 
 So perfect was the harmony between the individual and 
 the State that any dissociation of the one from the other 
 contradicted the individual's conception of ethical com- 
 pleteness. It is to this sense of perfect harmony, this 
 deep and satisfying conviction that the State is the true 
 and sufficient ethical environment of the individual, that 
 we owe the Greek conception of the grand significance of 
 the State. Our modern antithesis of the individual and 
 the State is unknown ; the individual apart from the 
 State is to the Greek an unethical abstraction. The 
 ethical individual is, as such, a citizen ; and the measure 
 of his ethical perfection is found in the perfection of the 
 State of which he is a citizen, and in the perfection of his 
 citizenship. We find this characteristic Greek conception 
 carried to its consummation in the ' Eepublic ' of Plato. 
 This is at once a treatise on politics and on ethics, on the 
 
THE SOCIAL LIFE. 299 
 
 State and on Justice. Plato's problem is to find the ideal 
 State, or the perfect sphere of the perfect life. The good 
 man shall be the good citizen of the good State, and with- 
 out the outer or political excellence the inner or ethical 
 excellence is of little avail. The just man is not an iso- 
 lated product, he is not even " self-made " ; he grows up in 
 the perfect State, and unconsciously takes on the colour of 
 its laws ; he is its scholar, and even in the inmost centres 
 of his life he feels its beneficent control. To separate him- 
 self from it in any particular were ethical suicide ; to seek 
 to have a " private life," or to call anything " his own," were 
 to destroy the very medium of his moral being, to seek to 
 play his part without a stage on which to play it. That 
 is to say, social organisation is necessary to the perfection 
 of the individual life, and the only perfect social organisa- 
 tion is the communistic State, which directly and immedi- 
 ately controls the individual, and recognises no rights, 
 individual or social, but its own. 
 
 But the growing complexity of the ethical problem, 
 the growing perception of the significance of personality, 
 and the growing dissatisfaction with the State as the 
 ethical sphere of the individual, led even the Greeks 
 themselves to a revision of their view of the relation 
 of the individual to the State. Greek ethics close with 
 the cry of individualism and cosmopolitanism. The 
 State proved its ethical insufficiency, as the individual 
 discovered his ethical self-sufficiency ; the outward failure 
 co-operated with the deeper inward reflection, to effect 
 the transition from the ancient to the modern standpoint. 
 Christianity, with its universal philanthropy, its obliter- 
 ation of national distinctions, its insistence upon the 
 
300 THE MORAL LIFE. 
 
 absolute value of the individual, its deeper and intenser 
 appreciation of personality, added its new strength to the 
 forces already in operation. The political societies of 
 the ancient world were gradually supplanted by a Cath- 
 olic ecclesiastical society. The Church to a large extent 
 displaced the State, and reasserted on its own behalf the 
 State's exclusive claim upon the life of the individual. 
 Controversy was thus inevitably aroused as to the respec- 
 tive jurisdictions of Church and State. The Family, too, 
 acquired a new importance and a new independence. 
 The break-down of Feudalism the political order of 
 the Middle Age was followed by the break-down of its 
 ecclesiastical order also, and the individual at last stood 
 forth in all the importance of his newly acquired inde- 
 pendence. Our modern history has been the story of the 
 gradual emancipation of the individual from the control 
 of the State, and its product has been an individualism 
 in theory and in practice which represents the opposite 
 extreme from the political socialism of the classical world. 
 The principle of individual liberty has taken the place of 
 the ancient principle of citizenship. We have become 
 very jealous for the rights of the individual, very slow to 
 recognise the rights of the State. Its legitimate activity 
 has been reduced to a minimum, it has been assigned 
 a merely regulative or " police " function, and has been 
 regarded only as a kind of balance-wheel of the social 
 machine. Not that the individual has emancipated him- 
 self from society. That is only part of the historical 
 fact ; it is no less true that the various extra-political 
 forms of social organisation have assumed functions 
 formerly discharged by the State. But the result is 
 
THE SOCIAL LIFE. 301 
 
 the same in either case viz., the narrowing of the sphere 
 of the State's legitimate activity. 
 
 Various forces have conspired to bring about a revision 
 of this modern theory of the State in its relation to the 
 individual and to the other forms of social organisation. 
 The interests of security have been threatened by the 
 development of the principle of individual liberty to its 
 extreme logical consequences in Anarchism and Nihilism, 
 the very life, as well as the property, of the individual i& 
 seen to be endangered by the gradual disintegration of the 
 State, and the strong arm of the civil power has come to 
 seem a welcome defence from the misery of subjection to 
 the incalculable caprice of "mob-rule." Individualism 
 has almost reached its reductio ad absurdum ; the prin- 
 ciple of the mere particular has, here as elsewhere, proved 
 itself to be a principle of disintegration. That each shall 
 be allowed to live for himself alone is seen to be an 
 impossible and contradictory conception. Experience has 
 taught us that the State is the friend of the individual, 
 securing for him that sacred sphere of individual liberty 
 which, if not thus secured, would soon enough be entered 
 and profaned by other individuals. The evils of a non- 
 political or anti- political condition of "atomic" individ- 
 ualism have been brought home to us by stern experi- 
 ences and by the threatenings of experiences even sterner 
 and more disastrous. 
 
 The complications which have resulted from industrial 
 competition, the new difficulties of labour and capital 
 which have come in the train of Laissez faire, have lent 
 their strength to emphasise the conviction that the State, 
 instead of being the worst enemy, is the true friend of the 
 
302 THE MORAL LIFE. 
 
 individual. The doctrine of the non-interference by the 
 State with the industrial life of the individual has pretty 
 nearly reached its reduction to absurdity. The evils of 
 unlimited and unregulated competition have thrown into 
 clear relief the advantages of co-operation ; the superior- 
 ity of organised to unorganised activity has become mani- 
 fest. And what more perfect form, it is said, can the 
 organisation of industry take than the political ? Only 
 through the nationalisation of industry, it is felt in many 
 quarters, can we secure that liberty and equality which 
 capitalism has destroyed : only by making the State the 
 common guardian, can we hope for an emancipation from 
 that industrial slavery which now degrades and im- 
 poverishes the lives of the masses of our citizens. 
 Capitalism has given us a plutocracy which is as bane- 
 ful as any political despotism the world has seen ; \ve 
 have escaped from the serfdom of the feudal State 
 only to fall into the new serfdom of an unregulated 
 industrialism. 
 
 The evils of leaving everything to " private enterprise " 
 force themselves upon attention, especially in the case 
 of what are generally called " public interests " those 
 branches of activity which obviously affect all alike, such 
 as the means of communication, railways, roads, and tele- 
 graphs. A more careful reflection, however, discovers a 
 certain " public " value in all forms of industry, even in 
 those which are apparently most " private." That mutual 
 industrial dependence of each on all and all on each, in 
 which Plato found the basis of the State, has once more 
 come to constitute a powerful plea for the necessity of 
 political organisation, and we have a new State-Socialism 
 
THE SOCIAL LIFE. 303 
 
 which maintains that the equal interests of each can be 
 conserved only by the sacrifice of all private interests to 
 the public interest, that only by disallowing the distinc- 
 tion between meum and tuum, and identifying the interest 
 of each with that of all, can we hope to establish the reign 
 of justice among men. 
 
 One other force has contributed to the change of stand- 
 point which we are considering namely, the changed 
 conception of the State itself. The progress towards indi- 
 vidual freedom has at the same time been a progress 
 towards the true form of the State ; and as the oligar- 
 chical and despotic have yielded to the democratic type of 
 government, it has been recognised that the State is not 
 an alien force imposed upon the individual from without, 
 but that, in their true being, the State and the individual 
 are identical. Upon the ruins of the feudal State the 
 individual has at length built for himself a new State, a 
 form of government to which he can yield a willing obedi- 
 ence, because it is the creation of his own will, and, in 
 .obeying it, he is really obeying himself. L'ttat cest moi. 
 
 Such causes as these have led to the return, in our own 
 time, to the classical conception of the State and its func- 
 tions, and to the substitution of the question of the rights 
 of the State for the question of the rights of the indi- 
 vidual. The tendency of contemporary thought and effort 
 is, on the whole, to extend the political organisation of 
 society, to socialise the State or to nationalise Society. 
 What, then, we are forced to ask, is the ethical basis of 
 the State ? What, in its principle and idea, is it ? If 
 we can answer this question of the ethical basis of the 
 State, we shall not find much difficulty in determining, 
 
304 THE MORAL LIFE. 
 
 on general lines, its ethical functions, whether negative 
 or positive, whether in the sphere of Justice or in that 
 of Benevolence. 
 
 is the 7. From an ethical standpoint the State must be re- 
 
 EnViu- 11 garded as a means, not as in itself an end. The State 
 exists for the sake of the person, not the person for the 
 sake of the State. The ethical unit is the person ; and 
 the mission of the State is not to supersede the person, 
 but to aid him in the development of his personality 
 to give him room and opportunity. It exists for him, 
 not he for it ; it is his sphere, the medium of his ethical 
 life. Here there is no real difference between the ancient 
 and the modern views of the State ; in principle they are 
 at one. For Plato and Aristotle, as for ourselves, the_State 
 is the sphere of the ethical life, the true State is the com- 
 plement of the true individual, his proper milieu. The 
 Greek State, it is true, as it actually existed and even 
 as Plato idealised it, contradicts, in some measure, our 
 conception of personality; but it did not contradict the 
 Greek conception of personality. From our modern stand- 
 point, we find it inadequate for two reasons. It exists 
 only for the few, the many exist for it ; the Greek State 
 is, in our view, an exclusive aristocracy, from the privi- 
 leges of whose citizenship the majority are excluded. 
 Yet, in the last analysis, we find that the end for which 
 the State exists is the person ; those who exist merely 
 for the State are not regarded as persons. If the Greeks 
 could have conceived the modern extension of personality, 
 it is safe to say that they would have entirely agreed 
 with the modern interpretation of the relation of the 
 
THE SOCIAL LIFE. 305 
 
 State to the individual. Then, in the second place, it is 
 to be noted that, with all their intellectual and aesthetic 
 appreciation, the Greeks had not yet so fully discovered 
 the riches of the ethical life. With our profounder appre- 
 ciation of the significance of personality, the merely in- 
 strumental value of the State is more clearly perceived. 
 But to those who did reflect upon its essential nature, the 
 Greek State also was a creation of the ethical spirit, the 
 great ethical institution. The ancient, as well as the modern 
 State, based its right to the loyal service of its citizens 
 upon the plea that, in serving it, the individual was really 
 serving himself ; that, in giving up even his all to it and 
 counting nothing " his own," he would receive from it a 
 return of full and joyous life out of all proportion to what 
 he gave. 
 
 It is only when we reflect, however, that we discover 
 this instrumental nature of the State. In our ordinary 
 unreflective thought we are the victims of the association 
 of ideas, and in this, as in so many other cases, we confuse 
 the means with the end. It is a case of the familiar 
 " miser's consciousness." As the miser comes to think of 
 money, because of its supreme instrumental importance, as 
 an end in itself, and to regard the real ends of life as only 
 means to this fictitious end, so does the citizen come to 
 regard the State, because of its supreme importance as 
 the medium of the ethical life, as itself the end, and him- 
 self as but its instrument. Yet it is the function of a 
 medium to mediate and fulfil, not to negate and destroy, 
 that which it mediates ; and whenever we reflect we see 
 that thelrue function of_the-State is to mediate and fulfil 
 the personal life of the citizen. This theoretic insight is, 
 
 u 
 
306 THE MORAL LIFE. 
 
 of course, not necessary to the life of citizenship ; we may 
 most truly use the State for this highest end, when we 
 act under the impulse of an unreflecting and uncalculating 
 loyalty to the State itself. But the very fact that we can 
 thus serve the State without disloyalty to our highest Self 
 implies . that we are not serving two masters, that the 
 only master of our loyal service is the ethical and personal 
 Ideal. The ultimate sanction and measure of political 
 obedience is found in the ethical value of the State as the 
 vehicle of the personal life of its citizens. 
 
 The true relation of the State to the individual has 
 been obscured in modern discussion by the constant an- 
 tithesis of " State-action " and " Individualism." The an- 
 tithesis is inevitable, so long as we regard the individual 
 as a mere individual. So regarded, he is like an atom that 
 resists the intrusion of every other atom into its place ; 
 the mere individual is anti-social and anti-political, and to 
 " socialise " or " nationalise " him is to negate and destroy 
 him. His life is one of "go-as-you-please," of absolute 
 laissez faire. But the ethical unit is not such a mere 
 atomic individual, but the person who is social and 
 political as well as individual, and whose life is forwarded 
 and fulfilled, rather than negated, by the political and 
 other forms of social organisation. To cut him off from 
 others, to isolate him, would be to maim and stunt his 
 life. That the State has seemed to encroach upon the life 
 of the ethical person, is largely due to the constant use of 
 the term " State-interference." In so far as the State 
 may be said to " interfere," it is only with the individual, 
 not with the person ; and the purpose of its " interference " 
 always is to save the person from the interference of other 
 
THE SOCIAL LIFE. 307 
 
 individuals. Neither the State nor the individual is the 
 ultimate ethical end and unit, but the person. " The 
 State at best is the work of man's feeble hands, working 
 with unsteady purpose ; the person, with all his claims, is 
 the work of God." 1 What is called " State-interference " 
 is in reality the maintenance of this ethical possibility, 
 the making room for the life of the person. If all 
 individuals were left to themselves, they would not leave 
 each other to themselves ; but individual would encroach 
 upon individual, and none would have the full opportunity 
 of ethical self-realisation. 
 
 8. Just here lies the ethical problem of the basis of the The ethical 
 State. The essence of the State is Sovereignty, and the the state. 
 maintenance of the Sovereign Power through control or 
 coercion. In order that each may have freedom of self- 
 development, each must be restrained in certain ways. Is 
 not the process ethically suicidal ? Is not the personality 
 destroyed in the very act of allowing it freedom of self- 
 development ? Does not State - control supplant Self- 
 control, the sovereignty of the State the sovereignty of 
 Personality ? Does not the political negate the ethical life, 
 and the State constrain the person to act impersonally ? 
 
 Two extreme answers are offered to this question. The 
 first is the answer of Anarchism, the refusal of the self 
 to acknowledge any control from without. This is the 
 answer of pure Individualism, and confuses liberty with 
 licence. The individual who refuses to acknowledge any 
 obligations to other individuals, and denies the right of 
 society to control his life, will not control himself. The 
 
 1 Professor Laurie, ' Ethica,' 69 (second ed.) 
 
 7BESITY 
 
308 THE MORAL LIFE. 
 
 life of individuals who refuse to become " political," will 
 be a " state of war," if not so absolute as Hobbes has 
 pictured it, yet deplorable enough to teach its possessors 
 the distinction between liberty and licence, and to awaken 
 in them the demand for that deliverance from the evils 
 of unrestrained individualism which comes only with the 
 strong arm of law and government. The other answer is 
 that of Despotism, which allows no freedom to the individ- 
 ual. This would obviously de- personalise man, and, de- 
 priving him of his ethical prerogative of self-government, 
 would make him the mere instrument or organ of the 
 Sovereign Power. Do these alternative extremes exhaust 
 the possibilities of the case ? Is Despotism the only 
 escape from Anarchy; can we not have liberty without 
 licence ? 
 
 It seems at first as if there were no third possibility, as 
 if the very existence of the State, of Law, of Government, 
 carried with it a derogation from the personal life of tlie 
 citizen. So far as its dominion extends, the State seems 
 to take the management of his life out of the individual's 
 hands, and to manage it for him. Another Will seems 
 to impose its behests upon the individual Will or Person, 
 and he becomes its creature and servant ; losing his self- 
 mastery, he is controlled and mastered by another Will. 
 " It is the specific function of Government to impose upon 
 the individual, in apparent violation of his claim to free 
 self-determination, an alien Will, an alien Law. . . . Preach- 
 ers and teachers try to instruct us as to what course our 
 own highest reason approves, and to persuade us to follow 
 that course. When they have failed, Government steps in 
 and says : ' Such and such are the true principles of justice. 
 
THE SOCIAL LIFE. 309 
 
 I command you to obey them. If you do not, I will punish 
 you.'" 1 Autonomy is of the essence of the moral life, 
 it is essentially a personal life. But the very existence of 
 the State seems to imply Heteronomy, or an impersonal 
 life in the citizens. The difficulty does not arise, it is to 
 be observed, from the artificiality of the State, or from the 
 natural egoism of human nature. Let us admit that the 
 State itself is the product and creation of the human 
 spirit, that man is by nature a political being, i.e., a being 
 whose life naturally tends to the political form. The 
 question is whether the human spirit is not imprisoned 
 in its own creation, whether the ethical life is not lost in 
 the political, autonomy in heteronomy. 
 
 The first thing to be noted is, that the imposition of the 
 Will of another upon the individual does not destroy the 
 individual Will. We are apt to think of the divine Will 
 as so imposed, of certain restrictions as laid by the very 
 nature of things upon the life of the individual ; yet we do 
 not find in this any infraction of human Personality or Will. 
 All that is imposed is a certain form of outward activity, 
 the inward movement of the Will is not necessarily touched. 
 Thus, all that is enforced by the political Will or the 
 Sovereign Power is outward obedience, not the inward 
 obedience of the Will itself. It is for the individual to 
 say whether he will complete the outward surrender by 
 the inward self -surrender. He may render either an out- 
 ward conformity or an inward conformity, the act re- 
 quired may be performed either willingly or unwillingly. 
 The appeal is to the Will or Personality, but it is for the 
 Will to respond or not to the appeal. What is coerced is 
 
 1 Taylor, ' The Right of the State to Be,' 44. 
 
310 THE MORAL LIFE. 
 
 the expression of the individuality in outward act ; the 
 citizen is not allowed to act (outwardly) as the creature 
 of ungoverned impulse. Not that the task of self-control 
 is taken out of his hands, or his individuality mastered 
 by another will or personality rather than by his own. 
 The mastery of the State extends only to the expression 
 of individual impulse in the corresponding outward activ- 
 ities. He may still cherish those impulsive tendencies the 
 expression of which on the field of overt activity has been re- 
 strained, as the criminal so often does cherish his criminal 
 instincts and habits, notwithstanding the outward repres- 
 sion. The criminal may remain a criminal, though the 
 State prevents his commission of further crime. He can- 
 not be mastered by another, but only by himself; it is 
 for himself alone, by an act of voluntary choice, to say 
 whether he will remain a criminal or not. 
 
 By its punishments, the State not merely restrains the 
 outward activity of its citizens ; it -further, by touching 
 the individual sensibility, appeals to the person to exer- 
 cise that self-restraint which is alone permanently effec- 
 tive. It is for the person to say whether he. will or will 
 not exercise such self-restraint. Just in so far as he 
 re-enacts the verdict of the State upon his life, or recog- 
 nises the justice of its punishment, just in so far as he 
 identifies his will with the will that expresses itself in 
 the punishment, and what was the will of another becomes 
 his own will, is the result of such treatment permanently,, 
 and thoroughly, and in the highest sense successful. When 
 the person has thus taken the reins of the government 
 of sensibility into his own hands, political coercion ceases 
 to be necessary. The will now expresses itself in the act,. 
 
THE SOCIAL LIFE. 311 
 
 the dualism of inward disposition and outward deed has 
 disappeared, and the life is, even in these particulars, a 
 personal life. 
 
 Thus interpreted, the coercion of the State is seen to 
 be an extension of the coercion of Nature. Nature itself 
 disallows certain lines of activity, does not permit us to 
 follow every impulse. The organisation of life in political 
 society implies a farther restraint upon individual ten- 
 dencies to activity, a certain farther organisation or co- 
 ordination of the outward activities. But the organisation 
 and co-ordination of the impulsive tendencies to activity, 
 this is in the hands not of the State but of the individual 
 will. The right of the State to coerce the individual, in 
 the sense indicated, is grounded in the fact that it exists 
 for the sake of the interests of personality. As these 
 interests are superior in right to the interests of mere 
 individual caprice, so are the laws of the State superior 
 to the instincts and impulses of the individual. The 
 State restrains the expression of the individuality that 
 it may vindicate the sacred rights of personality in each 
 individual. Its order is an improvement upon the order 
 of nature; it is more discriminating, more just, more 
 encouraging to virtue, more discouraging to vice. The 
 civil order foreshadows the moral order itself; it is a 
 " version," the best available for the time and place and 
 circumstances, of that order. 
 
 And although the action of the State seems at first 
 sight to be merely coercive, and its will the will of an- 
 other, a closer analysis reveals the fundamental identity 
 of the State, in its idea at least, with the ethical Person. 
 The sovereign will represents the individual will, or 
 
312 THE MORAL LIFE. 
 
 rather the " general will," of the individual citizens. Here, 
 in the general will of the people, in the common per- 
 sonality of the citizens, is the true seat of sovereignty. 
 The actual and visible sovereign or government is rep- 
 resentative of this invisible sovereign. The supreme 
 power in the State, whatever be the form of government, 
 is therefore, truly regarded, the " public person," and, in 
 obeying it, the citizens are really obeying their common 
 personality. The Sovereign Power is " the public person 
 vested with the power of the law, and so is to be con- 
 sidered as the image, phantom, or representative of the 
 commonwealth ; " " and thus he has no will, no power, but 
 that of the law." l Obedience to the State is obedience 
 to the citizen's own better self, and, like Socrates, we ought 
 not to " disobey a better." The apparent heteronomy is 
 really autonomy in disguise ; I am, after all, sovereign as 
 well as subject, subject of my own legislation. The right of 
 the State is, therefore, supreme, being the right of person- 
 ality itself. ' For the individual to assert his will against 
 the will of the State is ethically suicidal. ) Socrates went 
 willingly to death, because he could not live and obey the 
 State rather than God ; he accepted " the will of the 
 people " that he should die. Death was for him the only 
 path of obedience to both the outward and the inward 
 " better." The individual may criticise the political order, 
 as an inadequate version of the moral order. He may try 
 to improve upon and " reform " it. He may even " obey 
 God rather than man," and refuse the inner obedience of 
 the will. But, where the State keeps within its proper 
 function, he may not openly violate its order. 
 
 1 Locke, ' Treatise of Civil Government,' Bk. ii. ch. 13. 
 
THE SOCIAL LIFE. 313 
 
 9. If the State should step beyond its proper function, and The limit 
 invade instead of protecting the sphere of personality ; if action. 
 the actual State should not merely fall short of but con- 
 tradict the ideal, then the right of rebellion belongs to 
 the subject. If a revolution has become necessary, and 
 if such revolution can be accomplished only by rebellion, 
 rebellion takes the place of obedience as the duty of the 
 citizen. Even in his rebellion he is still a citizen, loyal to 
 the law and constitution of the ideal State which he seeks 
 by his action to realise. 
 
 This contradiction may occur in either of two ways. 
 In the first place, the Sovereign Power may not be repre- 
 sentative or " public," but may act as a private person or 
 body of persons. As Locke again says : " When he quits 
 this public representation, this public will, and acts by his 
 own private will, he degrades himself, and is but a single 
 private person without power, and without will that has 
 any right to obedience the members owing no obedience 
 but to the public will of the society." The true sovereign 
 must count nothing his own, must have no private in- 
 terests in his public acts ; his interests must be those of 
 the people, and their will his. If he acts otherwise, as- 
 serting his own private will, and subordinating the good 
 of the citizens to his own individual good, he thereby 
 uncrowns himself, and abnegates his sovereignty. Then 
 comes the time for the exercise of the " supreme power 
 that remains still in the people." The necessity of the 
 English and the French Eevolution, for example, lay in 
 the fact that the actual State contradicted the ideal, seek- 
 ing to destroy those rights of personality of which it ought 
 to have been the custodian, and to which it was called to 
 
314 THE MORAL LIFE. 
 
 give an account of its stewardship. At such a time the 
 common Personality, in whose interest the State exists, 
 must step forth, assert itself against the so-called " State," 
 and, condemning the actual, give birth to one that shall 
 be true to its own idea, that shall help and not hinder its 
 citizens in their life of self-realisation. The power re- 
 turns to its source, the " general will," which is thus forced 
 to find for itself a new and more adequate expression. 
 
 This brings us to the second form of the contradiction 
 between the actual and the ideal State. When the present 
 formulation of the general will has become inadequate, it 
 must be re-formulated ; and this re-formulation of its will 
 by the people may also mean revolution as well as reform- 
 ation. The actual sovereign or government is the steward 
 of that power whose real seat is in the will of the people, 
 and may be called before that bar to give an account of 
 its stewardship. Such a criticism and modification of the 
 State is indeed always going on, " public opinion " is 
 always more or less active, and more or less articulate, 
 and it is the function of the Statesman to interpret, 
 as well as to guide and form, this " public opinion." 
 : As long as there is harmony between the " general will " 
 and the will of the government, as long as the govern- 
 ment is truly " representative " of the governed, so long 
 the State exists and prospers. V As soon as there is discord, 
 and the government ceases to "represent" the general 
 will, so soon does a new delegation of sovereignty become 
 necessary. " Emperors, kings, councils, and parliaments, 
 or any combinations of them, are only the temporary 
 representatives of something that is greater than they." l 
 
 1 D. G. Ritchie, ' Principles of State Interference,' 69. 
 
THE SOCIAL LIFE. 315 
 
 " The acts of the government in every country which is not 
 on the verge of a revolution are not the acts of a minority 
 of individuals, but the acts of the uncrowned and in- 
 visible sovereign, the spirit of the nation itself." 1 In the 
 very indeterminateness of the general will, in the fact that 
 no one of its determinations or definitions of itself is final, 
 that no actualisation of it exhausts its potentiality or fixes 
 it in a rigid and unchanging form ; that, like an organ- 
 ism, it grows and in its growth is capable of adapting 
 itself always to its new conditions ; that, like the indi- 
 vidual will, it learns by experience and allows its past 
 to determine its present, lies the undying strength and 
 vitality of that invisible State which persists through all 
 the changing forms of its visible manifestation. 
 
 10. The State, being the medium of the ethical life of The ethical 
 the individual, has two ethical functions : (1) the negative 
 
 function of securing to the individual the opportunity of ( a 
 self-realisation, by protecting him from the encroachments 
 of other individuals or of non-political forms of society 
 the function of Justice ; (2) the positive improvement 
 of the conditions of the ethical life for each of its citi- 
 zens the function of Benevolence. In the exercise of 
 the former function, the State cares for the interests of 
 " being," in the exercise of the latter it cares for the in- 
 terests of " well-being " ; and as the interests of " being " 
 or " security " precede in imperativeness those of " well- 
 being," so is the political duty of Justice prior to that of 
 Benevolence. In the case of the State, as in that of the in- 
 dividual, however, the one duty passes imperceptibly into 
 
 1 ' Principles of State Interference/ 74. 
 
316 THE MORAL LIFE. 
 
 the other, and Benevolence is seen to be only the higher 
 Justice. This relation of the positive to the negative 
 function suggests, what a closer consideration makes very 
 plain, that there is no logical basis for the limitation of 
 State-action to Justice, and that these* who would thus 
 limit it are seeking artificially to arrest the life of the State 
 at the stage of what we may call the lower Justice. 
 
 Even at this stage the activity of the State is, in its 
 essence, the same as it is at the higher stages of that 
 activity. Even here the function is not a mere " police " 
 one ; even here the State " interferes " with the individual. 
 To protect the individual from the aggression of other 
 individuals and of society, the State must " interfere " 
 with the individual, and be in some considerable measure 
 " aggressive/' Already the imagined " sphere " of sheer 
 independent and private individuality has been penetrated, 
 and the right of the State to act within that "sphere" 
 established. While it is true that the preservation of the 
 integrity of the individual life implies a large measure of 
 freedom from government control, it is also true that the 
 only way to secure such freedom for the individual is by 
 a large measure of such control. If other individuals 
 and non-political society are not to encroach upon the 
 individual and destroy his freedom, the State must be 
 allowed to encroach and set up its rule within the life of 
 the individual. The tyranny of the individual and the 
 tyranny of unofficial " public opinion " are not to be com- 
 pared in evil with what some are pleased to call the 
 " tyranny " of the State. The justification of " State-in- 
 terference " in all its forms is, -as we have seen, that it is 
 exercised in the interest of individual freedom. 
 
THE SOCIAL LIFE. 317 
 
 The fundamental limitation, as well as the fundamental 
 vindication, of State-action is found in its ethical basis. 
 Since the State exists as the medium of personal life, the 
 limit of its action is reached at the point where it begins 
 to encroach upon and negate the strictly personal life 
 of the citizen. The State must maintain the life of the 
 individual, not simply annex and take possession of it for 
 itself ; it must not abolish but establish the life of the in- 
 dividual. If the individual apart from the State is "as* 
 good as nothing," a State in which the individual is lost 
 is no true State. The best State is that in whose citizen- 
 ship the individual most fully lives his own individual 
 life, that which includes, and integrates in a higher and 
 richer unity, the greatest number of individual elements, 
 and, like an organism, incorporates in its own total life the t 
 lives of its several members. The simplest State is likely 
 to be the worst rather than the best, since in the best 
 there must be room for indefinite differentiation without 
 the loss of the State's integrity. The true unity is, here as 
 elsewhere, unity in difference. The true political identity 
 is that which, like the identity of the organism, conceals 
 itself in endless differentiation of structure and function. 
 If the idea of the State is not to be contradicted, room 
 must be found in it for the ethical individual in all the 
 wealth of his individual possibilities. Does not the State 
 exist to provide the true sphere for the actualisation of 
 these possibilities ? 
 
 Take, for example, the question of the attitude of the 
 State to individual " property." From of old the spell of 
 the simple or communistic State has fascinated the im- 
 agination of political speculators. It has seemed self- 
 
 IVSKSIT7J 
 
 _ . J 
 
320 THE MORAL LIFE. 
 
 of it is in my own hands ; I have the right of use and ex- 
 change, as well as of possession. This right also the State 
 must establish and interpret, not destroy. Yet it is often 
 argued that, as the State ought to be the sole owner, so it 
 ought to be the sole disposer of property ; that here again 
 the individual life, instead of being maintained and reg- 
 ulated, should be simply absorbed by the State. 
 
 It is to be noted that, in thus limiting the functions 
 of the State, we are not maintaining individualism in the 
 ordinary sense of that term. The individual for whose 
 sake the State exists is the ethical individual or the 
 person, and his " security " from the encroachment of 
 other individuals implies a large measure of State con- 
 trol or " interference." The State must not only establish 
 the right of the individual to " his own " and to the dis- 
 position of " his own " ; it must also correct the abuses 
 which are apt to occur in these spheres of the individual 
 life. For it is as true in the life of ownership as in other 
 spheres that " no man liveth to himself." The individual 
 cannot isolate himself, even in these particulars of his 
 conduct ; in them also his life has a public, as well as 
 a private side. And if great possession, instead of being 
 used as a great ethical opportunity, becomes an instru- 
 ment of moral evil to other citizens, it is for the State 
 to intervene and, it may be, to interdict. The rule is the 
 constant one of guarding the security of personal rights. 
 No criterion of amount can be laid down a priori, cer- 
 tainly no rule of abstract " equality." But, when the 
 individual owner abuses his rights as a proprietor, that 
 is, where he so uses them as to injure the free and fruit- 
 ful self-development of others, the State may step in. It 
 
THE SOCIAL LIFE. 321 
 
 is a case of punishment, and does not amount to a viola- 
 tion of the rights of personality. It is the freaks of the 
 man's individuality his greed, his laziness, his selfish 
 indifference, that are punished (and the life of ownership 
 is liable to such freaks like any other life), not the essen- 
 tial and inviolable life of the person. The State may 
 even generalise from its experience of the actual working 
 of private ownership in the case of particular commodities 
 and industries, of land, or of public services, and decide 
 to nationalise them. The sphere of private ownership 
 may thus be limited by the State, on the principle that 
 the free and equal self-development of all its citizens is 
 the treasure in its keeping. In comparison with this, 
 the selfish satisfaction of the individual is of no account, 
 and must be sacrificed. But the theory of Communism 
 or State- Socialism, that the State shall be the sole pro- 
 prietor, is suicidal, destroying as it does those very rights 
 of personality which are the basis of the rights of pro- 
 perty, and in the absence or annihilation of which the 
 State itself, as an ethical institution, would have no ex- 
 istence, or at least no raison d'Stre. 
 
 A further limitation is set to the action of the State 
 by the principle of the existence and freedom of other 
 social institutions within it. The completely commun- 
 istic or socialistic State would absorb into itself, along 
 with the individual, all extra-political forms of associ- 
 ation, and would identify Society with the State. Now, 
 it is obvious that no form of social organisation can be, in 
 an absolute sense, "extra-political," inasmuch as these 
 minor societies must all alike be contained within the 
 larger society which we call the State. They, like the 
 
322 THE MORAL LIFE. 
 
 individual, depend upon the State for their very existence. 
 Yet each of these minor societies has a sphere of its own, 
 which the State preserves from invasion by any of the 
 others, and which the State itself must not invade. Each 
 must be allowed to exercise its own peculiar functions, 
 with due regard to the functions, equally rightful, of the 
 others. Even the State must not usurp the functions of 
 any other ethical institution. It has its genius, they have 
 theirs ; and as they recognise its rights, it must recognise 
 theirs also. The most important of these institutions 
 within the State are the Family and the Church. The 
 function of the State is not paternal, it does not stand in 
 loco parentis to the citizen ; nor is its function ecclesiasti- 
 cal, Church and State are not to be identified. The State 
 is the guardian of these institutions ; but the very notion of 
 such guardianship is that that which is guarded shall be 
 maintained in its integrity, and allowed to fulfil its own 
 proper work and mission for mankind. In the exercise of 
 this guardianship, the State may be called upon to act 
 vicariously for the institutions under its care ; but its 
 further duty must always be, so to improve the conditions 
 of institutional life, that that life shall pursue its own true 
 course without interference or assistance from without. 
 Institutions, like individuals, must be "helped to help 
 themselves." Eor example, the State may be called upon 
 not merely to superintend the institution of the Family, but 
 to discharge duties which, in an ideal condition of things, 
 would be performed by the parent. The State may also 
 not merely recognise the right of ecclesiastical association, 
 but even establish and endow an ecclesiastical society. 
 All that is ethically imperative is that, within the Church 
 
THE SOCIAL LIFE. 323 
 
 and within the Family, freedom of initiation and self- 
 development be allowed ; that each institution be permitted 
 to work out its own career, and to realise its own peculiar 
 genius. On the other hand, neither the Family nor the 
 Church must be allowed to encroach upon the proper 
 functions of the State ; here the State must defend its 
 own prerogative. In general, the political, the domestic, 
 and the ecclesiastical functions must be kept separate, 
 since, however closely they may intertwine, each deals 
 with a distinct aspect of human life. 
 
 The final principle of limitation that which in a sense 
 underlies the others mentioned is the principle of indi- 
 vidual freedom. The State may not use the individual as 
 its mere instrument or organ. In a sense, and up to a 
 certain, point, it may and must do so ; only it must not 
 appropriate, or altogether nationalise him. The industrial 
 State, e.g., of many Socialists, would reduce the individual 
 to a mere crank in the social or political machine. But 
 if we thus destroy the proper life of the individual for 
 himself, we undo the very work we are trying to do. 
 Ultimately the State exists for the individual, and it is 
 only because the individual some individual gets back 
 with the interest of an added fulness and joy in life what 
 the individual has given to the State in loyal service, that 
 the service is ethically justified. The State has a tre- 
 mendous and indefinite claim upon the citizen, but that 
 claim is only the reflection of the individual's claim upon 
 the State. The Socialism which neglects the individual 
 side of this claim is no less unsound than the Anarchism 
 which neglects its social side. The measure of the service 
 which the State can demand of the individual is found in 
 
324 THE MORAL LIFE. 
 
 his manhood. If the individual is not an independent 
 unit, neither is he a mere instrument for the production 
 of national wealth. The true wealth or well-being of the 
 nation lies in the well-being of its individual citizens ; and 
 if this universal well-being can be reached only through 
 that partial sacrifice of individual well-being which is im- 
 plied in the discharge by the individual of the functions 
 demanded by the State as a whole, the limit to such a 
 demand is found in the right of the individual to the 
 enjoyment of a return for his service in a higher and fuller 
 capacity of life. In the language of political economy, the 
 individual is a consumer as well as a producer, and even 
 if in his latter capacity he were " exploited " by the State, 
 he would still in the former have claims as an individual. 
 It is probably because the emphasis is placed on the pro- 
 duction, and the consumption is so largely ignored, that 
 the communistic State proves so fascinating to many. 
 But, in truth, regard must be had to the individual life 
 in both these aspects, if it is not to suffer in both. The 
 State, in short, must not demand the entire man ; to do so 
 is to destroy its own idea. The most perfect State will 
 be that in which there is least repression, and most en- 
 couragement and development, of the free life of a full 
 individuality in the citizens. 
 
 11. Within these ethical limits the State may do any- 
 thing, and need count nothing human foreign to its 
 province. The State has positive as well as negative 
 functions ; it may set itself to effect the higher as well 
 as the lower, the spiritual as well as the material, welfare 
 of its citizens. There is, of course, no special virtue in 
 
THE SOCIAL LIFE. 325 
 
 the fact that a thing is done by the State rather than by 
 some other agency. The reason for the exercise of the 
 higher functions by the State is the practical one, that 
 the action of the State is most effective and on the largest 
 scale. The State, e.g., can care for the education of its 
 citizens, as no individual or group of individuals can. We 
 must remember also that the action of the State may be 
 indirect as well as direct, local as well as central. What 
 functions the State shall take upon itself in any particular 
 country, how far it shall go in their discharge, and how 
 long it shall continue to discharge them, these are ques- 
 tions of practical politics, to be answered by the States- 
 man, and not by the political philosopher. All that Ethics, 
 in particular, can do is to formulate the ethical principles 
 of State-action in general. 
 
 How the negative function of the State passes into the 
 positive, its activities of Justice into those of Benevolence, 
 may be indicated in one or two of its chief aspects. The 
 protection of the individual (or rather of the community 
 of individuals) from the evils of ignorance implies, especi- 
 ally in a democracy, the education of the citizens. Com- 
 pulsory, and even under certain conditions free, education 
 thus become necessities of political well-being ; and once 
 the process of education has been undertaken by the State, 
 it is difficult to say where it shall be abandoned. For the 
 higher education, even though limited directly to the few, 
 penetrates, perhaps no less effectively than the lower, the 
 mass of the citizens and affects the common weal. Every 
 loyal citizen may well, with John Knox, thank God for 
 "another scholar in the land." Again, the permanent 
 and thorough-going prevention of crime implies a concern 
 
326 THE MORAL LIFE. 
 
 for the positive ethical well-being of the criminal. Pun- 
 ishment, in the older sense, is now seen to be a very 
 inadequate method of social protection. The only way in 
 which the State can permanently deter the criminal from 
 crime is by undertaking his education as a moral being, 
 and providing for him, as far as may be, the stimulus to 
 goodness. Only in so far as punishment is reformative 
 and educative, is it truly deterrent. Further than this, 
 and still in the interests of " security," as well as those 
 of well-being, the State must remove as far as possible the 
 stimulus to crime that comes from extreme poverty; it 
 must so far equalise the conditions of industrial life, as 
 to secure to each citizen the opportunity of earning an 
 honest livelihood. And, if it would prevent the general 
 loss which comes from the existence of a pauper class, the 
 State must take measures to secure the individual against 
 the risk of becoming a burden to society ; by taking upon 
 itself the burden of providing him with the opportunity 
 of self-maintenance, it will save itself from the later and 
 heavier burden of maintaining him. Since, also, the pro- 
 gress of society must often mean a temporary injustice to 
 the individual, the State must, again in its own per- 
 manent interest, provide some remedy for this injustice. 
 Social progress " costs " much, and it is for the State to 
 reckon up these costs of progress, and, as far as possible, 
 to make them good to its citizens. 1 The State must seek 
 to maintain the equilibrium which progress seems always 
 temporarily to disturb. 
 
 1 Cf. Professor H. C. Adams's suggestive article, entitled, " An Inter- 
 pretation of the Social Movements of our Time," ' International Journal 
 of Ethics,' October 1891. 
 
THE SOCIAL LIFE. 327 
 
 When, however, we realise the fuller meaning of the 
 State as an ethical institution, nay, as the all-containing 
 ethical institution, we see that it must go further than 
 that indirect or secondary Benevolence which is implied 
 in the lower or ordinary Justice. The sphere of the 
 higher Justice or that of true Benevolence is part of 
 the sphere of the State's legitimate activity. This higher 
 justice means that all be provided with the opportunity 
 of the ethical life which is so apt, even in our own^ 
 civilisation, to be open only to the few. It is for the 
 State to emancipate from the slavery of social condi- 
 tions the toiling masses of society, to endow those who 
 are citizens only in name with a real ethical citizen- 
 ship, to make those who have neither part nor lot in the 
 true life of humanity heirs of its wealth and partakers in 
 its conquests. The development of our modern industrial 
 system has given us back the essential evils of ancient 
 slavery and of feudal serfdom in a new and, in many 
 ways, an aggravated form. To the " working class," to the 
 " hands," into which machinery and free competition have 
 transformed the masses of our modern population to 
 these the State must give not merely the political fran- 
 chise, but the ethical franchise of a complete and worthy 
 human life. As the custodian of the ethical interests, and 
 not merely of the material interests of its citizens, the 
 State must see that the former are not sacrificed to the 
 latter. The political sphere, being the ethical sphere, in- 
 cludes the industrial as it includes all others ; and while 
 the industrial life ought to be allowed to follow its own 
 economic laws in so far as such independence is consistent 
 with ethical well-being, it is for the State to co-ordinate 
 
 
 I7SR 
 
328 THE MORAL LIFE. 
 
 the industrial with the ethical life. Industry is an ethical 
 activity, and must be regulated by ethical as well as by 
 economic law ; there must be no schism in the body- 
 politic. If men were mere brute agents, their lives as 
 producers and consumers of wealth would, no doubt, be 
 subject to economic law as undeviating as the law of 
 nature ; but the fact that, as men, they are in all their 
 activity moral beings, implies that even the economic 
 world must come under the higher regulation of moral 
 law. The State alone can enforce this higher regulation, 
 and the advance from the theory of absolutely " free com- 
 petition " or laissez faire to that of industrial co-operation 
 and organisation is bringing us to the recognition of the 
 ethical function of the State in the economic sphere. It 
 is for the State to substitute for the " mob-rule " of un- 
 ethical economic forces the steady rational control of 
 ethical insight. In the words of Professor Adams, in the 
 article already quoted : " Unless some way be discovered by 
 which the deep ethical purpose of society can be brought 
 to bear upon industrial questions, our magnificent material 
 civilisation will crumble to ashes in our hands. ... A 
 peace born of justice can never be realised by balancing 
 brute force against brute force. . . . The ethical sense 
 of society must be brought to bear in settling business 
 affairs. . . . Above the interest of the contending parties 
 stands the interest of the public, of which the State is 
 the natural guardian, and one way to realise the ethical 
 purpose of society in business affairs is, by means of 
 legislation, to bring the ethical sense of society to bear 
 on business affairs." This means, of course, " State- 
 interference " with the industrial life of society ; but " by 
 
THE SOCIAL LIFE. 329 
 
 such interference society is not deprived of the advantages 
 of competition, but the plane of competition is adjusted 
 to the moral sense of the community." 1 
 
 This maintenance by the State of the true relation of 
 economic to ethical good, of material to spiritual well- 
 being, may take many forms. The ultimate measure of 
 well-being having been found in the perfection of the 
 development of the total nature of the individual, his 
 instrumental value as a producer of wealth will be sub- 
 ordinated to his essential and independent worth as a 
 moral being; regard to the external and industrial cri- 
 terion will be checked by regard to the internal and 
 ethical. In this ultimate regard, all men will be seen to 
 be equal; here, in the ethical sphere, will be found the 
 true democracy. Class -interests do not exist here, the 
 capitalist and the " day-labourer " stand here on the same 
 level, and the true State will regard the interests of 
 each alike. And if, even here, the highest well-being of 
 all implies a certain sacrifice of well-being on the part of 
 the individual, the State will see that such sacrifice does 
 not go too far, that no citizen loses the reality of citizen- 
 ship and sinks to the status of a slave or of a mere in- 
 strument in the industrial machine, but that for each 
 there is reserved a sufficient sphere of complete ethical 
 living. If the preservation and development of the highest 
 manhood of its citizens is the supreme duty of the State 
 its ultimate raison d'etre an obvious case of this duty 
 is the securing of a certain amount of leisure for all its 
 citizens. The lowest classes those which are technically 
 
 1 'International Journal of Ethics,' October 1891. Cf. President 
 Andrews's 'Wealth and Moral Law.' 
 
330 THE MORAL LIFE. 
 
 called the " working " classes need this leisure far more 
 clamantly than the middle and higher classes. Their 
 " work " is a far harder tyrant than the work of the latter, 
 since it calls forth so much less of their true manhood ; 
 they are " dominated " far more largely " by the needs of 
 others than by their own." Yet they too have needs of 
 their own not less real and not less urgent than their 
 " betters " ; they too have a manhood to develop, a moral 
 inheritance to appropriate. How much more need have 
 they of leisure to be with themselves, and to attend to 
 their " proper business " ? Such a shortening of the hours 
 of labour, such an extension of the area of the free indi- 
 vidual life, as shall secure for them also their peculiar 
 ethical opportunity this surely is the duty of the State 
 as the custodian of the higher justice. 
 
 The case of the regulation of the industrial life of the 
 community offers perhaps the best example of the via 
 media in which the true view of the ethical function of 
 the State is to be found. The socialistic extreme would 
 place all industrial activities in the hands of the State, 
 and would thus endanger, if not destroy, the proper 
 life of the individual by negating the principle of 
 free competition. The individualistic extreme, on the 
 other hand, would exclude the .State from the industrial 
 sphere, and leave economic law to operate unguided and 
 unchecked by any ethical considerations a course equally 
 fatal to the moral life of the community. The true view 
 would seem to be that while the industrial sphere is to 
 be recognised as having a nature of its own, and economic 
 law is not to be confused with ethical, yet the ethical 
 sphere includes the industrial as it includes all others, 
 
THE SOCIAL LIFE. 331 
 
 and its law must therefore operate through the law of the 
 latter. The State, accordingly, as the all-inclusive social 
 unity, must guard and foster the ethical life of its citizens 
 in the industrial as in the other spheres of that life. 
 
 As regards the distribution of material wealth, the State 
 has also a function assigned to it by its ethical constitu- 
 tion. In order that the struggle for mere " bread and 
 butter " may not consume all the energies of the masses of 
 its citizens, but that each individual in these " masses " 
 may have scope for the development of his higher ethical 
 capacities, for his proper Self -development, the State must 
 see that the " furniture of fortune " is not so unequally 
 distributed that, in any individual, the activities of the 
 moral life are rendered impossible, or so narrowly limited 
 as to be practically frustrated. For though it may be true 
 that the ethical Good is in its essence spiritual, and that 
 " a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things 
 which he possesseth," it is also true that the moral life, as 
 we know it, has a physical basis, and that, without a cer- 
 tain measure of material well-being, the " good will " can 
 find but little expression and realisation in activity. The 
 potential manhood in each can be actualised only by an 
 act of individual choice : yet, without certain conditions, 
 such actualisation is impossible. It is for the State so to 
 improve the conditions or " environment " of those against 
 whom " fortune " it may be in the shape of economic 
 law has discriminated, as to make a full ethical life for 
 them also possible. 
 
 12. In such ways as these the State may serve the ethi- The Per- 
 cal End. The question may finally be raised, whether the 
 
332 THE MORAL LIFE. 
 
 of the State is itself a permanent ethical institution, or destined, 
 after discharging a temporary function, to give place to 
 some higher form of social organisation. Is the final form 
 of society non-political rather than political ? As the in- 
 dividual emancipates himself from political control by 
 assuming the control of himself, may not society ultimately 
 emancipate itself from the control of the State ? And 
 may not the narrower virtue of Patriotism, or devo- 
 tion to our country, give place to the larger virtue of a 
 universal Philanthropy and Cosmopolitanism ? This is, of 
 course, a question on which we can only speculate, but 
 our practical attitude towards the State will be to some 
 extent affected by our disposition to answer it in the one 
 way or the other. It seems to me that while the form of 
 the State may continue to change, the State itself must 
 remain as the great institution of the ethical life, unless 
 that life undergoes a fundamental change. Peace may 
 permanently supplant war, and harmony antagonism, in 
 the relation of State to State. But the permanence of the 
 State itself seems consistent with the highest development 
 of the ethical life. The concentration of Patriotism is not 
 necessarily identical with narrowness and limitation. " It 
 is just the narrower ties that divide the allegiance which 
 most surely foster the wider affections." 1 On the other 
 hand, Cosmopolitanism has proved a failure when sub- 
 jected to the test of history. The Stoics were Cosmopoli- 
 tans ; so also were the Cynics before them. But, in both 
 cases, Cosmopolitanism proved itself a negative rather than 
 a positive principle ; it resulted in individualism and social 
 disintegration. We best serve humanity when we serve 
 
 1 MacCunn, ' Ethics of Citizenship,' 46. 
 
THE SOCIAL LIFE. 333 
 
 \ 
 
 our country best, as our best service to our country is our 
 service to our immediate community, and our best service 
 to our community is the service of our family and friends 
 and neighbours. For here, once more, we must be on 
 our guard against the fallacy of the abstract universal. 
 " Humanity " is only a vague abstraction until we particu- 
 larise it in the nation, as the latter itself is also until we 
 still further particularise and individualise it. The true 
 universal is the concrete universal, or the universal in 
 the particular ; and we can well believe that in the life 
 of domestic piety, of true neighbourliness, and of good 
 citizenship, our best duty to humanity is abundantly ful- 
 filled. The true philanthropy must always " begin at 
 home " ; and, as far as we can see, nationalism is as 
 permanent a principle of the ethical life as individualism. 
 
 NOTE. 
 
 THE THEORY OF PUNISHMENT.* 
 
 A GROWING number of ethical thinkers, as well as of practical 
 philanthropists, maintain the necessity of a radical change in our 
 view of punishment. We must substitute, they contend, for the 
 older or retributive theory the "deterrent" and "reformative" 
 theories. The new "science of criminology" is founded upon the 
 theory that crime is a " pathological phenomenon," a " disease," a 
 "form of insanity," an "inherited or acquired degeneracy." 2 It 
 
 1 The greater part of this note appeared as a " discussion " in the ' Inter- 
 national Journal of Ethics,' Jan. 1892. 
 
 2 Cf. Donaldson, "Ethics as applied to Criminology " (' Journal of Mental 
 Science,' Jan. 1891). 
 
334 THE MORAL LIFE. 
 
 follows that the proper treatment of the criminal is that which seeks 
 his cure rather than his punishment. Prisons must be superseded 
 by hospitals, asylums, and reformatories. 
 
 An advance in human feeling, as well as in intelligence, is to be 
 seen in this movement, both in its theoretical and in its practical 
 aspects ; an advance from the hard, blind desire for justice and the 
 unrelenting and unreasonable spirit of vindictiveness to a gentler 
 and wiser humanity. And society is now so securely organised that 
 it can afford to be not only just, but generous as well. The ques- 
 tion, however, is, whether the newer and the older views of pun- 
 ishment are mutually exclusive, and, if not, what is their relation 
 to one another ; whether the substitution of the deterrent and re- 
 formative for the retributive view is ethically sound, or whether, in 
 our recoil from the older view, we are not in danger of going to the 
 opposite extreme and losing the element of truth contained in the 
 retributive theory. 
 
 We must acknowledge, to begin with, that the new theory can 
 point to many facts for its basis. The general principle of heredity 
 is operative in the sphere of crime and vice no less than in that 
 of virtue. We might almost say that the criminal " is born, not 
 made," or, rather, that he is more born than made. Crime seems to 
 be almost as " instinctive " in some natures as goodness is in others. 
 This instinctive tendency to evil, developed by favourable circum- 
 stances or " environment," blooms in the criminal act and in the life 
 of crime. There is a criminal class, a kind of caste, which propagates 
 itself. Crime is a profession, with a "code of honour" and an 
 etiquette of its own, almost a vocation, calling for a special apti- 
 tude, moral and intellectual. Have we not here a great " pathologi- 
 cal phenomenon," a " disease " to be cured, not punished 1 
 
 But we cannot carry out the " pathological " idea. It is only an 
 analogy or metaphor after all, and, like all metaphors, may easily 
 prove misleading, if taken as a literal description of the facts. We 
 distinguish cases of " criminal insanity " from cases of " crime " 
 proper. In the former, the man is treated as a patient, is confined or 
 restrained, is " managed " by others. But he is, by acknowledgment, 
 so much the less a man because he may be treated in this way ; he 
 is excused for that which, in another, would be punished as a crime ; 
 he is not held accountable for his actions. The kleptomaniac, for 
 example, is not punished, but excused. Are we to say that the differ- 
 
THE SOCIAL LIFE. 335 
 
 ence between these actions and crimes proper is only one of degree, 
 and that the criminal is always a pathological or abnormal specimen 
 of humanity ? Do all criminals " border close on insanity " ? Even 
 if so, we must recognise, among bad as well as among good men, a 
 border-line between the sane 'and the insane ; to resolve all badness 
 into insanity does not conduce to clear thinking. A point may in- 
 deed be reached in the life of crime, as in the life of vice generally, 
 after which a man ceases to " be himself," and may therefore be 
 treated as a " thing " rather than as a " person " ; a point after which, 
 self-control being lost, external control must take its place. But 
 normal crime, if it has anything to do with insanity, is rather its 
 cause than its result. 
 
 To reduce crime to a " pathological phenomenon " is to sap the 
 very foundations of our moral judgments ; merit as well as demerit,, 
 reward as well as punishment, are thereby undermined. Such a 
 view may be scientific ; it is not ethical, for it refuses to recognise 
 the commonest moral distinctions. After all these explanations- 
 have been given, there is always an unexplained residuum, the man 
 himself. A man knows himself from the inside, as it were ; and a 
 man does not excuse himself on such grounds. Nor would the 
 majority of men, however criminal, be willing to have their crimes 
 put clown to the account, of " insanity " ; most men would resent 
 such a rehabilitation of their morals at the expense of their " in- 
 tellects." 
 
 This leads us to remark a second impossibility in the theory 
 viz., that the ordinary criminal, whether he is a pathological speci- 
 men or not, will not submit to be treated as a " patient " or a case. 
 For he, like yourself, is a person, and insists on being respected as 
 such ; he is not a thing to be passively moulded by society accord- 
 ing to its ideas, either of its own convenience or of his good. Even 
 the criminal man will not give up his self-control, or put himself in 
 your hands and let you cure him. His will is his own, and he alone 
 can reform himself. He will not become the patient of society, to 
 be operated upon, by it. The appeal, in all attempts at reformation, 
 must be to the man himself ; his sanction must be obtained, and his 
 co-operation secured, before reformation can begin. He is not an 
 automaton, to be regulated from without. The State cannot annex 
 the individual ; be he criminal or saint, his life is his own, and its 
 springs are deep within. It is a truism, but it has to be repeated 
 
334 THE MORAL LIFE. 
 
 follows that the proper treatment of the criminal is that which seeks 
 his cure rather than his punishment. Prisons must be superseded 
 by hospitals, asylums, and reformatories. 
 
 An advance in human feeling, as well as in intelligence, is to be 
 seen in this movement, both in its theoretical and in its practical 
 aspects ; an advance from the hard, blind desire for justice and the 
 unrelenting and unreasonable spirit of vindictiveness to a gentler 
 and wiser humanity. And society is now so securely organised that 
 it can afford to be not only just, but generous as well. The ques- 
 tion, however, is, whether the newer and the older views of pun- 
 ishment are mutually exclusive, and, if not, what is their relation 
 to one another ; whether the substitution of the deterrent and re- 
 formative for the retributive view is ethically sound, or whether, in 
 our recoil from the older view, we are not in danger of going to the 
 opposite extreme and losing the element of truth contained in the 
 retributive theory. 
 
 We must acknowledge, to begin with, that the new theory can 
 point to many facts for its basis. The general principle of heredity 
 is operative in the sphere of crime and vice no less than in that 
 of virtue. We might almost say that the criminal " is born, not 
 made," or, rather, that he is more born than made. Crime seems to 
 be almost as " instinctive " in some natures as goodness is in others. 
 This instinctive tendency to evil, developed by favourable circum- 
 stances or " environment," blooms in the criminal act and in the lii'e 
 of crime. There is a criminal class, a kind of caste, which propagates 
 itself. Crime is a profession, with a "code of honour" and an 
 etiquette of its own, almost a vocation, calling for a special apti- 
 tude, moral and intellectual. Have we not here a great " pathologi- 
 cal phenomenon," a "disease" to be cured, not punished ] 
 
 But we cannot carry out the " pathological " idea. It is only an 
 analogy or metaphor after all, and, like all metaphors, may easily 
 prove misleading, if taken as a literal description of the facts. We 
 distinguish cases of " criminal insanity " from cases of " crime " 
 proper. In the former, the man is treated as a patient, is confined or 
 restrained, is " managed " by others. But he is, by acknowledgment, 
 so much the less a man because he may be treated in this way ; he 
 is excused for that which, in another, would be punished as a crime ; 
 he is not held accountable for his actions. The kleptomaniac, for 
 example, is not punished, but excused. Are we to say that the differ- 
 
THE SOCIAL LIFE. 335 
 
 ence between these actions and crimes proper is only one of degree, 
 and that the criminal is always a pathological or abnormal specimen 
 of humanity 1 Do all criminals " border close on insanity " ? Even 
 if so, we must recognise, among bad as well as among good men, a 
 border-line between the sane "and the insane ; to resolve all badness 
 into insanity does not conduce to clear thinking. A point may in- 
 deed be reached in the life of crime, as in the life of vice generally, 
 after which a man ceases to " be himself," and may therefore be 
 treated as a " thing " rather than as a " person " ; a point after which, 
 self-control being lost, external control must take its place. But 
 normal crime, if it has anything to do with insanity, is rather it& 
 cause than its result. 
 
 To reduce crime to a " pathological phenomenon " is to sap the 
 very foundations of our moral judgments ; merit as well as demerit, 
 reward as well as punishment, are thereby undermined. Such a 
 view may be scientific ; it is not ethical, for it refuses to recognise 
 the commonest moral distinctions. After all these explanations 
 have been given, there is always an unexplained residuum, the man 
 himself. A man knows himself from the inside, as it were ; and a 
 man does not excuse himself on such grounds. Nor would the 
 majority of men, however criminal, be willing to have their crimes 
 put down to the account of " insanity " ; most men would resent 
 such a rehabilitation of their morals at the expense of their " in- 
 tellects." 
 
 This leads us to remark a second impossibility in the theory 
 viz., that the ordinary criminal, whether he is a pathological speci- 
 men or not, will not submit to be treated as a " patient " or a case. 
 For he, like yourself, is a person, and insists on being respected as 
 such ; he is not a thing to be passively moulded by society accord- 
 ing to its ideas, either of its own convenience or of his good. Even 
 the criminal man will not give up his self-control, or put himself in 
 your hands and let you cure him. His will is his own, and he alone 
 can reform himself. He will not become the patient of society, to 
 be operated upon by it. The appeal, in all attempts at reformation, 
 must be to the man himself ; his sanction must be obtained, and his 
 co-operation secured, before reformation can begin. He is not an 
 automaton, to be regulated from without. The State cannot annex 
 the individual ; be he criminal or saint, his life is his own, and its 
 springs are deep within. It is a truism, but it has to be repeated 
 
 IVER3ITY1 
 
336 THE MORAL LIFE. 
 
 in the present connection, that all moral control is ultimately self- 
 control. 
 
 In virtue of his manhood or personality, then, the criminal must 
 be convinced of the righteousness of the punishment. Possessing, as 
 he does, the universal human right of private judgment, the right to 
 question and criticise according to his own inner light, he must be 
 made to see that the act of society is a punishment, and to accept it 
 as such ; he must see the righteousness of the punishment before it 
 can work out in him its peaceable fruits of righteousness. Here, in 
 the force of this inner appeal, in such an awakening of the man's 
 slumbering conscience, lies the ethical value of punishment. With- 
 out this element, you have only a superficial view of it as an ex- 
 ternal force operating upon the man. Such a violent procedure may 
 be necessary, especially in the earlier measures of society for its own 
 protection. But it is not to be taken as the type of penal procedure, 
 nor is it effective beyond a very narrow range. A man may be re- 
 strained in this way from a particular act of crime on a particular 
 occasion ; but the criminal nature in him is not touched, the crim- 
 inal instincts are not extirpated, they will bloom again in some 
 other deed of crime. The deepest warrant for the effectiveness of 
 punishment as a deterrent and reformative agent is found in its 
 ethical basis as an act of retribution. True reformation conies only 
 with the acceptance of the punishment, by mind and heart, as the 
 inevitable fruit of the act. For punishment thus becomes a kind of 
 revelation to the man of the true significance of his character and 
 life. A man may thus be shocked into a better life. For "acci- 
 dental" calamity, or for suffering which he has not brought upon 
 himself, a man does not condemn himself. Such self-condemnation 
 comes only with insight into the retributive nature of the calamity. 
 It is just this element of retribution that converts " calamity " or 
 " misfortune " into "punishment." The judgment of society upon 
 the man must become the judgment of the man upon himself, if 
 it is to be effective as an agent in his reformation. This private 
 re-enactment of the social judgment comes with the perception of 
 retribution or desert. 
 
 Punishment is, in its essence, a rectification of the moral order of 
 which crime is the notorious breach. Yet it is not a mere barren 
 vindication of that order ; it has an " effect on character," and 
 moulds that to order. Christianity has so brought home to us this 
 
THE SOCIAL LIFE. 337 
 
 brighter side of punishment, this beneficent possibility in all suffer- 
 ing, that it seems artificial to separate the retributive from the 
 reformative purpose of punishment. The question is not " whether, 
 apart from its effects, there would be any moral propriety in the 
 mere infliction of pain for pain's sake." l Why separate the act from 
 its " effects " in this way ? In reality they are inseparable. The 
 punishment need not be "for the sake of punishment, and for no 
 other reason ; " it need not be " modified for utilitarian reasons." 
 The total conception of punishment may contain various elements 
 indissolubly united. The question is, Which is the fundamental ; 
 out of which do the others grow ? Nor do I see that such a theory 
 of punishment is open to the charge of " syncretism." I should 
 rather call it synthetic and concrete, as taking account of all the 
 elements and exhibiting their correlation. Might we not sum up 
 these elements in the word " discipline," meaning thereby that the 
 end of punishment is to bring home to a man such a sense of guilt 
 as shall work in him a deep repentance for the evil past, and a new 
 obedience for the time to come ? 
 
 Whether, or how far, such a conception of punishment can be real- 
 ised by the State, is another question. Its realisation would mean 
 that the State should stand to the individual, in some measure, in loco 
 parentis, that the State is a great moral educator. Such a " pater- 
 nal " function is, at any rate, no less practicable for the State than 
 the curative function assigned to it by the theory we have been con- 
 sidering ; for the latter function to be effectively discharged would 
 imply an exhaustive " diagnosis " of each criminal " case." And we 
 have seen that the State has a moral end, that its function is not 
 the merely negative or "police" one of protection of individual 
 from individual, but the moral education and development of the 
 individual himself. It is, indeed, mainly to the external and in- 
 adequate modern conception of the State that we must trace the 
 external and, I have sought to show, inadequate view of punishment 
 as primarily deterrent, and (even when reformative) undertaken for 
 the protection of society from the individual rather than in the 
 interests of the individual himself. Civil punishment is, or ought 
 to be, undertaken in the interests of the moral individual ; it is one 
 of the arrangements of the State, which is the individual's moral 
 
 1 H. Rashdall, ' International Journal of Ethics/ October 1891. 
 Y 
 
338 THE MORAL LIFE. 
 
 "sphere." But even if we refuse to go beyond the protective or 
 deterrent point of view, we have seen that this standpoint coincides 
 with both the reformative and the retributive. In proceeding from 
 the one to the other of these views of punishment we are only pro- 
 ceeding from an external to an internal view of the same thing. To 
 be permanently deterrent, punishment must be educative or re- 
 formative as well ; there must be an inner as well as an outer 
 reformation. To the social prevention must be added self-prevention, 
 and this comes only with inner reformation. Such a reformation, 
 again, implies the acceptance, by the criminal, of the punishment as 
 just, his recognition in it of the ethical completion of his own act ; 
 and this is the element of retribution or desert, which is thus seen to 
 be the basis of the other elements in punishment. 
 
PART III. 
 
 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS OF MOEALITY 
 
METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS OF MOEALITY. 
 
 WE have sought to base our ethical theory upon psy- The three 
 chology ; since, as philosophy always rests upon science, Ini 
 the scientific account of man's nature must be the basis sico/Eth 
 of the ethical theory of his life. But when we try to 
 think out the life of man, and to discover its total and latlons - 
 perfect meaning, we are inevitably thrown back upon the 
 ultimate metaphysical questions which, here as elsewhere, 
 lurk behind the questions of science, and to which there- 
 fore science, as such, provides no answer. Indeed, 
 it must have been felt that the most important posi- 
 tions taken in the course of the preceding discussion 
 whether critical or constructive rest upon some deeper 
 basis than that of the introductory psychological analysis. 
 It seemed well, however, to reserve the direct investiga- 
 tion of this metaphysical basis till the end. For while 
 in strict logical order the Metaphysic of Ethics ought 
 to precede Ethics itself, yet the order " for us " is rather 
 the converse ; we proceed from the circumference to the 
 centre of knowledge, rather than from the centre to the 
 circumference. Now, however, we must try to discover 
 the metaphysical centre of our circle of ethical theory; 
 
342 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. 
 
 only if we can describe the circle from that centre, shall 
 we have verified the philosophical character of the ethical 
 theory itself. 
 
 The central or metaphysical principle of morality the 
 ultimate presupposition of ethical theory assumes differ- 
 ent aspects when we examine it from different standpoints 
 or in different moral lights. The single problem pre- 
 sents itself for solution in three different forms, as Kant 
 says the metaphysical problem necessarily does. When 
 we try to discover the ultimate warrant for our ethical 
 interpretation of human life, we find (1) that it must be 
 a certain interpretation of man's nature, of his essential 
 being, as either a product of nature, sharing nature's 
 life, and without an end essentially different from that 
 of the animal and the thing, or a being apart from nature, 
 with a being and a life in which nature cannot share, 
 standing in a different relation to the course of things, 
 and possessed of a unique power to order his own life and 
 to attain his own end, a unique capacity of failure or 
 success in the attainment of his life's possibility. In 
 other words, the world-old problem of human Freedom, 
 and the comparative merits of the two rival solutions 
 Libertarianism and Determinism inevitably present them- 
 selves and claim our consideration. (2) We cannot help 
 asking the question whether Nature, the physical cosmos, is 
 a sufficient sphere and environment for man as a moral be- 
 ing, or whether it is necessary to postulate a higher and 
 super-natural sphere, a moral order other than the physical 
 order, a moral Being or God other than Nature. This 
 is only another aspect of the first question. For if, on 
 one hand, we can naturalise the moral man, or resolve 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 343 
 
 man (and with him his morality) into Nature, then there 
 will be no call for an order higher than the order of 
 Nature, or for a God other than Nature itself. If, on the 
 other hand, such a naturalistic theory of man is im- 
 possible, we shall be forced to postulate a universal ethical 
 Principle or Being, answering to the ethical being of man. 
 Even then the relation of man to this universal Principle 
 or Being will have to be determined, a problem which 
 will be found to be only the problem of Freedom in another 
 aspect. (3) Last of all, there is the problem of the destiny 
 of man as a moral being, and this again is only a new 
 form of the old problem. If, on the one hand, man is a 
 merely natural being, his destiny must be that of Nature ; 
 only a unique being with a unique life can claim a unique 
 destiny. If, on the other hand, it is found impossible 
 to resolve man into Nature, and necessary to postulate for 
 him a being and a life different in kind from Nature's, 
 and an ethical universe as the sphere of that life, it would 
 seem to be necessary to the fulfilment of his being and 
 the completion (instead of negation) of his task, that he 
 should have an immortal destiny. Here, again, however, 
 the solution of the problem would depend upon our inter- 
 pretation not only of man's relation to Nature, but also of 
 his relation to God ; and both these interpretations throw 
 us back once more upon the question of the essential and 
 ultimate nature of man himself. 
 
 It is maintained by some, as we have seen, 1 that such 
 a Metaphysic of Ethics is both superfluous and futile 
 that a Science of Ethics is all that is needful and pos- 
 sible. Such a position is characteristic of the " agnostic " 
 
 1 Introduction, 21 ff. 
 
344 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. 
 
 or " positive " temper of contemporary thought ; it is also 
 of the essence of an empirical Evolutionism to disallow 
 any non-naturalistic, or specifically spiritual, principle of 
 explanation. Transcendental explanations are at a dis- 
 count, and men are in love with empirical or " scientific " 
 views. But the establishment of the superior claims of 
 such an explanation is itself a metaphysical undertaking, 
 and demands, for its successful accomplishment, a com- 
 parison with the rival " transcendental " or " metaphysi- 
 cal " view. We must, in any case, test the metaphysical 
 possibilities of the case, before we have any right to pro- 
 nounce against Metaphysics, here or elsewhere. I need 
 hardly add that I do not attempt, in what follows, to give 
 an exhaustive answer to the metaphysical questions, but 
 merely to indicate the kind of answer which, in an ethical 
 reference, these questions seem to me to demand. 
 
345 
 
 CHAPTEE I. 
 
 THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM. 
 
 1. AFTER what has been said in general about the neces- statement 
 sity of raising the metaphysical question in an ethical problem. 
 reference, we need not further attempt to vindicate the 
 propriety of discussing the problem of Freedom. That 
 problem is, like the other metaphysical problems, very 
 old, but not therefore, as some would say, antiquated. It 
 is not " a problem which arose under certain conditions,, 
 and has disappeared with the disappearance of these con- 
 ditions, a problem which exists only for a theological or 
 scholastic philosophy." 1 The conditions of the problem 
 are always with us, and the problem, therefore, can never 
 become obsolete. It is one of the central questions of 
 metaphysics or rather, it is one aspect of the central 
 metaphysical question ; and though its form may change > 
 the question itself remains, to be dealt with by each suc- 
 ceeding age in its own way. 
 
 For us, as for Kant, the question of freedom takes the 
 form of a deep-seated antithesis between the interests of 
 the scientific or intellectual consciousness on the one 
 
 ipaulsen, <Ethik,'i. 351. 
 
346 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. 
 
 hand, and the moral and religious convictions of mankind 
 on the other. 
 
 From the scientific or theoretical point of view, man 
 must regard himself as part of a totality of things, animals, 
 and persons. In the eyes of science, " human nature " is 
 a part of the universal " nature of things " ; man's life is 
 a part of the wider life of the universe itself. The uni- 
 versal order can admit of no real exceptions ; what seems 
 exceptional must cease to be so in the light of advancing 
 knowledge. This, its fundamental postulate, science is 
 constantly verifying. Accordingly, when science psycho- 
 logical and physiological, as well as physical attacks the 
 problem of human life, it immediately proceeds to break 
 down man's imagined independence of nature, and seeks 
 to demonstrate his entire dependence. The scientific 
 doctrine now prefers, indeed, to call itself by the " fairer 
 name " of Determinism ; but if it has the courage of its 
 convictions, it will acknowledge the older and truer name 
 of Necessity. For though the forces which bind man are 
 primarily the inner forces of motive and disposition and 
 established character, yet between these inner forces and 
 the outer forces of Nature there can be no real break. 
 The force, outer and inner, is ultimately one ; " human 
 nature " is part of the " nature of things." The original 
 source of man's activity lies therefore without rather than 
 within himself ; for the outer force is the larger and the 
 stronger, and includes the inner. I get my " nature " by 
 heredity from " Nature " herself, and, once got, it is further 
 formed by force of circumstances and education. All that 
 I do is to react as any animal or plant or even stone does 
 also in its measure on the influences which act upon ^ 
 
THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM. 347 
 
 Such action and reaction, together, yield the whole series 
 of occurrences which constitute my life. I, therefore, 
 am not free (as determinists are apt to insist that I am, 
 though my will is determined) ; " motives " are, after all, 
 external forces operating upon my " nature," which re- 
 sponds to them, and over neither " motive " nor " nature " 
 have I any control. I am constrained by the necessity 
 of Nature its law is mine ; and thus Determinism really 
 means Constraint. The necessity that entwines my life 
 is conceived, it is true, rather as an inner than as an 
 outer necessity ; but the outer and the inner necessity 
 are seen, in their ultimate analysis, to be one and the) 
 same. The necessity that governs our life is " a magic 
 web woven through and through us, like that magnetic 
 system of which modern science speaks, penetrating us 
 with a network subtler than our subtlest nerves, yet 
 bearing in it the central forces of the world." x 
 
 The distinction between the new Determinism and the 
 old Necessitarianism has been finally invalidated, so far 
 as science is concerned, by the scientific conception of 
 Evolution. Science now insists upon regarding man, like 
 all else, as an evolved product; and the evolution must 
 ultimately be regarded as, in its very nature, one and con- 
 tinuous. The scientific or modern fashion of speaking of 
 a man's life as the result of certain " forces," into which 
 it is the business of the biographer and historian to 
 resolve him, is no mere fashion of speech. In literal 
 truth, the individual is, in the view of science, the child 
 of his age and circumstances, and impotent as a child . in 
 their hands. The scientific explanation of human life 
 
 1 Mr Pater, in * The Renaissance. ' 
 
348 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. 
 
 and character is the exhibition of them as taking their 
 place among the other products of cosniical evolution. 
 In our day, accordingly, it is no longer scientific to 
 recognise such a break as Mill, following Edwards' hint, 
 insisted upon, between outward " constraint " and inward 
 " determination." All the interests of the scientific ambi- 
 tion are bound up with the denial of Freedom in any and 
 every sense of the wo'rd ; its admission means embarrass- 
 ment to the scientific consciousness, and the surrender of 
 the claim of science to finality in its view of human life. 
 
 With the assertion of Freedom, on the other hand, are 
 as undeniably bound up all the interests of the moral and 
 religious consciousness; Kant's saying still holds, that 
 freedom is the postulate of morality. The moral con- 
 sciousness dissolves at the touch of such scientific " ex- 
 planation" as I have just referred to. The determinist 
 may tiy to prop it up, and to construct a pseudo-morality 
 on the basis of necessity ; but the attempt is doomed to 
 failure. The living throbbing experience of the moral 
 man, remorse and retribution, approbation and reward, 
 all the grief and humiliation of his life, all its joy and ex- 
 altation, imply a deep and ineradicable conviction that his 
 destiny, if partly shaped for him by a Power beyond him- 
 self, is yet, in its grand outline, in his own hands, to make 
 it or to mar it, as he will. As man cannot, without ceas- 
 ing to be man, escape the imperative of duty, so he cannot 
 surrender his freedom and become a child of nature. All 
 the passion of his moral experience gathers itself up in 
 the conviction of his infinite and eternal superiority to 
 Nature : she " cannot do otherwise," he can. Engulfed in 
 the necessity of Nature, he could still conceive himself as 
 
THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM. 349 
 
 living the life of Nature, or a merely animal life, but no 
 longer as living the proper and characteristic life of man. 
 That is a life rooted in the conviction of its freedom ; for 
 it is not a life, like Nature's, " according to law," but a life 
 " according to the representation of law," or in free obedi- 
 ence to a consciously conceived ideal. 
 
 The grand characteristic of the moral life of man, which 
 forbids its resolution into the life either of Nature or of I 
 God, is Eesponsibility or Obligation. This is more than j 
 expectation of " punishment," to which Mill would reduce 
 it. It is rather punishability, desert of punishment or of 
 reward. The element of " retribution " or desert, instead \ 
 of being accidental, is essential to the conception. In the 
 common human experience of remorse there is implied the 
 conviction that different possibilities of action were open, 
 and therefore that the agent is accountable for what he 
 did accountable not necessarily in foro externo, human or 
 divine, but primarily and inevitably to himself, to the 
 inner tribunal of his own nature in its varied possibilities. 
 And retribution comes, if not from without, yet with sure 
 and certain foot from within. Our moral nature, in its i 
 high possibilities, is inexorable in its demands and relent- 
 less in its penalties for failure to satisfy them. To say 
 that the actual and the possible in human life are, in the 
 last analysis, identical, to resolve the " ought to be " into 
 the " is," would be to falsify the healthy moral conscious- 
 ness of mankind. 
 
 On the other hand, the admission of the full claim of 
 that consciousness may mean the surrender of metaphysi- 
 cal completeness in our scheme of the universe. For it 
 means the recognition of a spiritual " force," different in 
 
 O? 
 
 VBE 
 
350 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. 
 
 kind from the natural or mechanical, and therefore the 
 surrender of a materialistic Monism or a " scientific " syn- 
 thesis. It means also the recognition of a plurality of 
 spiritual " forces," and therefore the surrender of a 'spiritual 
 or idealistic Monism which would exclude such plurality. 
 It may even mean, as Professor James insists that it does, 
 the entire abandonment of the monistic point of view, or 
 of the conception of a " block-universe." The admission 
 of free personality may cleave the universe asunder, and 
 leave us with a seemingly helpless " pluralism " in place 
 of the various " monisms " of metaphysical theory. Such 
 an admission means further the recognition of evil, real 
 and positive, alongside of good in the universe. It may 
 therefore mean the surrender of optimism, philosophical 
 and religious, or at any rate force us to pass to it through 
 the "strait gate" of pessimism. All this darkness and 
 difficulty may result to metaphysics from the recognition 
 and candid concession of the demands of the moral con- 
 sciousness. Nor will this seem strange when we remember 
 that the moral problem of Freedom is just the problem of 
 Personality itself, which cannot but prove a stone of stum- 
 bling to every metaphysical system 
 
 " Dark is the world to tliee ; thyself art the reason why ; 
 For is He not all but thou, that hast power to i'eel * I am I ' ? " 
 
 The 2. Eecognising these difficulties, and regarding them 
 
 method." as insuperable, we may still accept freedom as the ethical 
 postulate, as the hypothesis, itself inexplicable, upon 
 which alone morality becomes intelligible. This is the 
 " moral method," which some living thinkers share with 
 Kant. The method or standpoint has received a brilliant 
 
THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM. 351 
 
 x 
 
 exposition and defence from Professor William James, in 
 a lecture on "The Dilemma of Determinism." 1 "I for 
 one," says the latter writer, " feel as free to try the con- 
 ception of moral as of mechanical or of logical reality. 
 ... If a certain formula for expressing the nature of the 
 world violates my moral demand, I shall feel as free to 
 throw it overboard, or at least to doubt it, as if it dis- 
 appointed my demand for uniformity of sequence, for 
 example." Insisting upon the "integrity of our moral" 
 as well as of our intellectual judgments, and especially 
 upon that of the "judgment of regret," and upon the 
 equal legitimacy of the " postulate of moral " with that of 
 " physical coherence," Professor James thus states his 
 conclusion : " While I freely admit that the pluralism 
 and restlessness [of a universe with freedom in it] are 
 repugnant and irrational in a certain way, I find that the 
 alternative to them is irrational in a deeper way. The in- 
 determinism offends only the native absolutism of my in- 
 tellect an absolutism which, after all, perhaps deserves to 
 be snubbed and kept in check. But the determinism . . . 
 violates my sense of moral reality through and through." 
 
 Now, such a solution of the problem of freedom is, to 
 say the very least, a plausible one ; but let us note exactly 
 what it means. It recognises and gives a new emphasis 
 to the Kantian antithesis between the intellectual or 
 scientific consciousness on the one hand, and the moral 
 and religious on the other ; and the solution offered con- 
 sists in an assertion of the rights of the latter along with, 
 and even in precedence of, those of the former. The 
 decision in favour of Freedom is thus a kind of "moral 
 
 1 Published in the 'Unitarian Review,' September 1884 (Boston, U.S.A.) 
 
352 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. 
 
 wager," as M. Kenouvier has well called it ; the odds seem 
 to be on the side of morality, and therefore the odds are 
 taken. And probably the question is generally answered 
 on some such grounds, though not so explicitly formulated. 
 The philosopher is the man, after all; and the stress is 
 laid on the one side of the question or the other, according 
 to the temper of the individual. One man feels more 
 keenly the disappointment of his moral expectation, 
 another feels more keenly the disappointment of his in- 
 tellectual or scientific ambition. For the ethical and the 
 scientific temper are not generally found in equal propor- 
 tions in the same man. As men are born Platonists or 
 Aristotelians, so are they born moralists or intellectualists, 
 men of practice or men of theory ; and this original bent 
 of nature will generally determine a man's attitude to 
 such an ultimate question. While the " intellectualists " 
 will, with Spinoza, ruthlessly sacrifice freedom to com- 
 pleteness and finality of speculative view, the " moralists " 
 will be content, with Kant and Lotze, to " recognise this 
 theoretically indemonstrable freedom as 'a postulate of 
 the practical reason.'" The latter position, if it con- 
 fessedly falls short of knowledge, is at any rate entitled to 
 the name which it claims for itself, that of a "rational 
 faith"; it is a faith grounded in the moral or practical 
 reason. Since man must live, whether he can ever know 
 how he lives or not, freedom may well be accepted as the 
 postulate or axiom of human life. If moral experience 
 implies freedom, or even the idea of freedom, as its condi- 
 tion ; if man is so constituted that he can act only under 
 the idea of freedom, or as if he were free, then the onus 
 probandi surely lies with the determinist. It is for him 
 
THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM. 353 
 
 to make good his libel upon human nature, that it is the 
 constant dupe of such deep delusion ; as it is for the 
 agnostic to make good that other libel of the mere rela- 
 tivity of human knowledge. 
 
 But, while fully recognising the merits of this " moral 
 method," and, above all, the intellectual candour which it 
 expresses, must we not seek to establish freedom upon 
 some higher and yet more stable ground ? Kant's an- 
 tithesis still remains. Can it not be overcome ? Is it not 
 possible to exhibit the unity of the intellectual and moral 
 judgments, and thus to eliminate the subjective element 
 which seems to cling to the solution just referred to ? 
 We, and our life, moral as well as intellectual and phys- 
 ical, are after all part of one reality ; moral reality and 
 physical reality are elements of a real universe. The 
 moral consciousness is the consciousness or expression 
 one among other expressions, conscious and unconscious 
 of the universe itself. 1 It is objective as well as subjec- 
 tive ; you cannot detach the moral subject and his con- 
 sciousness from the universe in which he finds his place 
 and life. The conception of Duty or Oughtness, with its 
 implicate of Freedom, is not an artificial product, a foreign 
 importation into the universe ; it is a genuine and authen- 
 tic exponent of the universe itself, and therefore we must 
 interpret the universe in its light. Whatever the difficul- 
 ties which the moral consciousness may raise for the 
 metaphysical intellect, it is of right, and not of favour or 
 of choice, that its utterance is heard. It, too, is the voice 
 of reason the voice of the universal Eeality or " nature 
 of things " ; and the determinism that would choke its 
 
 1 Of. Fouillee, ' L'Avenir de la Metaphysique,' 262 ff. 
 
 
354 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. 
 
 utterance or treat it as illusion and " pious fraud," is a 
 libel not only upon human nature, but upon the universe 
 itself. The breach between our intellectual and our moral 
 judgments can be only apparent, not real or permanent. 
 Must we not then continue the effort to achieve their re- 
 conciliation, and to understand Freedom in its relation to 
 so-called Necessity ? Let us revise both conceptions once 
 more, to discover whether such a reconciliation is still 
 possible. 
 
 The "re- 3. It has always been an ambition with the determin- 
 projec?" ists to show that there is no real controversy in the case, 
 that all the difficulty has arisen from a misunderstanding 
 of the terms employed on either side, and that Necessity, 
 rightly understood, does not exclude Freedom, rightly 
 understood. This "reconciling project" is as old as Ed- 
 wards, with his distinction of the free man and the deter- 
 mined will ; but its greatest advocate is Hume. 1 One of 
 its latest and not least persuasive advocates is Mr Shad- 
 worth Hodgson, who insists 2 that " the true and proper 
 meaning of Freedom is freedom as opposed to compulsion ; 
 and the true and proper meaning of Necessity is necessity 
 as opposed to contingency. Thus, freedom being opposed 
 to compulsion, and necessity to contingency, there is no 
 antithetical opposition between freedom and necessity." 
 Determinism maintains the uniformity of nature, or 
 necessity, as opposed to contingency, not to freedom ; and 
 therefore " a determinist is perfectly at liberty to main- 
 tain the freedom of the will." Accordingly, while " inde- 
 
 1 ' Enquiry concerning Human Understanding,' sect. viii. 
 
 2 'Mind,' vi. 111. 
 
THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM. 355 
 
 terminism imagines a freedom apart from necessity ^ . 
 necessity is the inseparable condition, or rather let us 
 say co-element, of freedom. And without that co-element, 
 freedom is as incapable of being construed to thought, is 
 something as impossible as walking without ground to 
 tread on, or flying without air to beat." * This, Mr Hodg- 
 son further maintains, is the only freedom that interests 
 the ordinary man. " By freedom, whether of the will or 
 anything else, men at large mean freedom from compul- 
 sion. What know they, or care they, about uniformity of 
 nature, or predestination, or reign of law ? " The ordinary 
 man holds both ideas together the idea of Freedom 
 ( = non-compulsion) and the idea of Necessity ( = unifor- 
 mity) of actions ; he realises no contradiction, as in reality 
 there is none, between them. The debate is between the 
 philosophers themselves, and has its source in the am- 
 biguity of the term " necessity." This has been conceived 
 dynamically, or as a force, a misunderstanding which 
 has arisen from carrying over the metaphorical idea of 
 " law " into scientific and philosophical thought. In 
 reality, whether applied to human activity or to the phe- 
 nomena of nature, "law" means simply "uniformity." 
 But while "law" is thus the merest "abstraction, and 
 incapable of operating as an entity," it has been hyposta- 
 tised not merely as the agent in the occurrences of nature, 
 but also as the agent in the process of human activity. 
 
 In such argumentation one can hardly help suspecting a 
 certain sleight of hand ; one can hardly believe that a 
 debate of this kind is altogether a war of words. And 
 one cannot but note that such an evaporation of the 
 
 1 ' Mind,' v. 252. 
 
356 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. 
 
 debate into the thin air of pure verbiage is always equiv- 
 alent to its settlement in favour of determinism. The 
 interpretation of "necessity," suggested in the sentences 
 just quoted from Mr Hodgson, is interesting and signifi- 
 cant. It indicates that the complexion of the question 
 has changed considerably since the classical presentation 
 of it by Edwards. Determinism no longer takes the " high 
 priori " road of the older Necessitarians ; it is now content 
 to follow the humbler path of " scientific method." Hume 
 has, once for all, emptied the conception of Necessity, for 
 the scientific mind, and for the mind of the empiricist in 
 philosophy, of all suggestion of mystery and force ; and it 
 would seem that the mere " uniformity " which is left is a 
 very innocent affair, and quite consistent with freedom. 
 Yet I cannot think that this is the case. " Non-compulr 
 sion " is certainly one element in the notion of freedom, 
 but it is not the whole notion. If it were, man could be 
 called free only in a sense in which Nature is also free. 
 For, as we have just seen, Necessity has no dynamical 
 content even in the sphere of natural occurrences; the 
 " laws of nature " are simply the uniformities which 
 characterise the behaviour of bodies. But there is, as 
 Professor James insists, an additional and no less essen- 
 tial element in the notion of Freedom viz., the element 
 of " contingency " or " chance." Absolute uniformity 
 would be, no less than compulsion, the negation of 
 freedom. 
 
 At the same time, this paring down of Necessity to 
 mere Uniformity is a certain contribution to the solu- 
 tion of our problem. While the advocates of freedom, 
 instead of giving up the element of contingency, must 
 
THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM. 35*7 
 
 continue to contend for a power of free and incalculable 
 initiation in the Self, we can yet see how the life of freedom 
 may be realised in the midst of mechanical uniformity ; 
 how it may, so to speak, annex the latter, and use it in 
 its own interests. In a narrower sense Necessity, in- 
 terpreted as Uniformity, may be called " the co-element 
 of Freedom." As Lotze says : " Freedom itself, in order 
 that it may even be thought of as being what it aims at 
 being, postulates a very widely extended, although not an 
 exclusive, prevalence of the law of causation." But, if 
 Freedom is to be saved, the causal Uniformity must not 
 be all-inclusive ; it must not include the moral Self. Uni- 
 formity or mechanism may be instrumental, an organic 
 element in the life of the self ; but the supreme category 
 of that life is Freedom. 
 
 4. The preceding considerations make necessary a re- Definition 
 vision of the conception of Freedom itself, with a view Freedom: 
 to its more exact definition, and, it may be, limitation. a tton& 
 Freedom means, we have just seen, contingency; but it 
 does not therefore mean mere and absolute indefiniteness 
 or caprice. Certain lines are laid down for each man, 
 in his inner " nature " and outward circumstances, along 
 which to develop a "character." A man has not the 
 universal field of possibilities to himself; each has his 
 own moral " sphere." This is determined for him, it is 
 the " given " element in his life. Two factors, an in- 
 ternal and an external, contribute to such determination. 
 I The internal factor is the " nature," " disposition," or 
 " temperament," psychological and physiological, which 
 constitutes his initial equipment for the moral life. The 
 
358 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. 
 
 external factor consists in the " force of circumstance," 
 the places and opportunities of his life, what is often 
 called his " environment," physical and social. So far 
 there is determination ; so far the field of his activity 
 is defined for each man. But unless out of these two 
 
 . factors, the external and the internal, you can construct 
 / the moral man, room is still left for freedom. Its "sphere" 
 may be determined ; the specific form and complexion of 
 the moral task may be different for each, and determined 
 for each. But the moral alternative lies within this 
 sphere. All that is necessary to constitute it is the pos- 
 sibility for the man of good or evil, not of any or every 
 particular form of good and evil. They may take any 
 form, and what form they shall take is determined for 
 the individual, not ly him. But the choice between the 
 alternatives is essentially the same in all cases ; it is a 
 choice between good and evil, and that choice must' be 
 shown to belong to the individual. Inner " nature " and 
 outward circumstances are, as it were, a raw material out 
 of which he has to create a character a plastic material 
 
 \ which, like the sculptor, he has to subdue to his own 
 formative idea. 
 
 The grand moral limitation is individuality. It is just 
 because we are individuals that the Moral Ideal takes a 
 different complexion for each of us, and that no man's 
 moral task is exactly like his brother's. Yet, amid all the 
 variety of detail, the grand outlines of the task remain the 
 
 ~^same for all. In its very nature, that task is universal ; 
 and though it must be realised in a variety of concrete 
 particulars, it may be realised in any particulars, without 
 losing its universal significance. For each man there is 
 
THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM. 
 
 359 
 
 an Ideal, an Ought-to-be ; for each man there is the same 
 choice, with the same momentous meaning, between good 
 and evil. To each there is set fundamentally the same 
 task out of nature and circumstance the equipment 
 given and the occasion offered, to create a character. For 
 character is, in its essence, a creation, as the statue is ; 
 though, like the statue, it implies certain given materials. 
 What, in detail, character shall be, in what way good and 
 in what way evil, depends upon the given elements of 
 nature and circumstance ; whether it shall be good or evil 
 must depend upon the man himself. Out of the plastic 
 material to create a character, formed after the pattern of 
 the heavenly beauty, that is the peculiar human task. 
 Is not the material of the moral life essentially plastic ? 
 Out of the most unpromising material have we not often 
 seen surprising moral creations ? Just when the task 
 seemed hardest, and came nearest to being impossible, 
 have we not sometimes seen the highest fulfilments of it ? 
 And with the most promising material do we not often see 
 conspicuous moral failure ? Must we not admit that 
 success or failure here is determined ultimately not by 
 the material, but by the free play of the energy of the 
 Self? 
 
 5. It is the task of philosophy to resolve this antithesis, The result- 
 to heal the apparent breach between the scientific and the JS^S^f 
 moral consciousness, to mediate between their seemingly p 
 rival claims and interests. Various philosophical solu- 
 tions are possible. It may be that the scientific (which is 
 here the psychological) view is the only available "ex- 
 planation" of human life. Should that be so, freedom 
 
360 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. 
 
 would be lost so far as knowledge is concerned. We 
 might still, of course, adopt the agnostic attitude, and say 
 that the ultimate or noumenal reality is here, as elsewhere, 
 unknowable. But to insist upon the finality and adequacy 
 of the scientific or psychological view is to pass beyond 
 science, and to take up a philosophical or metaphysical 
 position. The philosophical proof of freedom, therefore, 
 must be the demonstration of the inadequacy of the 
 categories of science : its philosophical disproof must be 
 the demonstration of the adequacy of such scientific cate- 
 gories. In the words of Mr Shadworth Hodgson, " Either 
 liberty is true, and then the categories are insufficient ; or 
 the categories are sufficient, and then liberty is a 
 delusion." Such a determination of the sufficiency or 
 insufficiency of scientific categories is the business of 
 philosophy as universal " critic." A negative as well as 
 a positive vindication of freedom, therefore, is possible^ 
 the former by the condemnation of the categories of 
 science as insufficient, the latter by the provision of 
 higher and sufficient categories for its explanation. Even 
 if such higher categories should not be forthcoming, and 
 we should find ourselves unable to formulate a theory of 
 Freedom, or to categorise the moral life, we might still 
 vindicate its possibility. 
 
 That the question of Freedom is ultimately a metaphys- 
 ical one, is indicated by the fact that all deterministic 
 theories base themselves, either explicitly or implicitly, 
 upon a definite metaphysic. The denial of individual 
 freedom is, for instance, the obvious corollary of such a 
 pantheistic metaphysic as Spinoza's. Human personality 
 being resolved into the all-comprehending Divine Nature, 
 
THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM. 361 
 
 from the necessity of which all things, without exception, 
 follow, man's conception of his freedom and of his result- 
 ing importance as an imperium in imperio is explained away 
 as an illusion of his ignorance, destined to disappear in an 
 " adequate " knowledge of the universe. The consequence 
 is strictly logical. If I am not a person, but merely an 
 " aspect " or " expression " of the universe or God, I can- 
 not be free. The life of the universe is mine also ; free- 
 dom is predicated, in such a system, of God alone, and 
 even of him in no moral sense. Materialism, again, 
 carries with it the same ethical consequence. If matter 
 is everything, and spirit merely its last and most com- 
 plex manifestation, once more freedom is an illusion. 
 Freedom means spiritual independence; and if spirit is 
 the mere product of matter, its life cannot in the end 
 escape the bondage of material law. The evolutional 
 metaphysic, whether of the biological or of the mechan- 
 ical type, also obviously binds its adherents to the denial 
 of freedom. Moral life is interpreted either as a series 
 of adjustments of the individual to his environment, or 
 as a series of balancings of equilibrium. In neither case 
 is room left for freedom, or a " new beginning." 
 
 In such cases as those just indicated, the connection of The prob- 
 lem of 
 the interpretation of human life with tne general meta- Freedom is 
 
 physical theory is obvious enough. The connection, though lem 
 not less obvious, has not been so generally remarked, in 
 the case of the " psychological " theory of determinism. 
 This theory has been chiefly studied in the form given 
 to it by Mill, and in that form the parallel between the 
 metaphysical sensationalism and the ethical determinism 
 is easily detected. The theory was originally stated, how- 
 
362 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. 
 
 ever, by Hume, and its logical dependence upon his philo- 
 sophical empiricism or sensationalism is no less evident. 
 If " I " am resolvable into the series of my conscious 
 states ; if " I " am merely the bundle or mass of sensations 
 and appetites, desires, affections, and passions which con- 
 stitute my " experience " ; if, in short, my existence is 
 entirely phenomenal, then the phenomena which are 
 11 me " can be accounted for, or refunded into their ante- 
 cedents, like any other phenomena which are " animals " 
 or " things." 
 
 Here, then, emerges the sole possibility of a metaphysi- 
 cal vindication of Freedom namely, in another than the 
 Humian, empirical, or " psychological " account of the 
 moral Person or Self. The nature of the Self is a meta- 
 physical question, and must be investigated as such ; it is 
 not to be taken for granted on the empirical or sensation- 
 alist side. There is another alternative account, the tran- 
 scendental or idealistic viz., that the Self, so far from 
 being equivalent to the sum of its particular experiences 
 or " feelings," is their permanent subject and presupposi- 
 tion. Thus the central problem of morality is seen to be, 
 like the central problem of knowledge, the nature and 
 function of the Self. We have to choose between an 
 empirical and a transcendental solution of both problems. 
 If, on the one hand, the Self is resolvable into its pheno- 
 menal states, if these exhaust its nature, the case for free- 
 dom is lost : these states determine and are determined 
 by one another in the unbroken nexus of antecedent and 
 consequent. If, on the other hand, such a resolution of 
 the Self into its successive experiences is impossible, if 
 moral experience presupposes at each stage the presence 
 
THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM. 363 
 
 and operation of a permanent Self, the case for freedom is 
 made good. 
 
 6. That the latter, and not the former, is the true state- The tran- 
 
 scendental 
 
 ment of the case, has, I think, been finally proved by the solution, 
 transcendental analysis of experience. It is still possible, 
 of course, to rest in the scientific or psychological view of 
 moral activity ; one may not be prepared to adopt the 
 transcendental standpoint, and may fall back upon the 
 psychological or empirical view, as more in accordance 
 with "common-sense." Moral, like intellectual scepti- 
 cism, and even agnosticism, are still, even after Kant and 
 Hegel, intelligible attitudes of thought. But unless it is 
 shown that the scientific or psychological is the final and 
 adequate or metaphysical view ; unless, that is, the whole 
 Self is resolved into its several states or its " experience," 
 freedom is not disproved. Now, such an empirical 
 resolution of the self is as impossible in the moral as in 
 the intellectual sphere ; the phenomenal or empirical 
 view, when offered as a metaphysic, is at once seen to be 
 abstract and inadequate. To understand or think out 
 the moral, equally with the intellectual life, we must 
 regard the former as, like the latter, the product of the 
 activity of the Self. That activity is the heart and centre 
 of the process, from which alone its real nature is recog- 
 nised. Neither the moral nor the intellectual man can be 
 resolved into his " experience." It implies him ; for, qiid 
 " experience," it is not a mere series or sum of " states," 
 but the gathering up of these in the continuous and single 
 life of an identical Self. In order to the establishment of 
 determinism, all the elements of the action must be known 
 
364 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. 
 
 and observed as its phenomenal factors ; but the source of 
 the action cannot be thus phenomenalised. Determinism 
 gives a mere dissection or anatomy of the action. Under 
 its analysis, the living whole of the action itself is dissolved 
 into its dead elements ; the constitutive synthetic principle 
 of the ethical life is absent. That principle is the Self, or 
 moral Personality, to which the action must be referred if 
 we would see it as a whole and from within. Motive, 
 circumstance, temperament, character the several stones 
 of the determinist structure all imply such an activity 
 of the Self, if they are to enter as living factors into the 
 moral situation. And the Self which is shown to be the 
 source of this original and formative activity is thereby 
 proved to be free. The Self cannot be snared, any more 
 than the spider, in the web of its own weaving. 
 
 The transcendental proof is essentially the same in the 
 case of the moral and the intellectual life. It is the 
 necessary complement, in either case, of the empirical or 
 psychological view. For the " previous question " of 
 metaphysics or " first philosophy " is : How is experience 
 itself possible? Experience, not being self-explanatory, 
 requires to be explained. The empirical or psychological 
 Self is not ultimate, but only " phenomenal " : we must 
 therefore ask, What is the Self which manifests itself in 
 these phenomena or " states," and what is the rationale of 
 its self - manifestation ? The transcendental answer is, 
 that the entire process of experience is a process of Self- 
 activity. The psychologist is concerned only with the 
 empirical process ; his business is to establish the true 
 causal connections between the antecedent and conse- 
 quent phenomena. But if, in an intellectual reference, 
 
THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM. 365 
 
 it can be shown that the presupposition of knowledge is a 
 constant activity on the part of the Self in the synthesis 
 of the presensational data, that without a unifying Self the 
 ordered unity of experience would be impossible, it is no 
 less evident that without a similar synthetic activity on 
 the part of a single central rational Self the unity of 
 moral experience would also be impossible. 1 The Self 
 weaves the web of its own experience, intellectual and 
 moral. Out of " wants," out of animal promptings, out of 
 the provocations of sensibility, the Self, by an activity of 
 appropriation, constitutes " motives " or " ends " of its own 
 activity. The entire process of motivation takes place 
 within the circle of its being, and is conducted by itself. 
 To press the psychological or empirical view, and to insist 
 that the scientific interpretation of the moral life is the 
 ultimate and sufficient interpretation of it, is to rest in a 
 superficial view when a deeper view is possible and neces- 
 sary. The empirical or phenomenal Self may be regarded 
 as the mere subject of " motive-forces," of tendencies and 
 counter-tendencies, whose "resultant" describes its life. 
 But when we ask what a " motive " is, we find that it is 
 nothing apart from the Ego ; it is mine, I have made it. I 
 am not merely the subject of tendencies, or the permanent 
 deposit of tendency. I am the theatre of the entire pro- 
 cess ; it goes on within me. 
 
 Hence the well-marked limits of psychological explana- 
 tion. The life of man, which is in its essence a personal 
 life, is regarded by psychology as an impersonal " stream 
 
 1 The parallel between the intellectual and the moral activity of the 
 Self is strikingly enforced by Green, 'Prolegomena to Ethics,' bk. ii., and 
 by Professor Laurie, in his companion volumes ' Metaphysica ' and ' Ethica.' 
 
366 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. 
 
 of thought," a series of phenomenal " states of conscious- 
 ness." But metaphysics must correct the abstractness 
 of psychology, as it corrects the abstractness of science 
 generally, and must re-view the moral life from its per- 
 sonal centre, from the standpoint of that Self-hood which, 
 as unifying principle, is not to be phenomenalised, because 
 without its constant operation there would be no phe- 
 nomenal process at all ; which cannot itself be accounted 
 for or explained by psychology, because it is presupposed 
 in every psychological explanation. 
 
 In particular, we have found that the ethical view of 
 life is the personal view of it. Personal " behaviour " has 
 ethical significance : impersonal behaviour has none. The 
 psychological or impersonal view even of morality is 
 quite legitimate, and valuable so far as it goes. But the 
 final explanation of morality demands that we view it 
 from the ethical standpoint of Personality, which we have 
 just seen to be also the inevitable standpoint of meta- 
 physical explanation in general. Here is the centre of 
 the circle whose circumference psychology has so care- 
 fully and laboriously described. 
 
 Difficulties 7. But our metaphysics of the Self must be based upon 
 transcen- o ur psychology of the Self, and serious difficulty is offered 
 utkm \ S (a) t the transcendental theory by a leading tendency of 
 S C diffi? current psychology the tendency, namely, to adopt what 
 ecu? the r " - Dr Ward nas called a " presentational " view of the Self. 
 
 "presenta- Thjg f s the view of those who hold that we can have 
 
 tional " 
 
 theory of a psychology without a soul." It is insisted that we 
 must not predicate the existence of a hyper-phenomenal 
 reality in the mental any more than in the physical 
 
THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM. 367 
 
 world ; the Ding-an-sich is equally unreal in both cases. 
 The real is the phenomenal or empirical, that which can 
 be observed and classified ; and what we do observe and 
 classify is not " the soul " or any " pure Ego," but simply 
 " mental phenomena " or the " psychological Me." There 
 are mental " events," as there are physical events ; and 
 we can trace, in either case, the relations of antecedents to 
 consequents in the series, as well as the relation of the one 
 series to the other. Psychology, as a " natural science," 
 must limit itself to the " phenomena," and its success in 
 accounting for all the phenomena without the hypothesis 
 of a mind or Ego as their " place " or cause, suggests very 
 forcibly, if it does not prove, the superfluity even for 
 metaphysics of such a hypothesis. " Entia non sunt 
 multiplicanda preeter necessitatem," and it seems as if 
 scientific psychology had taken away the occupation of the 
 metaphysical Self. 
 
 In the first place, it is maintained that we cannot Jcnoiu 
 the pure Ego, the identical Soul, or " I," because it is never 
 " presented," it never becomes part of the " content " of con- 
 sciousness. All that is presented, and can be known, is 
 consciousness itself, conscious " states " or " phenomena," 
 the empirical, changing, transient Ego, or the " Me." What 
 cannot be phenornenalised cannot be known, and, ex vi ter- 
 mini, the pure Ego or transcendental Self, as the condition 
 of all phenomena, is itself the unphenomenal or iion-pre- 
 sentable. This is, of course, no discovery of the " new " 
 psychology. It is the familiar doctrine of sensationalism 
 and empiricism, and is as old as the Sophists. The sole 
 ascertainable reality, the latter held, is the momentary 
 sensation, the percipere and the percipi. Neither subject 
 
368 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. 
 
 nor object has any identical or independent existence, the 
 psychological moment is all that we can be sure of. The 
 Lockian school also found in the " idea " or sensation the 
 only certain fact. Berkeley saw, hardly less clearly than 
 Hume, that we can never " know " the Self ; our know- 
 ledge, he holds, is confined to our " ideas " ( = sensations or 
 presentations), and we can never have an idea or sensation 
 of the Self, the Subject of all " ideas." And Hume reported 
 that he " never caught himself without a perception " ; the 
 only self he caught was a sensational self, the only psy- 
 chical reality was the sensation of the moment. When, 
 therefore, " psychology as a natural science " insists upon 
 objectifying or sensationalising the Self, and refuses to 
 acknowledge the psychological value of a Self which can- 
 not be " presented " or phenomenalised, it is only carrying 
 out the tradition of the older empirical metaphysics. 
 
 But, further, it is maintained that we can account for the 
 only Self there is, for the empirical Ego, or the psycho- 
 logical " Me," without invoking the hypothesis of a tran- 
 scendental and pure Ego or " I." The " Me " is self-explan- 
 atory, and calls for no reference to an " I " beyond itself. 
 Here one cannot help remarking how much the theory has 
 gained in plausibility through the advance of scientific 
 psychology. This has revealed, first, that the presenta- 
 tional series is a continuum, a fluid " stream " rather than 
 a rigid " chain " of sensations. The individual presenta- 
 tion is not an isolated point, self-contained and self-exclu- 
 sive: it points beyond itself for the apprehension of its 
 own reality ; its character, both qualitative and quantita- 
 tive, is determined by its place in the series of presenta- 
 tions or the " fringe " of consciousness, by its context or 
 
THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM. 369 
 
 " setting." The mental life, as empirically manifested, is 
 not discrete and " atomic," does not consist of isolated 
 sensations or " simple ideas," but is in its very nature 
 continuous. The problem of " synthesis " accordingly, it 
 is claimed, is in large measure solved without any appeal 
 to a transcendental Ego ; with the surrender of the " ato- 
 mic " theory of consciousness, and the acceptance of a 
 " stream of thought," the problem of synthesis ceases to be 
 a problem. Secondly, for the old meagre synthetic prin- 
 ciple of simple Association contemporary psychology sub- 
 stitutes the much more adequate and scientific principle of 
 Apperception (in the Herbartian sense) or " Systematic 
 Association." This principle provides for a much more in- 
 timate connection between the parts of the mental life 
 than that of mere simple Association. For the mechanical 
 unity of the latter it substitutes an organic unity, and 
 where association yielded aggregates, apperception yields 
 wholes or " systems." Apperception is " the process by 
 which a mental system incorporates, or tends to incor- 
 porate, a new element;" it is the process of mental 
 assimilation (emotional and volitional as well as intel- 
 lectual) by which the new is not merely added to the 
 old, but each is so adjusted to the other that the new 
 becomes old and the old becomes new. Thus, once more, 
 the unity and continuity of the mental life seem to be 
 explained, consistently with its never-ceasing change alike 
 in form and content. The genesis of the only Self we 
 know seems to have been fully accounted for on purely 
 empirical principles. 
 
 Yet I do not see that psychology has shown cause for 
 discarding the transcendental or metaphysical Self. On 
 
 2 A 
 
370 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. 
 
 the contrary, such a hypothesis, truly understood, seems 
 to me to be the necessary implication of psychological 
 science, required to account for that empirical Ego which 
 is its subject-matter. Without the " I " we could not have 
 the " Me." For what is the basal fact, the psychological 
 unit ? What is any and every mental " phenomenon," as 
 such ? It is certainly not a pure Ego or a " self with- 
 out a sensation," but no more is it a sensation or a com- 
 plex of sensations without a Self or mind. The one 
 abstraction is no less unreal and impossible than the 
 other; we can no more separate the sensations from the 
 Self, than the Self from the sensations. Or, to use Pro- 
 fessor James's terminology, we can no more have a 
 "stream of thought" without a thinker than a thinker 
 without thought. If, as Hume puts it, " they are the 
 successive perceptions only that constitute the mind " 
 which we can know, it is because in each of these percep- 
 tions the "mind" is already from the first contained. 
 The fundamental and elementary psychological fact is 
 not " consciousness," but " conscious mind," or mind in a 
 particular " state of consciousness." Consciousness refuses 
 to be made objective, it ceases to be consciousness so 
 soon as it is divorced from the conscious subject. The 
 psychological unit is not "percipere" or "percipi," "it 
 feels" or "it is felt," but "percipio," "/ feel." This sub- 
 jective or personal reference constitutes the very " form of 
 consciousness." It is only by hypostatising or substan- 
 tiating " experience " or " consciousness," by making the 
 phenomenal unphenomenal, that the case for a " psycho- 
 logy without a soul" seems plausible at all. Hamlet 
 without the Prince would be nothing to the drama of the 
 
THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM. 371 
 
 mental life without a mind. In this drama there is only 
 one player, but he is a player equal to every part, and he 
 is never off the stage. 
 
 We have only to consider the meaning of a psychological 
 "phenomenon," to see the necessity of this subjective 
 reference. We speak of " conscious states " or " states of 
 consciousness," but the "state" is not consciousness of 
 itself ; it is a state of my consciousness. Abolish me, and 
 it ceases to exist ; to separate it from the individual mind 
 is to contradict its very nature, and to destroy it. We 
 speak of " mental phenomena," and reduce them to their 
 elements of " presentation." But what is a phenomenon 
 that appears to no mind ? what is a " presentation " that 
 is presented to no Self ? The metaphysical demand for a 
 subject as well as for an object of consciousness becomes 
 irresistible as soon as we realise the meaning of our terms. 
 To phenomenalise the Self, to objectify the Subject, to 
 reduce the Ego to a complex of presentations, is impos- 
 sible, for the simple reason that an unphenomenal Self is 
 necessary to the existence of " phenomena," a subject which 
 cannot become its own object is necessary to the existence 
 of objects, and an unpresented Ego to the existence of 
 presentations. " Since the psychical standpoint the stand- 
 point, that is to say, that the psychologist studies is the 
 real, if not the logical presupposition of the physical, to 
 resolve it into the latter is tantamount to saying that there 
 are phenomena that appear to no one, objects that are 
 over against nothing, presentations that are never 
 presented." 1 The impersonal or " objective " view of the 
 mental life is thus seen to be self-contradictory and 
 
 1 Ward, art. '"Modern ' Psychology : a Reflexion " (' Mind,' N.S. ii. 54). 
 
372 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. 
 
 suicidal. The very elements to which it would reduce 
 the Self are seen to imply the Self; the empirical or 
 phenomenal reality stands or falls with the reality of the 
 transcendental Self. The psychologist's refusal to accept 
 the reality of the Self rests, like the phenomenalisms 
 refusal to accept the reality of God, on the ground that 
 the Self, like God, "does nothing." The answer is the 
 same in both cases. It is because the Self in the subjec- 
 tive world, like God in the objective, in reality does every- 
 thing that it seems here, as He seems there, to do nothing. 
 If the Self did not do everything, if it were not present in 
 every presentation, it could never " emerge " as the pro- 
 duct of their aggregation. To say that it could, is to 
 adopt a theory as unthinkable as the theory of "mind- 
 stuff," to beg the question as baldly as those do who 
 <f account for " the mind by endowing the elements, out of 
 which they profess to manufacture it, with the properties 
 of mind itself. No combination of zeros will produce a 
 number. 
 
 When we pass from the individual presentation or state 
 of consciousness to the unity and system which character- 
 ise the mental life, when we pass from the problem of the 
 individual mental state to the problem of the organisation 
 of the several states, we find a new function for the uni- 
 tary Self. It now becomes the " principle of unity," and 
 only a unitary principle can unify. The reason which 
 explains alike the continuity of the states and their 
 systematic association or apperceptive unity, is the same 
 reason which explains their existence at all viz., that 
 they are the states of a single identical Self. Only, the 
 Self which we have as yet regarded as the passive specta- 
 
THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM. 373 
 
 tor or mere subject of the presentational states, must now 
 be regarded as the agent that attends to and selects from 
 among the competing presentations, and thus organises 
 them into their apperceptive wholes. Without this activity, 
 we cannot explain the organisation of the mental life ; 
 and we cannot have the activity without an agent. The 
 states do not associate or organise themselves : without a 
 permanent organic centre of unity, organisation is impos- 
 sible. Apperception, like the old simple association, im- 
 plies a Mind or Self to discharge such a function. Psy- 
 chology may, of course, confine itself to a statement of the 
 " law," or modus operandi, of the Mind ; but an ultimate 
 or metaphysical explanation must take account of the 
 Mind itself, as the source of that activity. 
 
 And behind apperception there is attention. Without 
 the movement of attention, apperception would be a very 
 inadequate principle of explanation. The " systematic " 
 character of apperceptive association is ultimately due 
 to attention, which is therefore the " power behind the 
 throne," the principle which explains the apperceptive 
 system itself. For it is the movement of selective attention 
 which alone explains the fact of the superior " interest " of 
 certain points as compared with other points in the " stream 
 of thought " ; without it, indifference would reign, and 
 there would be no centres in the mental life. " We must 
 assume that the unique salience and dominance of the 
 presentations which successively occupy the focus of con- 
 sciousness is due to a specific process. This process must 
 be called attention." x The tendency towards " mono- 
 
 1 G. F. Stout, "Apperception and the Movement of Attention" 
 ('Mind,' xvi. 28). 
 
374 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. 
 
 ideism " seems to reside in the ideas themselves, only 
 because the ideas are inseparable from the mind, and it is 
 the very nature of mind to attend, and, by attending, to 
 select. The relation of apperception to attention has been 
 very clearly described by Mr Stout : " Every presentation 
 which is attended to is also apperceived. . . . The effect 
 of attention is to a great extent dependent on the apper- 
 ception which accompanies it. Those aspects of the pre- 
 sentation attended to, which are congruent with ^^apper- 
 cipient system, acquire special distinctness. O^B P ass 
 unnoticed. The physician will at a glance detect in a 
 patient symptoms which have escaped the anxious scrutiny 
 of friends and relatives. The reason for this does not lie 
 in his superior power of concentrating attention. He is 
 able to note what they fail to note, because in his mind 
 an apperceptive system has been organised, which they do 
 not possess." l Thus may the Self delegate to the care of 
 mechanism that which it has originally performed by 1111 
 effort of attention. But the work must originally be done 
 by the Self, it continues to be superintended by the Self, 
 and at any moment the Self can intervene and modify the 
 apperceptive system. 
 
 But the Self does more than watch and connect, it is 
 more than the active subject of presentations. It com- 
 pares and " comments " ; the vovs is, as Plato said, the 
 " critic " of sensation. Can we conceive of the genesis of 
 such a " commenting intelligence " out of the presentations 
 themselves ? How, on the theory that " all is sensation, 
 can there be an element not co-ordinate with sensation " ? 
 Can we explain how the " particular sensation can acquire 
 
 1 Ibid., 30. 
 
THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM. 375 
 
 a wholly new kind of independence, and come to measure 
 the worth of other sensations, or constitute the attitude 
 in which they are ' apprehended ' ? " 1 
 
 When we pass from the intellectual to the emotional 
 and volitional life, the reality of the subject, and the 
 impossibility of phenomenalising it or reducing it to the 
 object, become still more obvious. It is indeed to the 
 limitation of attention to the cognitiorial or intellectual 
 life that the plausibility of a " psychology without a soul " 
 is largely due. Wundt has rightly charged contemporary 
 fHychology with a one-sided " intellectualism." And Dr 
 Ward has persuasively shown that while, in the intellec- 
 tual life, the subject is content to spend its entire activity 
 in equipping us for the mastery of the object, in such wise 
 that its own existence is almost inevitably lost in the 
 vision of the world which without it had been impossible, 
 yet in the other two phases of its undivided life, a no less 
 exclusive stress is laid by the subject upon itself. It is in 
 the emotional and conative life that the Ego may be said 
 with unmistakable emphasis, and in the only way possible, 
 to " posit itself." It is chiefly because " feeling and activity" 
 are " elements irreducible to cognition, and yet part of the 
 facts," that we find " the antithesis of subject and object 
 to be the very essence of the science " of psychology. 
 Feeling and activity are " always subjective, and sensations 
 always objective." Hence " the duality of consciousness or 
 the antithesis of subject and object is fundamental." Only 
 the extreme desire to make psychology a " natural " or 
 " objective " science will account for the thoroughly un- 
 
 1 Ward, art. " ' Modern ' Psychology : a Reflexion " (' Mind,' N.S. 
 
 ii. 77). 
 
376 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. 
 
 scientific simplification of the mental life which is accom- 
 plished by the reduction of feeling and volition to cog- 
 nitional elements. Yet this is what the " presentational " 
 theory attempts to do. The fundamental unity of the 
 mental life is to be found not in the object, but in the 
 subject, in the unitary Self the elements of whose com- 
 mon life are not to be reduced to one another, and 
 without it would have no organic unity. And if in the 
 cognitional life the " I " seems to be lost in the " Me/' in 
 feeling and in activity the " I " becomes the prime reality. 
 The presentational theory of the Self is followed out to 
 its further consequences in the " automaton " or " parallel- 
 ism " view of the mind and its relation to the body. If 
 we give up " presentationism " and maintain the essential 
 activity of the Self, we must abandon, with it, the inter- 
 pretation of the mind as the passive " spectator " of " con- 
 comitant " physical phenomena. 
 
 (b)Meta- 8. We must now turn from the consideration of the 
 difficulty difficulties offered by psychology to the transcendental 
 cendenTai- theory of Freedom, to those offered by metaphysics, and 
 inherent in the transcendental theory itself as that theory 
 is generally stated. Transcendentalism, as well as em- 
 piricism, has its own peculiar snares. These are of two 
 opposite kinds, illustrated by the Kantian and Hegelian 
 forms of the theory respectively. Kant, by making abso- 
 lute the distinction between the noumenal or rational and 
 the empirical or sensible Self, by insisting that the true 
 Self, of which alone freedom can be predicated, is a Self 
 that entirely transcends experience, gives us only an 
 empty and unreal freedom. Hegelianism, on the other 
 
THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM. 377 
 
 hand, by identifying the noumenal and phenomenal, the 
 transcendental and empirical Selves, leaves no place for 
 freedom, and offers for our acceptance a new determinism. 
 This it does in two ways, by identifying the Self first with 
 the " character " or " experience," and secondly with God. 
 Let us examine in turn the Kantian and the Hegelian 
 form of the transcendental theory. 
 
 (1) Kant sees no escape from determinism except by (i)inKant- 
 removing the ethical Self out of the empirical or psycho- an empty 
 logical sphere. Within the latter sphere there is only real Free- 
 necessity, and here, as everywhere, Kant tries to save dl 
 spiritual reality by disproving the real validity of our 
 knowledge. Since our knowledge is only of the phe- 
 nomenal and not of the noumenal or essential, it can 
 never solve such an ultimate problem as that of freedom. 
 That, so far as we know it, our life is one of necessity, 
 does not prove that, as it is in itself, it is not free. And 
 the " practical reason " compels us to " think " or postu- 
 late that freedom which the "speculative reason" can 
 never " know." The " thou shalt " of the moral law 
 which, no less truly than the law of causation itself, 
 issues from the depths of reason, implies, in the subject 
 of it, "thou canst." It is necessary, therefore, without 
 invalidating the scientific or empirical interpretation of 
 our life, as made from the phenomenal standpoint of 
 science, to advance to this other and ethical interpre- 
 tation of it, an interpretation no less valid from the 
 noumenal standpoint of Ethics. As a moral being, man 
 is free from the " heteronomy " of nature and sensibility ; 
 as a rational being, he comes under reason's " autonomy," 
 and is free. His peculiar ethical task is to emancipate 
 
378 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. 
 
 himself from the necessity of the life of sensibility, and 
 to appropriate that freedom- which belongs to him of 
 right as a member of the kingdom of pure reason. Thus 
 that idea of freedom which speculatively is but " regu- 
 lative " and ideal becomes practically " constitutive " and 
 real. 
 
 ^Now it is obvious that this theory does not vindicate 
 actual freedom. Here, as elsewhere, Kant so presses the 
 distinction between the phenomenal and the noumenal as 
 to make the distinction absolute. In my noumenal nature, 
 or in myself, I am free ; in my empirical or phenomenal 
 states, I am not free, but under the necessity of nature. 
 This is hardly better, as M. Fouillee has remarked, 1 than 
 to tell a prisoner that outside his prison there is freedom, 
 and that he has only to think himself outside, to realise 
 that he is free. We are confined within the prison-house 
 of desire and passion, of sensibility and motive force, and 
 the only life we know is that of prisoners. What matters 
 it to us that there is freedom if we cannot make it our 
 own ? But escape we cannot, without ceasing to be men ; 
 our very manhood is our prison-house. 
 
 But, it may be urged, the Kantian freedom is the true 
 freedom after all, inasmuch as, though not actual, it is yet 
 the ideal or goal towards which the moral man is always 
 approximating. But even regarded as an ideal, it is but a 
 one-sided freedom, as the life of duty which realises it is 
 but a one-sided life. For, according to Kant's view, man 
 is free only in so far as he acts rationally or without 
 impulse of sensibility : in so far as he acts from impulse 
 or even with impulse, he acts irrationally, and is not free. 
 
 1 ' L'Evolutiounisme des Idees-Forces,' Introd. 76. 
 
THE PEOBLEM OF FREEDOM. 379 
 
 But freedom, if it is to have any moral significance, must 
 mean freedom in choosing the evil equally with the good ; 
 only such a double freedom can be regarded as the basis 
 of responsibility or obligation. Freedom is that which 
 makes evil evil, as it is that which makes good good. 
 
 If freedom is to be of real moral significance, it must be 
 realised in the concrete life of motived activity, in the 
 apparent necessity of nature, which is thereby converted 
 into the mechanism of freedom ; not apart from this 
 actual life of man, in a life of sheer passionless reason, 
 which is not human life as we know it. By withdrawing 
 it from the sphere of nature and mechanism, of feeling 
 and impulse, and constituting for it a purely rational 
 sphere of its own, Kant has reduced freedom to a mere 
 abstraction. What is left is the form of the moral life 
 without its content. The content of human freedom can 
 only be that life of nature and mechanism, of feeling and 
 impulse, which Kant excludes as irrational. The Self in 
 whose freedom we feel an interest because it is our Self, 
 is the Self that rejoices and suffers, that is tempted and 
 falls, that agonises also and overcomes, this actual human 
 Self and not another a Self of pure reason, which, if in- 
 deed it is the ideal Self, must remain for man, as we know 
 him, a mere ideal. 
 
 9. The Hegelian interpretation of Freedom seems to (2) in He- 
 
 , T r . . . . , . (. gelian- 
 
 me to be defective in two points, and, in consequence of ism, a new 
 these defects, to give us, instead of a real Freedom, a new 
 Determinism. In recoil from the absolute dualism of the 
 Kantian theory, Hegelianism maintains, first, the entire acter> 
 immanence of the Self in the process of its experience, or 
 
380 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. 
 
 the identity of the Self with the character ; and, secondly, 
 the entire immanence of God in the process of the uni- 
 verse, and therefore in that of human life. Both positions 
 seem to me to negate our moral Freedom. 
 
 (i) As regards the identification of the Self with its 
 character, we have the following, among other, explicit 
 statements of the late Professor Green. " The action is 
 as necessarily related to the character and circumstances 
 as any event to the sum of its conditions." l " What a 
 man now is and does is the result (to speak pleonastically, 
 the necessary result) of what he has been and has done ; " 
 " he, being what he is, and the circumstances being 
 what they are at any particular conjuncture, the deter- 
 mination of the will is already given, just as an effect is 
 given in the sum of its conditions. The determination of 
 the will might be different, but only through the man's 
 being different." 3 Thus the identification of the Self with 
 the character results in a new version of determinism no 
 less absolute than that of the empiricists themselves. The 
 " I " is once more identified with the " me " ; the refusal 
 to acknowledge any extra - empirical reality means the 
 denial of freedom. 
 
 The only way to save that freedom would seem to be 
 by maintaining the distinction between the Self and the 
 character, not in the absolute or Kantian sense, but in the 
 sense that while the Self is what in its character it appears 
 to be, it yet is always more than any such empirical mani- 
 festation of it; that, while it is immanent in its expe- 
 rience, it also for ever transcends that experience. The 
 
 1 ' Prolegomena to Ethics,' 112. - Ibid., 113. 
 
 3 'Works,' ii. 318. 
 
THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM. 381 
 
 alternative is not, as Green states it, between a Self which 
 is identical with its character and a Self which stands out 
 of all relation to its character, so that " a man's action " 
 does not " represent his character, but an arbitrary freak 
 of some unaccountable power of unmotived willing," 1 and 
 that " I could be something to-day irrespectively of what 
 I was yesterday, or something to-morrow irrespectively 
 of what I am to-day." 2 We may regard the Self as, 
 through its character, standing in the most intimate re^ 
 lation to its experience, and yet as being always more than 
 that experience, and in this more containing the secret of 
 its moral life. Dr Martineau has happily expressed this 
 view by calling the character a " predicate " of the Self ; 
 the moral life might be described as a process of Self- 
 predication. The predicates are meaningless without a 
 Self of which they may be predicated nay, without a 
 Self to predicate them of itself. As Professor Upton has 
 well put it : " While our character determines the nature 
 of our temptations, we are, I believe, clearly conscious 
 that it is not the character, but the Self ivhich has the 
 character, to which the ultimate moral decision is due. 
 In every moral crisis of a man's life he rises in the act 
 of moral choice above his own character, envisages it, and 
 passes moral judgment on the springs of action or desire 
 which he feels present within him ; and it is because a 
 man's true Self can thus transcend and judge his own 
 character, that genuine moral freedom and moral respon- 
 sibility become possible and actual." 3 The freedom of 
 the moral life lies in the fact that it is the original energy 
 
 1 ' Prolegomena to Ethics,' 113. 2 Ibid., 115. 
 
 3 'New World,' i. 152. 
 
382 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. 
 
 of a Self the measure of whose activity is never to be 
 found in the history of its past achievements. 
 
 The Hegelian identification of the Self with the char- 
 acter leads us back to determinism, because, by a kind 
 of irony of fate, it leads us back to empiricism of the 
 most unmistakable kind. The Self is once more lost in 
 its experience, resolved into its states. At most, the Self 
 is conceived as the " principle of unity " of its states, as the 
 " form " of its experience ; and even then the unity is rather 
 a cognitional than an ethical unity, the essentially dynam- 
 ical character of the moral life is ignored, the volitional is 
 once more resolved into the intellectual. What has been 
 said above in answer to the psychological view of the 
 Self need not be repeated here in answer to the transcen- 
 dental denial of its reality and activity. 
 
 (ii) The Self (ii) The Hegelian doctrine of the immanence of God in 
 man leads to the same result. History, like the course of 
 things, is a logical process, the process of the universal 
 Reason ; in the one case as the other, " the real is the 
 rational," and " all things follow from the necessity of the 
 divine nature." As to the Self, it is accounted for by 
 being referred to the Absolute Reality of which it is the 
 passing manifestation. If the biological and mechanical 
 evolutionists, refusing to regard the individual self as ulti- 
 mate and self-explaining, trace it to a past beyond itself, 
 and see in it the highly complex resultant of vast cosmic 
 forces, the Absolute Idealist, seeing in the universe the 
 evolution of divine Reason, finds in the life of the Self the 
 manifestation or reproduction in time of the eternal Self- 
 consciousness of God. There is only one Self the uni- 
 versal or divine ; this all-embracing Subject manifests 
 
THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM. 383 
 
 itself alike in the object and in the subject of human con- 
 sciousness, in Nature and in man. Both are God, though 
 they appear to be somewhat on their own account. 
 Obviously, if we are thus to interpret man as only, like 
 Nature, an aspect of God, we must de-personalise him ; it 
 is his Personality that separates, like a " middle wall of 
 partition," between man and God. Nor is this conclusion 
 shunned. Personality is explained to be mere "appear- 
 ance"; the Pteality is impersonal. This is Mr Bradley 's 
 view. " But then the soul, I must repeat, is itself not 
 ultimate fact. It is appearance, and any description of it 
 must contain inconsistency." The moral life is governed 
 by two " incompatible ideals," that of self-assertion and 
 that of self-sacrifice. "To reduce the raw material of 
 one's nature to the highest degree of system, and to use 
 every element from whatever source as a subordinate 
 means to this object, is certainly one genuine view of good- 
 ness. On the other hand, to widen as far as possible the 
 end to be pursued, and to realise this through the distrac- 
 tion or the dissipation of one's individuality, is certainly 
 also good. An individual system, aimed at in one's self, 
 and again the subordination of one's own development to 
 a wide-embracing end, are each an aspect of the moral 
 principle. . . . And, however much these must diverge, 
 each is morally good ; and, taken in the abstract, you can- 
 not say that one is better than the other." l " Now that 
 this divergence ceases, and is brought together in the end, 
 is most certain. For nothing is outside the Absolute, and 
 in the Absolute there is nothing imperfect. ... In the 
 Absolute everything finite attains the perfection which it 
 
 1 'Appearance and Reality,' 414, 415. 
 
384 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. 
 
 seeks ; but, upon the other hand, it cannot gain perfection 
 precisely as it seeks it. For . . . the finite is more or 
 less transmuted, and, as such, disappears in being accom- 
 plished. This common destiny is assuredly the end of the 
 Good. The ends sought by self-assertion and self-sacrifice 
 are, each alike, unattainable. The individual never can 
 { in himself become an harmonious system. And in the 
 wider ideal to which he devotes himself, no matter how 
 thoroughly, he never can find complete self-realisation. 
 . . . And, in the complete gift and dissipation of his per- 
 sonality he, as such, must vanish ; and, with that, the good 
 is, as such, transcended and submerged." * 
 
 After such a frank statement of the full meaning of the 
 Hegelian metaphysic of the Self, it is hardly necessary to 
 argue that it sacrifices, with the freedom of man, the 
 reality of his moral life. If I am but the vehicle of the 
 divine Self-manifestation, if my personality is not real but 
 only seeming the mask that hides the sole activity of 
 God my freedom and my moral life dissolve together. It 
 is true that God reveals himself in me in another way 
 than he does in the world ; but my life is, after all, only 
 his in a fuller manifestation, a higher stage, really as 
 necessary as any of the lower, in the realisation of the 
 divine nature. Such a view may conserve the freedom of 
 God ; it inevitably invalidates that of man. If man can 
 be said to be free at all, it is only in so far as he is iden- 
 tical with God. If it be contended that just here is found 
 our true Self -hood, and with it our real freedom, I submit 
 that this view of the Self means the loss of Self -hood in 
 any true sense of the term, since it means the resolution 
 
 1 'Appearance and Reality,' 419. 
 
THE PROBLEM OF FEEEDOM. 385 
 
 of man and his freedom as elements into the life of God, 
 the single so-called " Self." Thus freedom is ultimately 
 resolved by the Transcendentalists into a higher necessity, 
 as it is resolved by the Naturalists into a lower necessity : 
 by the former it is resolved into the necessity of God, as 
 by the latter it is resolved into the necessity of Nature. 
 Hegelianism, like Spinozism, has no place for the Person- 
 ality of man, and his proper life as man. Equally with 
 Naturalism, such an Absolute Idealism makes of man a 
 mere term in the necessary evolution of the universe, a 
 term which, though higher, is no less necessary in its 
 sequence than the lower terms of the evolution. It may 
 be that the doctrine is true, and that "necessity is the 
 true freedom." But let us understand that the freedom 
 belongs to God, the necessity to man ; the freedom to the 
 Whole, the necessity to the parts. 
 
 Such a Transcendentalism, equally with Naturalism, 
 also and at the same time invalidates the distinction be- 
 tween good and evil, resolving apparent evil into real 
 good, and seeing things as, in their ultimate "reality," 
 " all very good." Or rather, both good and evil are resolved 
 into a Tertium Quid. " Goodness [and, of course, badness 
 too] is an appearance, it is phenomenal, and therefore self- 
 contradictory." l " Goodness is a subordinate and, there- 
 fore, a self-contradictory aspect of the universe." 2 Such 
 distinctions are fictions of our own abstraction, mere 
 " entia imaginations," as Spinoza called them, the results 
 of a partial knowledge, and destined, therefore, to disap- 
 pear from the standpoint of the Whole. 
 
 But man, as an ethical being, is part of the universe, 
 
 1 Bradley ^ 'Appearance and Keality,' 419. 2 Ibid., 420. 
 
 2B 
 
386 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. 
 
 and as a part, he must be explained, not explained away. 
 To interpret his moral life as mere " appearance," to de- 
 personalise and thus to de-moralise him, is to explain 
 away his characteristic being. This pantheistic resolu- 
 tion of man into God is too rapid an explanation ; the 
 unity thus reached cannot be the true unity, since it 
 negates, instead of explaining, the facts in question. 
 Such an unethical unification might conceivably be a 
 sufficient interpretation of Nature, and of man in so far 
 as he is a natural being, and even in so far as he is an 
 intellectual being; it is not a sufficient interpretation of 
 man as man, or in his moral being. The reality of the 
 moral life is bound up with the reality of human freedom, 
 and the reality of freedom with the integrity of the moral 
 personality. If I am a person, an " Ego on my own 
 account," I am free ; if I am not such a person or Ego, 
 I am not free. 
 
 Resulting 10. It would seem, then, that the only possible vmdi- 
 
 conce] " 
 of Fr< 
 dom. 
 
 conception 
 
 of Free- cation of I reedom is to take our stand on the moral Sen 
 
 or Personality, as itself the heart and centre of the ethical 
 life, the key to the moral situation. The integrity of 
 moral Personality may be tampered with, as we have 
 found, in two ways. Man may be de-personalised either 
 into Nature or into God. And although the Naturalistic 
 resolution may be the favourite course of contemporary 
 determinism, the greater danger lies perhaps in the other 
 direction ; it was here that the older determinists like 
 Edwards waged the keenest warfare. The relation of man 
 as a free moral personality to God is even more difficult 
 to conceive than his relation to Nature ; theology has 
 
THE PKOBLEM OF FREEDOM. 387 
 
 more perils for human freedom than cosmology. To 
 think of God as all in all, and yet to retain our hold 
 on human freedom or personality, that is the real meta- 
 physical difficulty. To see in our own personality a mere 
 appearance behind which is God, is to destroy the reality 
 of the moral life ; yet when we try to think of that 
 life from the divine standpoint, the difficulty is to 
 understand its reality. But, even though the ultimate 
 reconciliation of divine and human Personality may be 
 still beyond us, I do not see how either conception can 
 be given up, whether for a religious Mysticism or for an 
 absolute philosophical Idealism. The Mystic has always 
 striven to reach the God-consciousness through the nega- 
 tion of Self -consciousness ; it must rather be reached * 
 through the deepening and enriching, the infinite ex- 
 pansion, of Self-consciousness. Even for metaphysics, 
 Personality or Self-consciousness would seem to be the 
 ultimate category. For, after all, the chief guarantee 
 of a worthy view of God is a worthy view of man. To 
 maintain the reality of the moral life must give us in the 
 end a higher view of God, as well as enable us to conceive 
 the possibility of a higher union with Him the union 
 and communion not only of thought with Thought, but of 
 will with Will. It is through the conviction of his own 
 superiority to Nature, of his own essential dignity and 
 independence as a moral person, that man reaches the 
 conception of One infinitely greater than himself. To 
 resolve the integrity of his personality even into that 
 of God, would be to negate the divine greatness itself, 
 by invalidating the conception through which it was 
 reached. We must, indeed, think of our life and 
 
388 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. 
 
 destiny, as like the course and destiny of the worlds, 
 ultimately in God's hands, and not in our own. If 
 man is an " imperium," he is only an " imperium 
 in imperio" If God has, in a sense, "vacated" the 
 sphere of human activity, he still rules man's destiny, 
 and can turn his evil into good. The classical concep- 
 tion of Fate and the Christian thought of a divine Provi- 
 dence have high metaphysical warrant. All human ex- 
 perience 
 
 " Should teach us 
 
 There's a divinity that shapes our ends, 
 
 Rough-hew them how we will." 
 
 Yet man cannot regard himself as a mere instrument in 
 the divine hands, a passive vehicle of the energy of God. 
 Activity (evepyeia) is the category of his life as man, and 
 his highest conception of his relation to God is that of 
 Co-operation (o-vvepjia). He must regard himself as a 
 fellow-worker even with God. This is his high human 
 birthright, which he may not sell. 
 
389 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE PROBLEM OF GOD. 
 
 1. THE demand that we shall be " positive," " scientific," or The neces- 
 sity of the 
 un-metaphysical in our thinking, reaches its climax when theological 
 
 we approach the problem of the divine government of the 
 world. If a scientific theory of morals is not based upon 
 the doctrine of moral Freedom, still less does it rest, we 
 are told, upon a doctrine of God ; if a rational psychology 
 is illegitimate, still more obviously so is a rational theol- 
 ogy : if metaphysics in general is ruled out as unscientific, 
 then theology, which is metaphysics run wild, is a forti- 
 ori condemned. The command, " Be un-metaphysical " 
 is more closely interpreted the command " Be un-theo- 
 logical." The entire argument of contemporary Agnos- 
 ticism and Positivism is to the effect that God is either 
 the unknown and unknowable, or the most unreal of all 
 abstractions, the merest fiction of the human imagination. 
 The phenomenal alone is real and intelligible. The noume- 
 nal is either unreal, or, if real, unintelligible. Let us be 
 content, then, with the relative and phenomenal, the 
 " positive " reality of experience, whether that experience 
 be intellectual or moral. Why continue to weary our- 
 
390 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. 
 
 selves with beating our wings against the cage ? Why 
 seek to burst the bars of our intellectual prison-house ? 
 There is abundant room and breathing-space within the 
 prison- walls which so inexorably shut us in. Outside 
 the walls of experience there is nothing, or, at least, 
 nothing for us; within is contained all the treasure 
 which we had vainly sought without. 
 
 Yet we cannot think of the moral life in this way. 
 The foundation of this human experience lies deep in 
 the unphenomenal the unphenomenal Self and the 
 unphenomenal God. Either to refuse us any access to 
 the unphenomenal, or to deny its existence, is to lose 
 the true significance of the phenomenal, to misunderstand 
 that moral experience which we are seeking to interpret. 
 Nay, we cannot be unmetaphysical and untheological, 
 merely " positive " or scientific. Even the man of science 
 does not limit himself to " the facts," to " what he sees," 
 to mere occurrences or happenings. Science, not less than 
 philosophy, is " the thinking view of things " ; what the 
 man of science seeks to apprehend is the meaning of the 
 facts. And the philosopher is ambitious to gather from 
 the hints of science the total meaning of the facts. The 
 metaphysician is, therefore, no more unscientific than the 
 man of science is unmetaphysical. Where science seeks 
 to think the facts, philosophy seeks to think them out. 
 Metaphysics, we are told, is " a leap in the dark." But 
 even the man of science makes his " leap in the dark," his 
 leap from the light of the known to the darkness of the 
 unknown. It is only by such venturesomeness that the 
 light of knowledge is let into the darkness of the unknown 
 (but not unknowable). Why should a limit be put to this 
 
THE PROBLEM OF GOD. 391 
 
 speculative courage, which is at the root of all intellectual 
 progress ? Why should not the metaphysician be allowed 
 to make his bolder leap into the deeper darkness ? The 
 darkness is thick indeed, but not therefore impenetrable. 
 At any rate, " it is vain," as Kant says, " to profess in- 
 difference to those questions to which the mind of man 
 can never really be indifferent." Of these " not indiffer- 
 ent " questions, the supreme is the question of God, of his 
 relation to the world and to our human life and destiny. 
 
 The agnostics invite us to follow with them the well- 
 trodden paths of moral and religious faith, of practical or 
 ethical belief. Indeed the deepest motive of modern 
 agnosticism, as it originated in Kant, was the preserva- 
 tion of such moral faith, the defence of ethical and re- 
 ligious Eeality, as unknowable, from rationalistic dissolu- 
 tion. The agnostic is not generally content, with Spencer, 
 to celebrate the " Unknown and Unknowable," or, with 
 Hamilton and Mansel, to proclaim the inspiration that 
 comes of " mystery," to glory in the " imbecility " of the 
 human mind and the "relativity" of all its knowledge. 
 He is apt to insist, with Locke and Kant nay, with 
 Hamilton and Spencer themselves on the rights of the 
 ethical and religious spirit, and its independence of the 
 intellectual or scientific understanding. The interest of 
 the former, he contends, is practical, not theoretical ; its 
 sphere is not thought, but life. Its instrument is the 
 creative imagination ; its atmosphere is not the " dry 
 light " of the intellect, but the warmth and glow of the 
 emotional nature, and the moving energy of the will. 
 It is with the appreciation of true culture and of delicate 
 moral and religious susceptibility, that this acknowledg- 
 
392 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. 
 
 ment is made. It is made in slightly different ways by 
 Lange and Tyndall, no less fully than by Huxley and 
 Spencer. To speak of such writers as " atheistic " or 
 " irreligious " is most unfair and most misleading. It is 
 not the heart, but the head, that is at fault. Their view 
 of human nature is both broad and deep ; what it wants 
 is logical clearness and coherence. 
 
 That there is a moral, as well as an intellectual reality, 
 and that the moral life, as such, is independent of any 
 theoretical understanding of it, is surely true and im- 
 portant. But that this independence is absolute and 
 ultimate we cannot believe. Unless we are sceptics, and 
 have only Hume's blind " belief " of custom, we cannot say 
 that. The Kantian agnostic is right when he recognises 
 a spiritual element in man, and concedes its claim to an 
 appropriate life. Man is an ethical, as well as an in- 
 tellectual being ; the will and emotions demand a sphere 
 of their own. But if the world of man's moral and 
 religious life is the mere projection of the emotional 
 imagination, it is a world in which that life cannot 
 continue to live. "If there is no God, we must make 
 one ; " but a God of our own making is no God. If the 
 moral and religious ideal is a mere ideal, the shadow 
 cast by the actual in the sunshine of the human imagin- 
 ation ; if the ideal is not also in very truth the real ; 
 if the good is not also the true, the reality of man's 
 spiritual life is destroyed, and its foundations are sapped. 
 Man cannot permanently live on fictions; the insight 
 that his deepest life is founded on "the baseless fabric 
 of a vision" must bring with it, sooner or later, the 
 downfall of the life thus undermined. Agnosticism, if it 
 
THE PROBLEM OF GOD. 393 
 
 is true, must carry with it the ultimate disappearance of 
 religion, and, with religion, of all morality higher than 
 utility. For we cannot permanently separate the ethical 
 and intellectual man. His nature and life are one, single, 
 inclissolubly bound together; and ultimately he must 
 demand an intellectual justification of his ethical and 
 religious life, a theory of it as well as of the world of 
 nature. The "need of ethical harmony" must make 
 itself felt ; a moral being demands a moral " environ- 
 ment " or " sphere." The attempt to divorce emotion and 
 activity from knowledge is a psychological error of a 
 glaring kind. Our life is one, as our nature is one. We 
 cannot live in sections, or in faculties. Temporarily and 
 in the individual, an approximation to such a divorce 
 may be possible, but not permanently or in the race. 
 The practical life is connected, in a rational being, with 
 the theoretical ; we cannot be permanently illogical, either 
 in morality or religion. The postulate of man's spiritual 
 life is the harmony of Nature and spirit, or the spiritual 
 constitution of the universe. 
 
 2. If we ask, then, Where is the source of ethical Ag:nos- 
 enthusiasm to be found ? the answer of the " scientific " Positivism. 
 or unmet aphysical philosopher is, Either in the Unknow- 
 able Absolute, or in that phenomenal moral reality which 
 we know, in the ethical life of Humanity. The former is 
 the answer of Agnosticism, the latter is that of Positivism. 
 The first answer is purely negative and does not carry as 
 far. If it has any positive meaning, it is simply that 
 the real is not the phenomenal, that "phenomena" or 
 " facts " are but " shows " of a deeper Eeality. It is indeed 
 
394 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. 
 
 a most important truth, that the universe is not a mere 
 " flux " or process, a " stream of tendency " which tends no 
 whither, but that it has an abiding meaning. But no 
 more is the universe a sphinx, on whose dead expres- 
 sionless face we must for ever gaze without a suggestion 
 of a solution of the riddle of the earth. If the mean- 
 ing of things is one which we can never hope in any 
 measure to decipher, then for us there might as well be 
 no meaning at all. And as for the needed moral inspira- 
 tion, an unknovm quantity can hardly be the source of 
 inspiration. One can hardly wonder at Mr Harrison's 
 travesty of the agnostic's prayer to his Unknown God: 
 " # nth love us, help us, make us one with thee ! " 
 
 If the Agnostic sends us to an Unknown and Unknow- 
 able Absolute for the inspiration of our moral life, the 
 Positivist bids us see in that never-ceasing human proces- 
 sion of which we ourselves form such a humble part the 
 object of reverent adoration, and draw from the sight 
 the moral inspiration which we need. Comte and his 
 followers would have us, in this the day of our race's 
 intellectual majority, dethrone the usurper Gods of our 
 theological and metaphysical " minority," and place on 
 the throne the true and only rightful God the Grand 
 fitre of Humanity itself. In our weakness, we may cast 
 ourselves upon its greater strength ; in our foolishness, 
 upon its deeper wisdom ; in our sin and error, upon its 
 less erring righteousness. Nay, we can pray to this 
 "mighty mother" of our being; we are her children, and 
 she is able to sustain us. Nor need we stop short of 
 worship, for the Grand fitre is infinitely greater than 
 we, and contains all our greatness in itself. And if we 
 
THE PROBLEM OF GOD. 395 
 
 ask for a "moral dynamic," for an energy of goodness 
 which shall make the good life, otherwise so hard or 
 even impossible, a possibility and a joy to us, where shall 
 we find such an abiding and abundant source of moral 
 inspiration as in the " enthusiasm of Humanity " ? There 
 is a motive-force strong enough to carry us steadily for- 
 ward in all good living, deep enough to touch the very 
 springs of conduct, enduring enough to outlast all human 
 strivings and activities. 
 
 It would be ungrateful to deny or to minimise the 
 importance of this truth to deny or to belittle the fact 
 of the solidarity of the race, and the capital importance 
 of that fact for human conduct. That we are not separate 
 from our brethren, but members one of another, that in 
 our deepest interests and best endeavours we are one with 
 our fellows, and that in the realisation of that fellowship 
 there is a deep moral inspiration all this is true and most 
 important. But in order that we may find in humanity 
 all the inspiration that we need in order that it may 
 become to us a Grand $tre, which shall claim our un- 
 wavering trust and reverence we must abstract from 
 the concrete and actual humanity of our experience, from 
 the real men and women whom we know, and know to be 
 imperfect, to have failings as well as virtues and excel- 
 lences of character, whom we love even in their weakness, 
 and perhaps even because of it, but whom we cannot wor- 
 ship, or regard as the complete embodiment of the moral 
 ideal. Not men, but man, then, must be the object of our 
 worship and the source of our ethical enthusiasm ; not the 
 members of the race, but the race itself, must be our Grand 
 fitre. What is this but to set up, on the throne vacated 
 
396 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. 
 
 by the fictitious deity of metaphysical abstraction, a new 
 fiction, the latest product of " hypostatisation," the last 
 relic of scholastic " realism," a " great being," which de- 
 rives its greatness and worshipf ulness from the elimination 
 of those characteristics which alone make it real and 
 actual ? The race consists of men and women, of moral 
 individuals; and the moral individual is never quite 
 worshipful. " Humanity " is only a collective or generic 
 term ; it describes the common nature of its individual 
 members, it does not denote a separate being, or the 
 existence of that common nature, apart from the individ- 
 uals who share it. A touch of logic, or, at any rate, of 
 that " metaphysic " which we are supposed to have out- 
 grown, but which we cannot afford to outgrow, is enough 
 to reveal the unreality and ghostliness of the positivist 
 Grand $tre. 
 
 The Positivist Eeligion of Humanity is, it seems to me, 
 a misstatement of an all-important truth viz., that God 
 is to be found in man in a sense in which he is not to be 
 found in Nature, that he is to be found in man as man, 
 as an ethical and non-natural being. But this very differ- 
 entiation of man from Nature, on which the Eeligion of 
 Humanity rests, must be vindicated, and its vindication 
 must be metaphysical. Such an interpretation of human 
 life implies an idealisation of man, the discovery in his 
 phenomenal life of an ideal meaning which gives it the 
 unique value attributed to it. Man is divine, let us 
 admit ; but it is this divinity of man that has chiefly to 
 be accounted for. What is the Fountain of these welling 
 springs of divinity in man ? Unless behind your fellow 
 and yourself, and in both, you see God, you will not catch 
 
THE PROBLEM OF GOD. 397 
 
 the " enthusiasm of Humanity." The true Enthusiasm 
 for Humanity is an enthusiasm for God. When in the 
 good man we see the " image of God," when behind all 
 the shortcomings of actual goodness we see the infinite 
 divine potentiality of Good, we can mingle reverence 
 with our human love, and hope with our pity and regret. 
 But the roots of our reverence and our hope are deep 
 in the Absolute Goodness that we see reflected in the 
 human as in a mirror. If this human goodness is the 
 original, and reflects not a higher and more perfect than 
 itself, its power to stimulate the good life is incalculably 
 diminished. 
 
 3. I have devoted so much attention to Agnosticism and Natural- 
 Positivism, because these are the contemporary equivalents 
 of that anti-theological spirit which, till quite recently, 
 called itself Materialism or Atheism. The general atti- 
 tude of mind common to the earlier and the later form 
 of thought might be described as Naturalism or Phenom- 
 enalism, as opposed to Supernaturalism or Noumenalism. 
 It adopts a mechanical or materialistic explanation, rather 
 than a teleological or idealistic. But the absolute or 
 ontological materialism of former times has been sup- 
 planted by the relative or " scientific " materialism of the 
 Agnostics. The Agnostic denies the possibility of meta- 
 physical knowledge in general, and of a " metaphysic of 
 ethics " in particular. All knowledge being " positive " or 
 scientific, and the ultimate positive reality being physical 
 energy, it follows that all " explanation," even of psychi- 
 cal and ethical phenomena, is in terms of this energy, 
 in mechanical and material terms. In spite of his pro- 
 
398 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. 
 
 fessed impartiality between matter and mind, Spencer 
 does not hesitate to offer such a materialistic or natural- 
 istic interpretation of the moral life. And even when the 
 attempt is not made to explain the moral life in terms of 
 mechanism, the possibility of any other explanation is 
 denied, and we are asked to be simply "agnostic" or 
 "positive" in our attitude to it. This is the position 
 of Professor Huxley in his notable Eomanes Lecture on 
 ' Evolution and Ethics,' a brilliant statement of the con- 
 sistent and characteristic Ethics of Agnosticism. 
 
 What, then, are we offered in the name of scientific 
 explanation, and as a substitute for metaphysical specula- 
 tion ? A naturalistic scheme of morality, the correlation 
 of the ethical with the physical process, the incorporation 
 of man, his virtue and his vice, his defects and his failures, 
 his ideals and attainments, as a term in the process of 
 cosmical evolution. We are offered, in short, a new 
 version of the " Ethics of Naturalism " far superior to the 
 old Utilitarian version, superior because so much more 
 scientific. Man, like all other animals, like all other 
 beings, is the creature of his conditions ; his life is pro- 
 gressively defined by adjustment to them ; his goodness 
 is simply that which has given or gives him the advan- 
 tage in the universal struggle for existence, and has 
 enabled him to survive. The ethical category is one 
 with the physical ; the " best " is only the " fittest." The 
 ideal is the shadow of the actual, and the distinction 
 arises from the very nature of evolution as a process, 
 as the becoming of that which is not yet but shall be. 
 Thus would the Evolutionist in Ethics "naturalise the 
 moral man," account for him and even for his ideals 
 
THE PROBLEM OF GOD. 399 
 
 by reference to that Nature of which he forms a part, 
 and make the " ethical process " only a later stage of the 
 "cosmical process." Thus for God we are asked to sub- 
 stitute Nature, and in " the ways of the (physical) cosmos 
 to find a sufficient sanction for morality." Where is the 
 need of God, whether for moral authority or for moral 
 government, when Nature is so profoundly ethical, so 
 scrupulously discriminating in her consideration for the 
 good, and in her condemnation of the evil ; when goodness 
 itself is but the ripe fruit of Nature's processes, and evil, 
 truly interpreted, only goodness misunderstood, or good^ 
 ness in the making ? 
 
 But, as we have learned to know Nature better, better to 
 understand the ways of the physical cosmos, we have found 
 that these ways are by no means ways of righteousness. 
 The doctrine of Evolution has itself made it infin- 
 itely more difficult for us than it was for the Stoics to 
 unify the ethical and the " cosmic process." It is one of 
 the keenest living students of Nature, as well as one 
 of the keenest thinkers of our time, Professor Hux- 
 ley, who has stated this difficulty in the most emphatic 
 terms, who has confessed in the fullest way the failure of 
 the scientific effort " to make existence intelligible and to 
 bring the order of things into harmony with the moral 
 sense of man," : and who speaks of " the unfathomable 
 injustice of the nature of things." 2 He has reminded 
 us how ancient the problem is, and how ancient the 
 confession of man's inability to solve it, how " by the 
 Tiber, as by the Ganges, ethical man admits that the 
 cosmos is too strong for him," how the roots of pessimism 
 
 1 ' Evolution and Ethics,' 8. 2 Ibid., 12. 
 
400 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. 
 
 are to be sought for in this contradiction, how " social pro- 
 gress means a checking of the cosmic process at every 
 step, and the substitution for it of another, which may be 
 called the ethical process, the end of which is not the 
 survival of those who may happen to be the fittest, in 
 respect of the whole of the conditions which exist, but 
 of those who are ethically the best ; " l how " the prac- 
 tice of that which is ethically the best what we call 
 goodness or virtue involves a course of conduct which, 
 in all respects, is opposed to that which leads to success in 
 the cosmic struggle for existence ; " how the history of 
 civilisation is the record of " the steps by which men have 
 succeeded in building up an artificial world within the 
 cosmos ; " and how Nature's " moral indifference " culmi- 
 nates in her undoing of that moral creation which had 
 seemed her fairest work ; how she, for whom there is no 
 " best " and " worst," and for whom the " fittest " is only 
 the "ablest," will yet undo her own work, and man's 
 resistance to her mighty power will avail him nothing to 
 " arrest the procession of the great year." 
 
 Perhaps Professor Huxley goes too far when he says 
 that " the cosmic process bears no sort of relation to the 
 ethical," but he has at any rate stated clearly the issue at 
 stake viz., the question of the legitimacy of the identifi- 
 cation of the ethical process with the process of the physi- 
 cal cosmos, the identification of " the power that makes 
 for righteousness " with the necessity of natural evolution. 
 If, as I have contended, a Naturalistic explanation of the 
 moral Ideal is impossible, if that Ideal has another and 
 higher certificate of birth to show, then we need not 
 
 1 ' Evolution and Ethics/ 33. 
 
THE PROBLEM OF GOD. 401 
 
 wonder that Nature should prove an insufficient sphere 
 for the moral life, and that we should fail to harmonise 
 the order of nature with the order of morality. If man is 
 not part of nature, but disparate from nature, then his 
 life and nature's may well conflict in the lines of their 
 development. If we acknowledge such a conflict, we may 
 either be candidly agnostic, and, regarding physical ex- 
 planation as the only explanation, may say that moral- 
 ity, just because it is undeniably different from nature, 
 is inexplicable ; or we may seek for another explanation 
 of it, and try to answer Mr Spencer's question : " If the 
 ethical man is not a product of the cosmic process, what X 
 is he a product of ? " l Does not the very insufficiency of 
 Naturalism necessitate unless we are to remain agnostic 
 a supernatural or transcendental view of morality? 
 Does not the non-moral character of Nature necessitate 
 a moral government of man's life higher than the govern- 
 ment of Nature, a discipline, retribution, and reward that 
 shall excel hers in justice, insight, and discrimination ? 
 Mr Huxley's lecture, with its emphatic, almost passionate, 
 assertion of the dualism of nature and morality, with its 
 absolute refusal to merge the latter in the former, is itself 
 a fine demonstration of the impossibility of metaphysical 
 indifference ; the profound ethical faith which it expresses 
 is the best evidence of the author's superiority to his creed, 
 the best proof that agnosticism cannot be, for such a 
 mind, a final resting-place. For the mere assertion of the 
 dualism and opposition of the ethical and the cosmical 
 process is not the whole case. That dualism and opposi- 
 tion raise the further question of the possibility of their 
 
 1 ' Athenamm,' August 5, 1893. 
 2 C 
 
402 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. 
 
 reconciliation. As one of Professor Huxley's reviewers 
 said : " The crux of the theory lies in the answer to the 
 question whether the ethical process, if in reality opposed 
 altogether to the cosmical process, is or is not a part of 
 the cosmical process ; and if not, what account can be 
 given of its origin. In what way is it possible, in what 
 way is it conceivable, that that should arise within the 
 cosmical process which, in Mr Huxley's comprehensive 
 K^ phrase, ' is in all respects opposed ' to its working ? " 
 
 Man and 4. The dualism of Nature and morality raises for us 
 the question whether we must not postulate for man as a 
 moral being another, and a higher, environment or sphere 
 than Nature. The fact that the physical scheme is not 
 the ethical scheme, renders necessary, for the justification 
 and fulfilment of morality, a moral theology, a scheme of 
 moral government which shall right the wrongs of the 
 physical government of the universe. The fact of opposi- 
 tion between nature and spirit, the fact that man's true 
 life has to be lived in a foreign element, that the power 
 which works in the physical cosmos is not a " power which 
 makes for righteousness " or a power which cares for 
 righteousness, the fact of " these hindrances and antip- 
 athies of the actual," the indubitable and baffling fact of 
 this grand antinomy, forces us beyond the actual physical 
 universe and its order, to seek in a higher world and a 
 different order the explanation and fulfilment of our 
 moral life. Intellectually, we might find ourselves at 
 home in Nature, for her order seems the reflection of our 
 own intelligence. But morally, she answers not to the 
 
 1 'Athenaeum,' July 22, 1893. ' 
 
THE PKOBLEM OF GOD. 403 
 
 human spirit's questionings and cravings; rather, she 
 seems to contradict and despise them. She knows her 
 own children, and answers their cry. But man she knows 
 not, and disclaims : for, in his deepest being, he is no child 
 of hers. As his certificate of birth is higher, so is his true 
 life and citizenship found in a higher world. Thus there 
 comes inevitably to the human spirit the demand for 
 God, to untie the knot of human fate, to superintend the 
 issues of the moral life, to right the wrongs of the natural 
 order, to watch the spiritual fortunes of his children, to 
 be himself the Home of their spirits. Nature is morally 
 blind, indifferent, capricious. Force is unethical. Hence 
 the call for a supreme Power akin to the spirit of man, 
 conscious of his struggle, sympathetic with his life, guid- 
 ing it to a perfect issue the call for a supremely right- 
 eous Will. This belief in a moral order is necessary if we 
 are to be delivered from Pessimism. Mere Agnosticism 
 means ethical Pessimism: the only escape is to "see 
 God." Without such a vision the mystery of our human 
 life and destiny is entirely dark, the "riddle of the pain- 
 ful earth " is absolutely inexplicable. Unless our human 
 nature and life are, in Professor Huxley's phrase, " akin 
 to that which pervades the universe," unless God is for 
 us, and we are in a real sense not alone but co-workers 
 with him, our life is, as Hume described it, "a riddle, an 
 enigma, an inexplicable mystery." 
 
 The problem raised for human thought by this dual- 
 ism of Nature and morality is as old as human thought 
 itself. It is the problem of Fate or Fortune, a Power 
 blind but omnipotent, that sets its inexorable limit to the 
 life of man, that closes at its own set time, and in its own 
 
404 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. 
 
 appointed way, all his strivings, and blots out alike his 
 goodness and his sin ; a Power which the Greeks quaintly 
 thought of as superior even to the gods themselves, and 
 which to the modern mind seems to mean that there is no 
 divinity in the world, that the " nature of things " is non- 
 moral. That which so baffles our thought is " the recog- 
 nition that the Cosmos has no place for man " ; that he 
 feels himself, when confronted with Nature's might and 
 apparent indifference, an anomaly, an accident, a for- 
 eigner in the world, a " stranger from afar." The stream 
 of good and evil seems to lose itself in the mazes of the 
 course of things ; the threads of moral distinctions seem 
 to get hopelessly intertwined in the tangled skein of 
 Nature's processes. 
 
 " Streams will not curb their pride 
 The just man not to entomb, 
 Nor lightnings go aside 
 To give his virtues room : 
 Nor is that wind less rough which blows a good man's barge. 
 
 " Nature, with equal mind, 
 Sees all her sons at play : 
 Sees man control the wind, 
 The wind sweep man away ; 
 Allows the proudly riding and the foundering bark." 1 
 
 I have said that it is a world-old problem, this of the 
 ultimate issues of the moral life. And it has seemed as if 
 the only escape from total pessimism lay in a calm and 
 uncomplaining surrender of that which most of all in life 
 we prize. Let us cease to make our futile demand of the 
 nature of things ; ceasing to expect, we shall also cease 
 
 1 Matthew Arnold, "Empedocles on Etna." 
 
THE PROBLEM OF GOD. 405 
 
 from disappointment and vexation of spirit. Be it ours to 
 conform with the best grace we can to Nature's ways, since 
 she will not conform to ours. Let us meet Nature's " moral 
 indifference " with the proud indifference to Nature of- the 
 moral man. A stranger in the world, with his true citizen- 
 ship in the ethical and ideal sphere, let man withdraw 
 within himself, and escape the shock of outward circum- 
 stance by cutting off the tendrils of sensibility which 
 would take hold on the course of the world and make him 
 its slave. " Because thou must not dream, thou needst not 
 then despair ! " But neither the philosopher nor the poet, 
 no, nor even the " ordinary man," will consent to' forego 
 his dreams and hopes, nor will humanity pass from its 
 bitter plaint against the evil course of things and the 
 tragic wreck of human lives. Such a dualism and contra- 
 diction between man and his world presses for its solution 
 in some deeper unity that shall embrace and explain them 
 both. The Stoics themselves, the great preachers of Kesig- 
 nation, had their own solution of the problem. The ways 
 of the cosmos were not for them dark or unintelligible ; 
 the " nature of things " was, like human nature, in its 
 essence altogether reasonable. The question raised by the 
 impossibility of correlating man and Nature by " natural- 
 ising the moral man " is, whether we cannot reduce both 
 man and nature to a deeper unity: whether, though 
 " human nature " is for ever distinct from physical nature, 
 and the world of morality " an artificial world within the 
 cosmos," both are not expressions or exponents of a deeper 
 " nature of things." Such a question the unifying instinct 
 of man cannot help raising. Even Professor Huxley admits 
 that "the ethical process must bear some sort of relation to 
 
406 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. 
 
 the cosmic." Nor need this relation be that of levelling 
 down, of reducing man to Nature. Why should we not level 
 up ? Why should not Nature, if in one sense the eternal 
 enemy of man, to be subdued under his feet if he is to ~be 
 man, yet also be the minister and instrument of man's 
 moral life, charged with a moral mission even in its 
 moral " enmity " or " indifference " ? If the ethical pro- 
 cess is not part of the cosmic process, may not the 
 cosmic be part of the ethical ? or better, may not both 
 be parts of the Divine process of the universe ? Since 
 man has to live the ethical life in a natural world, in a 
 world Which is in a sense the enemy of that life, and in 
 a sense indifferent to it, may not the ethical process be 
 " more reasonably described as an agency which directs 
 and controls rather than entirely opposes the cosmical 
 process " ? 1 
 
 To the question whether we can thus correlate the ethical 
 with the cosmical process, man and Nature, by seeing 
 God in both, in such wise that Nature shall become the 
 instrument and servant of the ethical spirit ; or whether 
 Nature must remain for man an alien and opposing force 
 which, by its moral indifference, is always liable, if not to 
 defeat, to embarrass and endanger, moral ends, to this 
 question I do not see that we can give more than a 
 tentative answer. Our answer must be rather a specula- 
 tive guess, a philosophic faith, than a reasoned certainty. 
 "Nature" in ourselves we may annex, our natural dis- 
 positions, instincts, impulses, we may subdue to moral 
 ends ; this raw material we may work entirely into the 
 texture of the ethical life. But what of the "Nature" 
 
 i ' Athenaeum,' July 22, 1893. 
 
THE PROBLEM OF GOD. 40*7 
 
 which is without ourselves ? What of that " furniture 
 of fortune" of which Aristotle speaks, which seems to 
 come to us and to be taken away from us without any 
 reference, oftentimes, to our ethical deservings ? What 
 of that " fate " in which our life is involved, whose issues 
 are unto life and unto death, which disappoints and 
 blights our spiritual hopes, whose capricious favours no 
 merit can secure, whose gifts and calamities descend, 
 without discrimination, upon the evil and the good ? Call 
 it what we will " fortune," " circumstance," " fate " 
 does there not remain an insoluble and baffling quantity 
 an x which we can never eliminate, and whose presence 
 destroys all our calculations ? Yet the ground of moral 
 confidence is the conviction, inseparable from the moral 
 life, of the supremacy and ultimate masterfulness of the 
 moral order. Professor Huxley himself expresses a sober 
 and measured confidence of this kind. "It may seem an 
 audacious proposal thus to pit the microcosm against the 
 macrocosm, and to set man to subdue Nature to his higher 
 ends ; but I venture to think that the great intellectual 
 difference between the ancient times . . . and our day 
 lies in the solid foundation we have acquired for the hope 
 that such an enterprise may meet with a certain meas- 
 ure of success." Man has learned, with the advance of 
 science, his own power over Nature, the power, which 
 increasing knowledge brings, to subdue Nature to his 
 own ends, and his confidence inevitably grows that he is 
 Nature's master, not her slave. But whether he can ever 
 entirely subdue her, whether the natural order will ever 
 be so filled with the moral order as to be the perfect ex- 
 pression and vehicle of the latter ; or whether the natural 
 
408 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. 
 
 order must always remain the imperfect expression of the 
 moral, and some new and perfect expression be framed for 
 it, we cannot tell. Only this we can say, that since each 
 is an order, since Nature itself is a cosmos, not a chaos, 
 and since they issue from a common source, Nature arid 
 morality must ultimately be harmonised. 
 
 The mod- 5. This, in itself unchanging, problem assumes two 
 mentofthe different aspects as it appears in ancient and in modern 
 speculation. It is in the latter of these aspects that we 
 are naturally most familiar with it, and in this form 
 perhaps its most characteristic statement is that of Kant. 
 The ultimate issue of goodness, he contends, must be 
 happiness ; the external and the internal fortunes of the 
 soul must in the end coincide. This is the Kantian 
 argument for the existence of God, as moral Governor of 
 the universe, distributor of rewards arid punishments in 
 accordance with individual desert. For though the very 
 essence of virtue is its disinterestedness, yet the final 
 equation of virtue and happiness is, for Kant, the pos- 
 tulate of morality. We have seen that the hedonists, 
 who reduce virtue to prudence and the right to the 
 expedient, find themselves forced, in order to the vindica- 
 tion of altruistic conduct, or of that part of virtue which 
 refuses to be resolved into prudence, to make the same 
 postulate in another form. Either the appeal is made to 
 the future course of the evolutionary process, which, it is 
 argued, cannot stop short of the identification of virtue 
 and prudence, individual goodness and individual hap- 
 piness; or it is maintained, as by Professor Sidgwick, 
 that the gap in ethical theory must be filled in by a 
 
THE PROBLEM OF GOD. 409 
 
 theological hypothesis of the Kantian sort. The Socratic 
 conviction is reasserted, that " if the Eulers of the universe 
 do not prefer the just man to the unjust, it is better to 
 die than to live." Nor is such a demand the expression 
 of mere self-interest. " When a man passionately refuses 
 to believe that the ' wages of virtue ' can ' be dust,' it is 
 often less from any private reckoning about his own 
 wages than from a disinterested aversion to a universe 
 so fundamentally irrational that ' God for the Individual ' 
 is not ultimately identified with ' Universal Good.' " 1 
 The assumption of such a moral order, maintained by a 
 moral Governor, is accordingly accepted as " an hypo- 
 thesis logically necessary to avoid a fundamental contra- 
 diction in one chief department of our thought." 2 Even in 
 this aspect, the problem is not exclusively modern. The 
 coincidence of outward prosperity with righteousness, 
 individual and national, was the axiom of Hebrew 
 thought an axiom whose verification in national and 
 individual experience cost the Hebrews much painful 
 thought, and often seemed to be threatened with final 
 disappointment. Even the lesson, learned by bitter 
 experience, that man must be content to "serve God 
 for nought," never carried with it for them the defini- 
 tive divorce of righteousness and prosperity. Their in- 
 tense moral earnestness persisted in its demand for an 
 ultimate harmony of external fortune with inward merit ; 
 sin and suffering, goodness and happiness, must, they felt, 
 ultimately coincide. And, like our modern Kantians 
 and Evolutionists, they were compelled to adjourn to 
 
 1 Sidgwick, ' Methods of Ethics/ 504 (3d ed. ) 
 
 2 Ibid., 505. 
 
410 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. 
 
 the future, now of the community, now of the indi- 
 vidual, the solution of a problem which their present 
 experience always left unsolved. 
 
 Yet one cannot help feeling that this is not the most 
 adequate or the worthiest statement of the problem. 
 There is a feeling of externality about such a moral 
 universe as that of the Hebrews, of Kant, or of Professor 
 Sidgwick ; such a God is a kind of deus ex machina, after 
 all, an agent introduced from outside into a scheme of 
 things which had seemed already complete, to re-adjust 
 an order already adjusted. Especially in Kant we feel 
 that, in spite of all his skilful pleading, there is a fall 
 from the elevated and consistent Stoicism of his ethics 
 to the quasi -Hedonism of his moral theology; the old 
 keynote sounds no longer. Nor is his God much better 
 than " a chief-of-police of the moral universe." It seems 
 to me that the ancient Greek statement of the problem 
 was much more adequate than the characteristic modern 
 version of it, and that the Greek solution is also more 
 suggestive of the true direction in which the solution 
 must be sought. 
 
 its ancient 6. The Greek problem was that of an adequate sphere 
 for the exercise of virtue. In general this sphere was 
 found in the State, and Plato held that there was no 
 contradiction more tragic than that of a great nature 
 condemned to live in a mean State ; great virtue needs a 
 great sphere for its due exercise. And the Greek State, at 
 its best, did provide a splendid, and to the Greeks a satis- 
 fying, sphere for the exercise of human virtue. It en- 
 larged and ennobled, without annulling, the life of the 
 
THE PROBLEM OF GOD. 411 
 
 individual citizen. For Aristotle, though the State is still 
 the ideal sphere of virtuous activity, and Ethics itself " a 
 sort of political inquiry," the problem has already changed 
 its aspect, and become more directly a problem of the 
 individual life. To him the question is that of the 
 opportunity for the actualisation of the virtue or excel- 
 lence which exists potentially in every man. The actual- 
 isation (evepyeia) of virtue is for him of supreme im-~~\ 
 portance ; and whether any man's potential virtue shall 
 be actualised or not, is determined not by the man him- 
 self, but by his circumstances, his initial and acquired 
 equipment, his " furniture of fortune," wealth, friends, 
 honour, personal advantage, &c. These things constitute 
 the man's moral opportunity, and determine the scale 
 of his ethical achievement. A good, or passively virtuous, 
 man might " sleep all his life," might never have a fit 
 opportunity of realising his goodness, never find a suffi- 
 cient stage for the demonstration of his powers in act, 
 or never find his part in the drama of human history. 
 The tide of fortune might never for him come to the 
 flood, and as it ebbed away from him he might well feel 
 that it carried with it all his hopes of high enterprise 
 and achievement. Here Aristotle seems to find a baffling, 
 inexplicable surd in human life a " given " element 
 which, in a moment, may wreck our lives, and which 
 must fill some men from the first with despair, or at best 
 must imprison their lives within the narrowest horizon. 
 For, so, we are not masters even of our own characters ; 
 character is the result of exercise, it is not the strong, 
 but they who run, that receive the crown of virtue. But 
 we may never be allowed on the course, or we may not 
 
412 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. 
 
 have the strength that is needed for the race. The 
 ethical End cannot be compassed at least it cannot be 
 fully compassed without the external aid of Fortune ; 
 and Fortune, Aristotle seems to feel almost as irresistibly 
 as Professor Huxley feels about Nature, is ethically in- 
 different. The most a man can do is, he says, to make 
 the best use of the gifts of Fortune, such as they are, 
 "just as a good general uses the forces at his command 
 to the best advantage in war, and a good cobbler makes 
 the best shoe with the leather that is given him." l But 
 oftentimes the forces available are all too scant for any 
 deed of greatness, and the leather is such that only a 
 very indifferent shoe can be made out of it. So that, 
 after all, it is rather in the noble bearing of the chances 
 of life than in any certainty of actual achievement, that 
 we ought to place our estimate of true nobility of soul. 
 Even in the most untoward circumstances, in those 
 calamities which mar and mutilate the felicity of life 
 by causing pains and hindrances to its various activities, 
 nobility may shine out when a person bears the weight 
 of accumulated misfortunes with calmness, not from in- 
 sensibility, but from innate dignity and greatness of 
 soul. 
 
 In this attitude of Aristotle we are already very near 
 the position of the Stoics. The problem of Fortune, 
 which Aristotle never completely solved, became the 
 chief problem of his successors; and the Stoics and 
 Epicureans found in part the same solution of it. The 
 only salvation from the evil chances of life is to be 
 found, they agree, in a self-contained life which is inde- 
 1 Eth., I. xi. 
 
THE PROBLEM OF GOD. 413 
 
 pendent of outward change and circumstance. The life 
 of the wise man is a closed sphere, with its centre within 
 the man himself; his mind to him a kingdom is, he is 
 his own sufficient sphere. For the outward sphere has 
 become manifestly inadequate; the splendid life of the 
 Greek States has disappeared in narrow provincialism; 
 Fortune lias played havoc with man's life, and shattered 
 the fabric of his brave endeavours. The lesson is that 
 man must find his good, if he is to find it at all, entirely 
 within himself, and must place no confidence in the 
 course of outward things. And has he not the secret 
 of happiness in his own bosom ? Is it not for him to 
 dictate the terms of his own true welfare ? Can he not 
 shield himself from Fortune's darts in a complete armour 
 of indifference and " impassibility " ? 
 
 Yet this is not the final resting-place, either for Aris- 
 totle or for the Stoics. The problem of Fortune, it is 
 quite manifest, is not yet solved, nor can the attempt 
 to solve it be abandoned. There is a very real kinship 
 and community, it is felt, between man's "nature" and 
 the " nature of things." The latter is not the sphere of 
 blind chance, after all ; its essence is, like man's, rational. 
 " Live according to nature " means, for the Stoic, " Live 
 according to the common reason, obey that rational order 
 which embraces thy life and nature's too." Nothing 
 happens by chance, everything befalls as is most fit ; and 
 man's true salvation is to discover the fitness of each 
 thing that befalls him, and in all things to order his 
 behaviour in accordance with the eternal fitness of the 
 divine order. Fortune is in reality the Providence of 
 God ; no evil can happen to a good man ; his affairs are 
 
414 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. 
 
 not indifferent to God. The universe is itself divine, the 
 perfect expression of the divine Keason, and therefore the 
 home of the rational spirit of man. Nor is man, after all, 
 alone, or his life a solitary and exclusive one, contained 
 within the narrow bounds of his individual selfhood. 
 Without ever straying beyond himself, he can become a 
 citizen of a fairer and greater City than any Greek or 
 earthly State, a Civitas Dei, the " goodly fellowship " of 
 humanity, yea, of the universe itself, for his life and the 
 life of the universe are in their essence one. This splen- 
 did and spacious Home it was that the Stoics built for 
 themselves out of the wreck of worldly empire and the 
 shattering of their earlier hopes ; such sweet uses hath 
 adversity for the human spirit. Aristotle's problem seerns 
 pretty near its solution. 
 
 Aristotle had himself suggested this Stoic solution, and 
 had even, in his own bold metaphysic, transcended it. 
 He could not stop short of a perfect unification of man's 
 life with the life of Nature, and of both with the divine 
 universal Life. The universe has, for him, one End, and one 
 perfect Fulfilment. The Form of all things, and the Form, 
 if we may say so, of human life, are the same ; the Form 
 of the universe is Eeason. And the apparent unreason, 
 the " matter " of the world and of morality, is only reason 
 in the making or " becoming." It is " the promise and 
 the potency " of reason, and will in due time demonstrate 
 its rationality by a perfect fulfilment and actualisation. 
 The process of Nature and the process of human life are 
 really only stages in the one entirely rational process of 
 the divine life. To God all things turn, after his per- 
 fection they all aspire, in him they live and move and 
 
THE PROBLEM OF GOD. 415 
 
 have their being. And if we ask, What, then, of " man's 
 place in nature " ? we have Aristotle's answer in his 
 doctrine of the human ^v^rj. It is the Form of the 
 body, its perfect actualisation or eVreXe^eta. Nay, the 
 true soul of man, the soul of his soul, is that same Active 
 and Creative Eeason, that pure activity of thought, which 
 is the Alpha and the Omega of Being. In fulfilling the 
 End of his own nature, therefore, man is a "co-worker with 
 God" in the fulfilment of the universal End. Eor the 
 End of the universe is the same as the End of human life. 
 Man can, in virtue of his higher endowment of reason, 
 accomplish with intelligence and insight that which the 
 lower creation accomplishes in its own blind but unerring 
 way. So that ultimately man cannot fail of his End, any 
 more than Nature can fail of hers ; let him link his for- 
 tunes with those of the universe itself, and he cannot 
 fail. The " cosmic process " is not indifferent to man, 
 who is its product and fulfilment, and also, in a sense, 
 its master and its end. Aristotle does not bring together 
 his ethical doctrine of Fortune as an external and in- 
 different power which may as readily check as forward 
 the fulfilment of man's moral nature and his attainment 
 of his true end, and his metaphysical doctrine of the 
 unity of the divine or universal End with the end of 
 human life, a unity which would imply that there cannot 
 be, in man any more than in Nature, such a thing as 
 permanently unfulfilled capacity, or potentiality that is 
 not perfectly actualised. But the profound meaning of 
 his total thought about the universe would seem to be 
 that man must share in the fruition of the great con- 
 summation, that without his participation it would be no 
 
416 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. 
 
 consummation at all, and that into that diviner Order 
 the lower order (or disorder) of outward accident in 
 which his life had seemed to be confined and thwarted 
 of its fulfilment, must ultimately disappear. Thus in- 
 terpreted, the thought of Aristotle would at once antici- 
 pate and transcend the Stoic philosophy of man and 
 Nature, in the measure that the Aristotelian theology 
 anticipates and transcends the theology of the Porch. 
 
 The Chris- 7. Christianity offers its own bold solution of the 
 
 tian sol- 
 ution, problem we are considering. It knows no ultimate dis- 
 tinction between the course of the world and the course 
 of the moral life, but sees " all things working together 
 for good," and discerns in each event of human history a 
 manifestation of the divine Providence. The natural order 
 is incorporated in the moral ; and even where, to the Greek 
 mind, and to the pagan mind always, the latter seemed to 
 thwart and retard the former, it is felt most surely to pro- 
 mote and help it on. Misfortune and calamity, instead of 
 being obstacles to the development of goodness, are the 
 very soil of its best life, the atmosphere it needs to bring 
 it to perfection. Not the wealthy, but the poor ; not the 
 prosperous, but the persecuted ; not the high-minded, but 
 the lowly, the weary, and the heavy-laden, are called 
 blessed. A new office is found for suffering and calamity 
 in the life of goodness ; man is " made perfect through 
 suffering." And while Aristotle thought that length of 
 days was needed for a complete life, Christianity has 
 taught us that 
 
 " In short measures life may perfect be." 
 
THE PROBLEM OF GOD. 417 
 
 Nor is salvation found any longer in a mere Stoical in- 
 difference or apathy to misfortune; such a "bearing" is 
 no real bearing of calamity, but rather a cowardly retreat 
 from it. It is in the actual suffering of evil that Chris- 
 tianity finds the " soul of good " in it. Its office is discip- 
 linary and purifying, and " though no suffering for the 
 present seemeth joyous but rather grievous, yet afterward 
 it yieldeth the peaceable fruits of righteousness in those 
 that are exercised thereby." Instead of negating the exer- 
 cise of virtue (as Aristotle thought), calamity provides the 
 very opportunity of its best and highest exercise, and 
 therefore must be regarded as the most perfect instrument 
 in the development of goodness. 1 
 
 8. If philosophy finds itself precluded from going the The ideal 
 whole length of the Christian doctrine of divine Provi- Real, 
 dence, yet it seems to me that Christianity puts into the * ^ 
 hands of philosophy a clue which it would do well to f\^. 
 follow up, especially since the conception is not altogether 
 new, but is the complement and development of the Aris- 
 totelian and Stoic theology which I have just sketched. 
 All that I am concerned at this point to maintain is the 
 speculative legitimacy and necessity of the demand for a 
 Moral Order somehow pervading and using (in however 
 
 1 Addison has given quaint expression to this Christian estimate of so- 
 called "Misfortune" in his fine allegory of "The Golden Scales." "I 
 observed one particular weight lettered on both sides, and upon applying 
 myself to the reading of it, I found on one side written, ' In the dialect of 
 men,' and underneath it, ' CALAMITIES ' : on the other side was written, 
 ' In the language of the gods,' and underneath ' BLESSINGS.' I found the 
 intrinsic value of this weight to be much greater than I imagined, for it 
 overpowered health, wealth, good-fortune, and many other weights, which 
 were much more ponderous in my hand than the other." 
 
 2D 
 
418 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. 
 
 strange and unexpected wise) the order of Nature, and thus 
 making possible for the moral being the fulfilment of his 
 moral task, the perfect realisation of all his moral capaci- 
 ties. That the universe is not foreign to the ethical spirit 
 of man, or indifferent to it, but its sphere and atmosphere, 
 the soil of its life, the breath of its being ; that " the soul 
 of the world is just," that "might" is ultimately "right," 
 and the divine and universal Power " a power that makes 
 for righteousness " ; that so far from the nature of things 
 being antagonistic to morality, " morality is the nature of 
 things," this at least, it seems to me, is the metaphysical 
 implication of morality as we know it. A moral universe, 
 an absolute moral Being, is the indispensable Environment 
 of the ethical life, without which it cannot attain its 
 perfect growth. A " first Actuality," of goodness as of in- 
 telligence, is the presupposition of, and the only sufficient 
 security for, the perfect actualisation of moral as of in- 
 tellectual capacity. Philosophy must acknowledge the 
 right of a moral being to self-realisation and complete- 
 ness of ethical life, and substantiate his claim upon the 
 universe whose child he is, that it shall be the medium, 
 and not the obstacle and negation, of his proper life ? 
 This ultimate and inalienable human right is not a " right 
 to bliss," "to welfare and repose," but a right to self- 
 fulfilment and realisation. To deny this right, to invali- 
 date this claim, is either to naturalise, i.e., to de-moralise 
 man, or to convict the universe of failure to perfect its 
 own work, to say that, in the end, the part contradicts 
 the whole. Our reasons for dissenting from the former 
 alternative have been already given, and belong to our 
 entire ethical theory ; to assent to the latter would be to 
 
THE PROBLEM OF GOD. 419 
 
 deny the reality of the universe, and to surrender the pos- 
 sibility of philosophy itself. Accordingly, we seem not 
 only warranted, but compelled, to maintain the moral 
 constitution of the universe. This is, in the words of a 
 recent French writer, " the only hypothesis which explains 
 the totality of phenomena, moral phenomena included, 
 which grasps the harmony between them and us, which 
 gives, with this unity and harmony, clearness to the mind, 
 strength to the will, sweetness to the soul." l Fichte's 
 question is most pertinent, " While nothing in nature 
 contradicts itself, is man alone a contradiction ? " 2 
 
 The same conclusion is reached by pressing the investi- 
 gation of the ultimate significance of morality itself. We 
 have seen that the moral life is in its essence an ideal 
 life a life of aspiration after the realisation of that 
 which is not yet attained, determined by the unceasing 
 antithesis of the Is and the Ought-to-be. What, then, 
 we are forced at last to ask, is the source and warrant 
 of this Moral Ideal, of this imperious Ought-to-be ? To 
 answer that it is entirely subjective, the moving shadow 
 of our actual attainment, would be irrevocably to break 
 the spell of the Ideal, and to make it a mere foolish will- 
 o'-the-wisp which, once discovered, could cheat us no 
 longer out of our sensible satisfaction with the actual. 
 An ideal with no foothold in the real, would be the 
 most unsubstantial of all illusions. As Dr Martineau has 
 strikingly said : " Amid all the sickly talk about ' ideals ' 
 which has become the commonplace of our age, it is well 
 to remember that, so long as they are dreams of future 
 possibility, and not faiths in present realities, so long as 
 
 1 Ricardou, ' De 1'Ideal/ 325. 2 ' Popular Works,' i. 346 (Eng. tr.) 
 
420 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. 
 
 they are a mere self-painting of the yearning spirit, . . . 
 they have no more solidity or steadiness than floating air- 
 bubbles, gay in the sunshine, and broken by the passing 
 wind/' What is needed to give the Ideal its proper dignity 
 and power is " the discovery that your gleaming Ideal is 
 the everlasting Keal, no transient brush of a fancied angel 
 wing, but the abiding presence and persuasion of the Soul 
 of souls." 1 The secret of the power of the Moral Ideal is 
 the conviction which it carries with it that it is no mere 
 Ideal, but the expression, more or less perfect, and always 
 I becoming more perfect, of the supreme Eeality ; that " the 
 rule of right, the symmetries of character, the require- 
 ments of perfection, are no provincialisms of this planet ; 
 they are known among the stars ; they reign beyond Orion 
 and the Southern Cross ; they are wherever the universal 
 Spirit is." 2 The entire preceding discussion goes to show * 
 that to make morality entirely relative and subjective, 
 to give a merely empirical " evolution " of it, is to destroy 
 its inner essence, and to miss its characteristic note. 
 That note is the ideal without whose constant presence 
 and operation moral development would be impossible. 
 But we have reserved the question of the origin and 
 warrant, of the Ideal itself; and when we ask it to 
 produce its " certificate of birth," it is compelled to refer 
 us to the "nature of things," and to proclaim that the 
 way in which it has commanded us to walk is the Way 
 of the Cosmos itself, the Way of the divine Order. 
 
 1 Martineau, 'Study of Religion/ i. 12. Cf. Ricardou, ' De I'lde'al,' 
 262 : " It is not enough that the ideal charm the imagination by its 
 poetry, it is necessary that it satisfy the reason by its truth, its objective 
 and absolute truth." 
 
 2 Martineau, op. cit., i. 26. 
 
THE PROBLEM OF GOD. 421 
 
 Thus an adequate interpretation of morality compels us 
 'to predicate an ultimate and absolute moral Reality, a 
 supreme ground of Goodness as well as of Truth, and the 
 moral idealism which we have maintained against empiri- 
 cal realism in Ethics brings us in the end to a moral Real- 
 ism, to a conviction of the Reality of the Moral Ideal. We 
 are driven to the conclusion that the Ideal is not simply 
 the unreal, but the expression and exponent of the Real ; 
 that that which on our side of it is the Ideal, is, on its 
 farther side, the Real ; that behind the Ought lies the Is, 
 behind our eternal Ought-to-be the eternal I am of the 
 divine Righteousness. But that supreme moral Reality we 
 can only apprehend on this, our human side ; its farther 
 side we may not see. " No man shall see God's face and 
 live ; " the full vision would scorch man's little life in the 
 " consuming fire " of the divine perfection. To see God, we 
 must be like him ; it is a moral rather than an intellectual 
 apprehension. Yet, as we obey the Ought-to-be, and realise 
 in ourselves the Ideal Good, we do in our human measure 
 and in our appropriate human way come to the fuller 
 knowledge of the divine Goodness. The veil that hides 
 it from us the veil of our own failure and imperfection 
 is gradually taken away, and "the pure in heart see 
 God." 
 
 To make the antithesis between the ideal and the real 
 final/and to refuse to recognise the reality of the ideal, is 
 to betray a radical misunderstanding of the ideal and of 
 its relation to the real. We must distinguish carefully 
 between the real and the actual, between the absolute and 
 eternal Real and the empirical and historical Actual. 
 The ideal is, as such, always opposed to the actual ; but 
 
422 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. 
 
 this does not prevent its being the exponent of the real. 
 Whence comes the ideal of the actual but from the Eeality 
 or true Being of the actual itselH Thus the ideal brings 
 us nearer to Eeality than the actual ; the one is a more 
 perfect, the other a less perfect, expression of the single 
 Eeality in relation to which both stand, and out of rela- 
 tion to which the distinction between them would disap- 
 pear. For that distinction must be interpreted as having 
 an objective, and not merely a subjective, basis and sig- 
 nificance. " The ideal, founded upon the reasoned and 
 positive knowledge of the essential nature of being, is at 
 once true and possible ; it is superior, not contrary, to the 
 actual fact ; in a sense it is truer than fact itselfj for it is 
 fact purified, transformed, such as it would be if nothing 
 opposed its development ; it is reality tending to its com- 
 plete actualisation." 1 The ideal is, truly understood, the 
 mirror in which we see reflected at once the real and the 
 actual ; it is founded in the real, and is at the same time 
 and for that reason the heart and truth of the actual. 
 The ideal or potential is not simply what the actual is not, 
 it is also the prophecy and guarantee of what the actual 
 shall be-^nay, the revelation of what in its essence it is 
 its very being, its rL fjv elvai. The Ought of morality 
 is the dictation of the ethical Whole to its parts, for the 
 true nature of the parts is determined by the nature of 
 their common Whole. Jft is only the empiricist who sub- 
 ordinates the ideal to the actual, who makes the actual the 
 only real, and sees in the Whole but the sum of the parts. 
 
 1 Ricardou, 'De 1'Ideal,' 22. Cf. Professor Caird, 'Evolution of Re- 
 ligion,' ii. 229 : " The ideal reveals itself as the reality which is hid beneath 
 the immediate appearance of things." 
 
THE PROBLEM OF GOD. 423 
 
 But evolution itself should teach us to find the real al- 
 ways in, or rather behind, the ideal ; never in, but always 
 ahead of, the actual. The empirical time-process, if it has 
 a meaning, implies an eternal Eeality, a Being of the Be- 
 coming, a Something that becomes, the Beginning and the 
 End of the entire process of development. The process is 
 the evolution the gradual unfolding or appearing of that 
 essential Eeality which is its constant implication. 
 
 9. Such an interpretation of Moral Eeality, as only the The Per- 
 other side of the Moral Ideal, enables us to be faithful to of God. 
 the great Kantian principle of the essential Autonomy 
 of the moral life. It is a principle divined by other 
 moralists, by Plato and Butler especially, that man cannot 
 properly acknowledge subjection to any foreign legisla- 
 tion, but is for ever " a law unto himself," his own judge, 
 at once subject and sovereign in the moral realm. But 
 the Kantian Autonomy is not a final explanation of 
 morality. How comes it, we must still ask, that man is 
 fitted for the discharge of such a function ; whence this 
 splendid human endowment ? Kant does not himself 
 connect the self-legislation of man with the divine Source 
 of moral government in the universe ; but his doctrine of 
 Autonomy teaches us that the connection must be no 
 external one. The supreme Head of the moral universe 
 he who, as Holy and not placed under Duty, is only 
 Sovereign and never Subject must be akin to its other 
 members who occupy the " middle sfcate," and are subjects 
 as well as sovereigns, legislators who with difficulty obey 
 the laws of their own making. But what is this but to 
 say that as the ideal is the truth of the actual, so the 
 
424 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. 
 
 Supreme Keality can only be the perfect embodiment and 
 realisation of the ideal. In no one of these three terms 
 do we depart from the single concrete fact of moral 
 experience ; abstract any one of them, and that concrete 
 experience becomes impossible. And what is the concrete 
 fact, the single term of which these three are only aspects, 
 but Self -hood or Personality ? Behind the actual there is 
 the ideal Self, and behind the ideal the real or divine 
 Self. The whole drift of the argument goes to show that, 
 in essence, God and man must be one, that God the 
 supreme moral Source and Principle, the Alpha and the 
 Omega of the moral as of the intellectual life is the 
 eternally perfect Personality, in whose image man has 
 been created, and after the pattern of whose perfect 
 nature the archetypal essence of his own he must 
 unceasingly strive to shape his life. Since the Moral 
 Ideal is an Ideal of Personality, must not the Moral 
 Eeality the Eeality of which that Ideal is the after- 
 reflection as well as the prophetic hint be the perfection 
 of Personality, the supreme Person whose image we, as 
 persons, bear and are slowly and with effort inscribing on 
 our natural individuality ? We must thus complete the 
 Kantian theory of Autonomy ; that alone does not tell 
 the whole story of the moral life. Its unyielding 
 Ought, its Categorical Imperative, issues not merely 
 from the depths of our own nature, but from the heart 
 of the universe itself. We are self-legislative ; but we 
 re-enact the law already enacted by God, we recognise, 
 rather than constitute, the law of our own being. The 
 moral law is the echo within our souls of the voice of the 
 Eternal, " whose offspring we are." 
 
THE PROBLEM OF GOD. 425 
 
 All this, I need hardly say, is not intended as mathe- 
 matical demonstration. Philosophy never is an " exact 
 science." Eather it is offered as the only sufficient Hypo- 
 thesis of the moral life. The life of goodness the ideal 
 life is necessarily a grand speculation, a great " leap in 
 the dark." It is a life based on the conviction that its 
 source and its issues are in the Eternal and the Infinite. 
 Its mood is "strenuous," enthusiastic, possessed by the 
 persuasion of its own infinite value and significance. The 
 man lives under the power of the idea of the supreme 
 reality of moral distinctions, and as if their significance 
 were absolute. To invalidate the hypothesis would be to 
 invalidate the life which is based upon it. But the life of 
 goodness is unyielding in its demand for the sanction, in 
 ultimate divine Eeality, of its own Ideal. For that Ideal 
 is infinite to make it finite were to destroy it ; and, as 
 infinite, it must seek its complement in the Infinite or 
 God. And if a life thus founded is in reality an infinite 
 Peradventure, one long Question always repeated, its pro- 
 gress brings with it the gradual conversion of the specula- 
 tive Peradventure into a practical certainty, and the per- 
 sistent Question is always answering itself. The touch 
 of this transcendent faith alone transfigures man's life 
 with a divine and absolute significance, and endows it 
 with an imperishable and unconquerable strength. "If 
 God be for us, who can be against us ? " " We feel we 
 are nothing, but Thou wilt help us to be." If indeed we 
 are in alliance with the Power that rules the universe, we 
 may well feel confident that " we can do all things " ; if 
 we are going this warfare at our own charges, we may as 
 well give up the struggle. But the ve'ry essence of good- 
 
426 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. 
 
 ness is that it will never give up, but perseveres even to 
 the end. One thing alone would be fatal to it the loss 
 of belief in its own infinite reality, in its own absolute 
 worth. With that surrender would come pessimism. But 
 again the good life never is pessimistic. 1 
 
 Objections 10. The objection is made to such an ethical or personal 
 pomor- conception of God, that it is anthropomorphic, and rests, 
 
 like all anthropomorphism, upon a false estimate of man's 
 ofNaturai place in the universe, upon such an exaggerated view of his 
 011 ' own importance as is fatal to the vision of God in his true 
 being. This objection comes from two sides, from that 
 of Naturalism and from that of Transcendentalism, or 
 from that of empirical and from that of dialectical Evolu- 
 
 1 Cf. Professor James, ' International Journal of Ethics/ i. 352, 353 : 
 " When, however, we believe that a God is there, and that he is one of the 
 claimants, the infinite perspective opens out. The scale of the symphony 
 is incalculably prolonged. The more imperative ideals now begin to speak 
 with an altogether new objectivity and significance, and to utter the in- 
 finitely penetrating, shattering, tragically challenging mode of appeal. . . . 
 All through history, in the periodical conflicts of puritanism with the 
 don't-care temper, we see the antagonism of the strenuous and genial 
 moods, and the contrast between the ethics of infinite and mysterious 
 obligation from on high, and those of prudence and the satisfaction of 
 merely finite needs. The capacity of the strenuous mood lies so deep 
 down among our natural human possibilities that even if there were no 
 metaphysical or traditional grounds for believing in a God, men would 
 postulate one simply as a pretext for living hard, and getting out of the 
 game of existence its keenest possibilities of zest. Our attitude towards 
 concrete evils is entirely different in a world where we believe there are 
 none but finite demanders, from what it is in one where we joyously face 
 tragedy for an infinite demander's sake. Every sort of energy and en- 
 durance, of courage and capacity for handling life's evils, is set free in 
 those who have religious faith. For this reason the strenuous type of 
 character will, on the battle-field of human history, always outwear the 
 easy-going type, and religion will drive irreligion to the wall." 
 
THE PROBLEM OF GOD. 427 
 
 tion. The former need not detain us long ; the latter will 
 require more careful consideration. 
 
 The evolutionary view of the universe, it is held, em- 
 phasises the lesson of the Copernican change of stand- 
 point. As the geo-centric conception was supplanted by 
 the helio-centric, so must the anthropo-centric view give 
 place to the cosmo-centric. As man has learned that his 
 planet is not the centre of the physical universe, he is 
 now learning that he himself is only an incident in the 
 long course of the evolutionary process. His imagined 
 superiority to nature, his imagined uniqueness of endow- 
 ment, must disappear when he is found to be the product 
 of natural factors, and the steps are traced by which he 
 has become what he is. 
 
 But such a deduction from the theory of evolution is 
 the result of a misinterpretation of that theory. Here, as 
 elsewhere, the theological consequence is a metaphysical 
 deduction from scientific statements, rather than a finding 
 of science itself. It is for science to discover the " laws " 
 of phenomena, or the manner of their occurrence, to 
 describe the How of the world and of man. The What 
 and the Why are questions for philosophy. The " laws " 
 of " nature " which science discovers may be at the same 
 time the " ways " of God, the modes of the divine activity. 
 Why should not evolution by natural selection be the 
 mode of the divine activity ? Even if Evolution be the 
 supreme Law of the universe, it is only the "highest 
 generalisation," the most comprehensive scientific state- 
 ment of the phenomenal process. But the process does not 
 explain itself. The " genetic method " may be adequate 
 for science, it is not adequate^iac-.-giyosophy. Philo- 
 
428 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. 
 
 sophy can never rest in a universe of mere " Becoming," 
 it must explain the Becoming by its " Being " rather than 
 conversely. Heraclitus, as a philosophical evolutionist, 
 recognised this in his assertion of the Law or path (0809) 
 of the process ; and Aristotle saw still more clearly that 
 the process of evolution is not self-explanatory, that Be- 
 coming rests on Being, that the TL ecmv of the actual pre- 
 supposes the ova-la or TI fjv elvai of the essential and ideal. 
 In other words, we understand the Becoming only when 
 we refer it to the Being that is becoming. The very con- 
 ception of Evolution is teleological. Evolution is not mere 
 change or indefinite movement ; it is progress, movement 
 in a certain direction, towards a definite goal. " The pro- 
 cess of evolution is itself the working out of a mighty 
 teleology, of which our finite understandings can fathom 
 but the scantiest rudiments." 1 It has been truly said that 
 "Evolution spells Purpose." The philosophic lesson of 
 Evolutionism is the constant lesson of science itself, that 
 the universe is a universe, a Many which is also a One, a 
 Whole through all its parts. And while it is the business 
 of the scientific Evolutionist to analyse this Whole into its 
 component parts, it is for philosophy to make the synthesis 
 of the parts in the Whole. 
 
 To discover this total meaning of the evolutionary 
 process, this End which is at the same time the Be- 
 ginning of the entire movement, philosophy must reverse 
 the evolutionary method, as understood by science, and 
 explain the lower in terms of the higher, rather than the 
 higher in terms of the lower ; the earlier in terms of 
 the later, rather than the later in terms of the earlier ; the 
 
 1 Fiske, ' Cosmic Philosophy,' ii. 406. 
 
THE PROBLEM OF GOD. 429 
 
 simpler by the more complex, rather than the more com- 
 plex by the simpler. For it is in the higher and later and 
 more complex that we see the unfolding of the essential 
 nature of the lower and earlier and simpler forms of 
 being. In the latter we discover what the former had 
 it in them to become, what the former in promise and 
 potency already were. The oak explains the acorn, even 
 more truly than the acorn explains the oak. Now, the 
 highest and latest and most complex form of being that 
 we know is man, and thus teleology becomes inevita- 
 bly anthropomorphism. The superiority of the anthropo- 
 centric view to the cosmo-centric receives a new vindi- 
 cation when we see that man includes nature. " That 
 which the pre-Copernican astronomy naively thought 
 to do by placing the home of man in the centre of 
 the physical universe, the Darwinian biology profoundly 
 accomplishes by exhibiting man as the terminal fact in 
 that stupendous process of evolution whereby things have 
 come to be what they are. In the deepest sense it is 
 as true as ever it was held to be, that the world was made 
 for man, and that the bringing forth in him of those 
 qualities which we call highest and holiest is the final 
 cause of creation." : For in man we now see, with a new 
 distinctness, the microcosm ; he sums up in himself, 
 repeats and transcends, the entire process of the world. 
 Anthropomorphism is more adequate than Naturalism, 
 because in man we are nearer the Whole, and nearer the 
 Centre, than in nature. Evolutionism sends us, for the 
 explanation of nature, from nature to man. The con- 
 tinuity of the process of evolution in nature and in man 
 
 1 Fiske, 'Idea of God,' Pref. 21. 
 
430 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. 
 
 is a new vindication of anthropomorphism. As long as 
 man could separate himself from nature, and regard him- 
 self as unique, a Melchisedec-birth, he had no right to 
 interpret the process of nature in terms of himself ; the 
 unity of man and nature which science is slowly establish- 
 ing is the vindication of that right. It does not matter 
 where man's home may be, at the centre or the circum- 
 ference of the physical system ; it does not matter what 
 his history has been, by what slow stages he has become 
 what he is. It is in what he is, and always in " promise 
 and potency " was, that man's supreme importance lies. 
 The Darwinian, like the Copernican "change of stand- 
 point," has forced us to revise our conception of " man's 
 place in nature," of his temporal as well as of his spatial 
 place. But his true being shines out all the more clearly 
 in the changed light. 
 
 If we regard the universe as one continuous evolution, 
 we must find in man the key to the entire process. For 
 while in the organic we find the fulfilment and raison 
 d'etre of the inorganic, the end to which the latter is a 
 means, in the rational soul of man we must find, with 
 Aristotle, that for the realisation of which his body exists 
 (o-&>//,o.T09 evT\exeia). The course of evolution, as we 
 can empirically trace it, should teach us this. Till man 
 is reached, there is no stopping anywhere, each species 
 seems to exist only as a step towards the next. Nature 
 seems to be not merely " careless of the single life," but to 
 be careless even of " the type." But with man the move- 
 ment seems to change its course, and the progress seems 
 to be inwards rather than onwards. The human species 
 once evolved, the function of evolution seems to be the 
 
THE PROBLEM OF GOD. 431 
 
 perfecting of this species. The material world seems to 
 exist for the body of man, and man's body for his soul. 
 " On earth there is nothing great but man : in man there 
 is nothing great but mind." '" Man seems indeed to be the 
 microcosm, the focal point of the evolutionary process, the 
 universe itself in miniature. It seems as if in his perfec- 
 tion it attained its end, and accomplished its mission. 
 
 11. But the charge of Anthropomorphism comes from C6) from the 
 
 standpoint 
 
 the Transceridentalists as well as from the .Naturalists, of Diaiec- 
 from the dialectical as well as from the empirical Evolu- ution. 
 tionists. Absolute Idealism has no place for Personal- 
 ity, or at any rate for a plurality of Selves, human and 
 divine. It is difficult to define Hegelian " orthodoxy," 
 but it seems to demand an impersonal view both of God 
 and man. God thus becomes either the One which is 
 not the Many, or the All, the universal process itself. 
 Both views are found, I think, in the latest English ex- 
 position of Hegelian theology, Professor Edward Caird's 
 Gifford Lectures on ' The Evolution of Eeligion.' On the 
 one hand, it is maintained that we must not conceive 
 God in terms either of the Object or of the Subject, that 
 Naturalism and Monotheism are alike inadequate. God, 
 being the principle of unity that underlies both subject 
 and object, must not be identified with either. The result 
 would seem to be the impossibility of conceiving God at 
 all. If, in order to think God, we must think away all 
 the reality we know, it is clear that we cannot know God 
 at all. A mere " principle of unity," beyond the dualism of 
 subject and object, is hardly to be distinguished from the 
 Spencerian Absolute, neither material nor spiritual, but 
 
432 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. 
 
 the unknown and unknowable basis alike of material and 
 spiritual phenomena. Professor Caird is evidently con- 
 scious of this difficulty, and tries to answer it : " What, it 
 is asked, can we make of a Being who is neither to be 
 perceived or imagined as an object, nor to be conceived 
 and determined as a subject, but only as the unity in 
 which all difference begins and ends ? Must we not 
 content ourselves with the bare acknowledgment of such 
 a Being, and bow our heads before the inscrutable ? " The 
 answer is, that though " in a sense such a universal must 
 be beyond knowledge, ... it is the ground on which we 
 stand, the atmosphere which surrounds us, the light by 
 which we see, and the heaven that shuts us in." l But 
 if the God of Idealism must remain mere indeterminate 
 Being, a Something of which we cannot predicate any 
 attributes, Idealism has only brought us round by a new 
 path to Agnosticism. At best, such a " principle of unity " 
 could be only the form of our knowledge, and a form 
 into which we are not allowed to put any content must 
 needs remain empty arid abstract. 
 
 The only escape from this formalism of a mere " prin- 
 ciple of unity " seems to lie in the identification of God 
 with the process of experience, the " system of relations," 
 the dialectical movement of reason in nature and in man. 
 God thus becomes the All regarded as One, the Whole, 
 the Universe itself. Now, since this Whole, to be inter- 
 preted as such i.e., as the unity of the all must be re- 
 garded as the rational order which makes the cosmos a 
 cosmos, the result is Pan-logism. Of this position we have 
 various statements. To Hegel himself God is the " Abso- 
 
 1 'Evolution of Religion,' i. 153. 
 
THE PROBLEM OF GOD. 433 
 
 lute Idea," the self-contained and self-completed Thought 
 which lives and moves to its self-realisation in " all think- 
 ing things, all objects of all thought." To Professor Caird 
 God is neither Subject nor Object, but the higher term 
 presupposed in and containing both. This Absolute is 
 obviously Kant's "Unity of Apperception," left alone 
 after the withdrawal of the Kantian Things-in-themselves, 
 objective and subjective alike. For Kant himself this was 
 the mere Form of experience, the principle of its possibil- 
 ity, and was not to be substantiated as a Being outside 
 experience. If, therefore, we deny the reality of Kant's 
 noumenal or supra-experiential world, 1 there remains what 
 was for Kant himself the only knowable Keality, the 
 rational system of experience itself. The " thinking 
 thing " disappears, with the " objects " of its thought, in 
 thought itself; the real is the rational; form is filled 
 with content, because form and content are one. 
 
 If the former view led us to the Eleatic unity of inde- 
 terminate Being, this brings us to the Heracleitean unity 
 of mere Becoming. This version of Hegelianism is indeed 
 essentially a revival of Heracleiteanism. Nothing is, every- 
 thing becomes ; the process itself is the entire reality ; and 
 the process is rational. It is instructive to notice how 
 near " pan-logism " thus comes to " pan-phenomenalism." 
 The one theory interprets the process rationally, the other 
 empirically ; but in both alike the process is everything. 
 But Heracleiteanism is no more adequate than Eleaticism. 
 Becoming implies Being, as Being implies Becoming ; either 
 alone is a half-truth. Thought without a Thinker, Eela- 
 
 1 From what follows it will be seen that I am not here contending for 
 the rehabilitation of the Kantian Ding-an-sich. 
 
 2E 
 
434 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. 
 
 tions between nothing, Order without an Orderer, are 
 unintelligible. To hypostatise the Thought, the Eelation, 
 the Order, is the very acme of scholastic Eealism. This 
 impersonal and merely " dynamical " conception of the 
 Absolute Eeality is connected inseparably with an im- 
 personal and dynamical view of man. As " mind " was for 
 Spinoza only " idea corporis " or " idea idere corporis," a 
 collective name for the " ideas " or " states," but represent- 
 ing no " substantial " reality, so for the Hegelian school 
 is the Thinker resolved into his Thought. The subject 
 has no more reality than the object ; both are " aspects " 
 or " modes " of the Absolute which contains them. 
 
 But if, as I have tried to maintain, 1 we cannot resolve 
 the finite subject into its experience, whether intellec- 
 tual or moral, no more can we identify the Absolute with 
 experience, or with " the process of the actual." The 
 very conception of Experience implies a reference to a 
 Subject or Self, permanent amid its ceaseless flux, and 
 never ceasing to distinguish itself, as one and identical, 
 from the changing manifold of that experience. That the 
 ultimate Eeality should be found by transcendental Ideal- 
 ism in Experience itself is one more example of how, 
 in the history of thought, philosophical extremes may 
 meet. 
 
 If, however, Hegelianism is to maintain itself as an 
 idealistic and spiritual interpretation of the universe, it 
 is obvious that it must be by accepting the subject as a 
 more adequate exponent of the ultimate divine Eeality 
 than the object. Hegel himself regarded God as the 
 Absolute Subject, and conceived the grand superiority 
 
 1 Pp. 366 ff. 
 
THE PROBLEM OF GOD. 435 
 
 of his system to Spinozism to lie in the substitution of 
 " Subject " for " Substance." It is indeed the consequence 
 of Hegel's evolutionary view of the universe, that in the 
 later stage, that of human Self-consciousness, the manifes- 
 tation of ultimate Eeality should be more adequate than 
 at the earlier stage of mere Nature. And it is of the 
 essence of Idealism, as distinguished from Spinozism, to 
 perceive that spirit and nature, thought and extension, 
 subject and object, are not co-ordinate, but that the former 
 always " overlaps " the latter. Accordingly we find Green 
 characterising God as the "Eternal Self" or "Self-con- 
 sciousness," and many Hegelians professing Theism or the 
 doctrine of divine Personality. Professor Caird, for ex- 
 ample, holds that on the basis of Absolute Idealism " we 
 can think of God as He must be thought of as the 
 principle of unity in all things, and yet conceive Him 
 as a self-conscious, self-determining Being." 1 
 
 But it is a pretty obvious deduction from Absolute 
 Idealism that if God be Subject, His absoluteness pre- 
 cludes the existence of any other subjects or any relation 
 to them. Accordingly the finite subject is regarded by 
 Green as the " reproduction in time " of the one Eternal 
 Self. Professor Caird also maintains explicitly the entire 
 immanence of God in man as well as in Nature, and the 
 resulting unity of God with man. To deny that identity, 
 he insists, is to rest in an external view of the universe, 
 to stop short of the divine Unity. The immanence of God 
 precludes his transcendence ; his unity with man as well 
 as with nature makes impossible that separateness of being, 
 whether in him or in ourselves, which we are accustomed 
 
 1 ' Evolution of Religion,' ii. 82. 
 
436 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. 
 
 to call Personality. " It is equally impossible for us to 
 recall or to maintain the attitude of mind of the pure 
 monotheists, for whom God was merely one subject 
 among other subjects ; and though lifted high above 
 them, the source of all their life, was yet related to them 
 as an external and independent will. Our idea of God 
 will not let us conceive of Him as external to anything, 
 least of all to the spirits who are made in His image, 
 and who live and move and have their being in Him. 
 We cannot, therefore, avoid thinking of God as a prin- 
 ciple who is within us as He is without us, present in 
 self-consciousness as in consciousness, the presupposition, 
 the life, and the end of all." 1 On the theory of Absolute 
 Idealism, on the other hand, " it becomes possible to think 
 of man as a ' partaker in the divine nature/ and, therefore, 
 as a self-conscious and self-determining spirit, without 
 gifting him with an absolute individuality which would 
 cut him off from all union and communion with his 
 fellow- creatures and with God." 2 
 
 These statements, while they contain most important 
 and much - needed truth, also reveal the nature of the 
 reasoning upon which the central position of Hegelian 
 Idealism rests. That position, it seems to me, derives its 
 chief plausibility from the pressing into the service of 
 philosophic thought of the spatial metaphor which underlies 
 such terms as " externality," " relation," " separation," &c. 
 Things which are external to one another, related to one 
 another, separated from one another in space, are not one 
 and the same, but manifold and different. But the spatial 
 metaphor must not blind us to the fact that, in investigat- 
 
 1 Op. cit., ii. 72. 2 Ibid., ii. 84. 
 
THE PROBLEM OF GOD. 437 
 
 ing the relation of man to God, we are dealing not with 
 spatial but with spiritual existence ; and in the spiritual 
 sphere it does not follow that a real separateness of being, 
 a real relation between man and God, is fatal to the unity 
 of the terms in question. " When we speak of God all 
 idols of space and time must be forgotten, or our best 
 labour is in vain." l The Hegelian unity is too easy ; its 
 synthesis of the elements of reality human and divine 
 is too rapid. Its conception of God is the result of 
 the exclusive intellectualism of its view of the universe. 
 From the standpoint of the intellect, such a synthesis 
 might conceivably be satisfactory. But Will and Feeling 
 are factors of human reality, no less than Intellect ; and 
 from the point of view of Will and Feeling we cannot 
 unify, in the sense of identifying, man with God. For 
 the Hegelian, as for the Spinozist, the process of the 
 universe is one. But that is because the Hegelian view is, 
 no less than the Spinozistic, a purely intellectual view, and 
 its unity is therefore the unity of thought, not the unity of 
 feeling and will. The process of thought might conceiv- 
 ably be one in God and in man ; the process of will and 
 feeling is not one. It is the very nature of Will to 
 separate, to substantiate, if also to relate, its possessors * 
 and, as a moral being, man claims for himself a moral 
 sphere of freedom and independent Self-hood. 
 
 It is this inalienable human quality of freedom, of 
 independent moral initiation, that dictates the true moral 
 relation of man to God. It is not the intellectual burden 
 of finitude, but the moral burden of evil, that sends man 
 beyond himself to God ; and the moral relation of man to 
 
 1 Herder, quoted by Knight, 'Aspects of Theism,' 161. 
 
438 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. 
 
 God is in its essence a personal relation a relation of 
 Will. " Our wills are ours, to make them Thine." If 
 we absolutely unify or identify God and man, the ethical 
 attitude, which is one of relation, not of identity, becomes 
 impossible. In avoiding the evils of the doctrine of the 
 divine transcendence, Hegelianism falls into the no less 
 serious evils of the doctrine of the mere immanence of 
 God. Morality implies, in the last analysis, a relation 
 between man and God, "union and communion of the 
 human will with the divine Will " ; not such a unity and 
 identity of man and God as must mean the dissolution of 
 all relation between them. It is the spiritual difference 
 or separateness of being that gives the union its entire 
 moral and religious significance ; it is the very possibility 
 of saying " I will " that gives its infinite value to man's 
 "Not my will, but Thine, be done." A philosophy which 
 includes the life of man in the one divine process of 
 the universe, and makes his life, like nature's, simply a 
 " reproduction " of the life of God, may perhaps be intel- 
 lectually satisfying, but it cuts away the roots of morality, 
 and of " ethical religion." 
 
 The greatest strain comes upon such a unitary view 
 when it meets the problem of evil. Is evil an element in 
 the life of God ? If so, it must cease to be real evil, and 
 this is precisely Professor Caird's solution. He invokes 
 the sanction of Christianity in favour of such a thoroughly 
 optimistic interpretation of moral evil. The characteristic 
 truth of the Christian religion he takes to be " the omni- 
 potence of good." But, in order to the perfect develop- 
 ment of goodness, evil must be struggled with and over- 
 come. Goodness is, in its very essence, deliverance from 
 
THE PROBLEM OF GOD. 439 
 
 evil; and "with the increasing pressure of the conflict, 
 and the growing consciousness of the evil with which he 
 has to contend, there comes a deepening sense of the 
 necessity for such a conflict with evil, and of all the 
 suffering it brings with it, to the highest triumph of 
 good." 1 Thus, in the supreme conflict of evil with 
 goodness, " even the powers that opposed and persecuted 
 the good were secretly its instruments, and even the 
 malice and hatred of men were no real hindrances, but 
 rather the opportunities required for its manifestation." 2 
 " Nay, even sin itself, as its utmost power is shown only 
 under the Law which produces a distinct consciousness 
 of sin, and so prepares the way for the negation of it and 
 for the reception of a new principle of life even sin 
 itself, from this point of view, is seen to be part of the 
 divine order." 3 "The intensification of sin, due to the 
 consciousness of it awakened by the Law," works out 
 the greater triumph of the good. For while " sin is not 
 sin in the deepest sense till it is conscious, the sin of one 
 who knows the divine law he breaks ; yet just this very 
 consciousness, while it deepens the sin, in another way 
 prepares for its extinction." 4 
 
 This solution of the problem of evil seems again too 
 rapid and easy. I cannot see how, on the unitary theory, 
 evil is a necessary element in the process of the good ; 
 how, in such a universe as Professor Caird's, the evil 
 which is an indubitable fact of moral experience, should 
 occur; how human sin can be a part or stage of the 
 necessary process of the divine life; how this unreason 
 
 1 'Evolution of Religion,' 139. - Ibid., 165. 
 
 3 Ibid., 207. * Ibid., 208. 
 
 -:* 
 
440 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. 
 
 should infect a universe which is rational through and 
 through. The explanation offered may be satisfactory as 
 an explanation of how the knowledge of evil is instru- 
 mental to the life of goodness ; but it is not satisfactory 
 as an explanation of the existence of evil, it does not justify 
 the occurrence of evil as a real fact in the universe. We 
 can see how evil, once there, is utilised and converted into 
 an instrument of goodness ; but why evil should be there 
 at all, we do not see. Even if we grant the necessity of 
 evil as affording an opportunity for the choice of the good, 
 still the existence of evil, that is, the fact that the good 
 is not chosen, is left out of the explanation. And in 
 every case of moral evil we have such a misdirection 
 of the will. To make evil only a necessary element in 
 the life of goodness seems to me to imperil, if not to 
 destroy, the reality of the moral life both on its good and 
 on its evil side. The earnestness of that life, whether 
 in its bitterness or in its joy, finds no adequate interpre- 
 tation in a theory which makes it in all its parts and 
 phases absolutely and simply "necessary." 
 
 The true Absolute must contain, instead of abolishing, 
 relations ; the true Monism must include, instead of ex- 
 cluding, Pluralism. A One which, like Spinoza's " Sub- 
 stance " or the Hegelian Absolute, -does not enable us to 
 think the Many, cannot be the true One, the unity of the 
 manifold. The one Subject which negates all subjects 
 is hardly better than the one Substance which negates 
 all substances. The true unity must be ethical, as 
 well as intellectual ; and an ethical unity implies dis- 
 tinctness of being and activity. To deify man is as illegit- 
 imate as to naturalise him. But morality is the medium 
 
THE PROBLEM OP GOD. 441 
 
 of union, as well as of separation, between man and God. 
 Will unites, as well as separates, its possessors. " Barriers 
 exist only for the world of bodies ; it is the privilege 
 of minds to penetrate each other without confusion with 
 one another. In communion with God we are one with 
 Him, and yet we maintain our personality." x The very 
 surrender of the finite will to the infinite is itself an act 
 of will ; neither morality nor ethical religion is self -less 
 or impersonal. 
 
 12. Hegelianism, we have seen, finds it necessary, in intellect- 
 order to the establishment of an intelligible theory of the Moraiism : 
 universe, to conceive God in terms of the subject rather n 
 than in terms of the object ; it is, to this extent, anthro- 
 pomorphic. But if we are to find the key to the inter- 
 pretation of the Absolute in the subject rather than in 
 the object, with what right do we exclude the ethical 
 and emotional elements of the subject's life, and retain 
 only the intellectual ? Intellectualism, Gnosticism, or 
 pure Eationalism must always prove itself an inadequate 
 exposition of a universe which includes the human sub- 
 ject, and must continue to call forth Moraiism or the 
 philosophy of Will and Emotion as its needed comple- 
 ment. For while, as- an intellectual being, man might 
 resolve himself into unity with God, and regard himself 
 as a mere mode or aspect of the one Subject, a moral 
 being must " round itself to a separate whole." The reality 
 of the moral life implies man's independence of God as 
 well as of Nature, and forces upon him, to that extent, a 
 pluralistic rather than a monistic view of the universe. 
 
 1 Kicardou, ' De 1'Iddal,' 143. 
 
442 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. 
 
 And if a moral theology is no less legitimate than an 
 intellectual theology, it follows that we may interpret 
 God not merely as Thought, but as Will. It was with 
 a true insight that Aristotle and the Schoolmen thought 
 of God as "pure activity." Im Anfang war die That 
 is as true as Im Anfang war das Wort. But we must no 
 more separate Will from Intelligence than Intelligence 
 from Will. Will, separated from Intelligence, would not 
 be Will. What Schopenhauer calls " Will " is only blind 
 brute Force ; its activity is necessarily disastrous, and 
 what it does has to be undone when Intelligence is born. 
 But Aristotle's ultimate Reality is the unity of intelligence 
 and will ; the divine life is for him identical in its essence 
 with the ideal life of man, rational activity. Perfection 
 of will implies perfection of intelligence, and perfection 
 of intelligence and will implies also emotional perfection. 
 In us, it is true, " feeling, thought, and volition have all 
 defects which suggest something higher." l But the 
 " something higher " which these defects suggest is some- 
 thing higher in the same kind, the perfection of these 
 elements, their harmonious unity. To think of God as 
 perfect Personality, to conceive the divine Life as the 
 harmonious activity of perfect Will informed by perfect 
 Intelligence and manifested in the Feeling of this har- 
 mony, is to conceive God as like ourselves, but with our 
 human limitations removed, and to conceive our relation 
 to God as a moral and emotional, and not merely as an 
 intellectual relation. 
 
 If, therefore, we are to maintain a spiritual, and more 
 particularly an ethical, view of the universe, we must be 
 
 1 F. H. Bradley, 'Appearance and Reality,' 182. 
 
THE PROBLEM OF GOD. 443 
 
 in earnest with the conception of Personality. Hegelian- 
 ism is altogether too vague in its utterances here. Accord- 
 ing to the latest exposition of that philosophy, that of Mr 
 Bradley, God is to be conceived as " super-personal" rather 
 than as " impersonal." " It is better to affirm personality 
 than to call the Absolute impersonal. But neither mis- 
 take shall be necessary. The Absolute stands above, and 
 not below, its internal distinctions. It does not reject 
 them, but it includes them as elements in its fulness. 
 To speak in concrete language, it is not the indifference 
 but the concrete identity of all extremes. But it is better 
 in this connection to call it super-personal." 1 Yet Mr 
 Bradley closes his book with the statement that, accord- 
 ing to " the essential message of Hegel, outside of spirit 
 there is not, and there cannot be, any reality, and the 
 more anything is spiritual, so much the more is it verit- 
 ably real." 2 But is not spirit essentially personal, and 
 must we not think of the Infinite Spirit rather as complete 
 Personality than as super-personal ? 
 
 It is objected that to conceive God as a Person is to 
 contradict His infinity. " The Deity which they want is 
 of course finite, a person much like themselves, with 
 thoughts and feelings limited and mutable in the process 
 of time. ... Of course for us to ask seriously if the 
 Absolute can be personal in such a way would be quite 
 absurd." 3 " For me a person is finite or is meaningless." 4 
 " Once give up your finite and mutable person, and you 
 have parted with everything which, for you, makes per- 
 sonality important. . . . For me it is sufficient to know, 
 
 1 'Appearance and Reality,' 533. 2 Ibid., f>52. 
 
 3 Op. cit., 532. 4 Loc. cit. 
 
444 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. 
 
 on one side, that the Absolute is not a finite person. 
 Whether, on the other side, personality in some eviscer- 
 ated remnant of sense can be applied to it, is a ques- 
 tion intellectually unimportant and practically trifling." x 
 Such statements as these and they are typical of the 
 criticism constantly made upon ethical Theism seem to 
 me to rest upon the ambiguity of the term Personality. 
 When we think of Personality as essentially finite, we 
 are confounding Personality with Individuality. The 
 individual is essentially finite, the person is essentially 
 infinite. So far is Personality from contradicting the In- 
 finite, that, as Lotze says, 2 " only the Infinite is completely 
 personal." If we think of God as being all that we ought 
 to be, as the Eeality of the moral Ideal, must we not say 
 that, as we gradually constitute our Personality, we are 
 tracing the divine image in ourselves, and learning more 
 fully the very nature of God ? " The Absolute is not a 
 finite person ; " but to say that personality is necessarily 
 " finite," " with thoughts and feelings limited and mutable 
 in the process of time," is to beg the whole question at 
 issue. The question just is whether the "infinite" and 
 the " personal " are, or are not, contradictory conceptions. 
 The essentially unethical character of an impersonal or 
 super-personal universe is finely suggested by Professor 
 Eoyce in a little fable of his own invention : " And so at 
 worst we are like a child who has come to the palace of 
 the king on the day of his wedding, bearing roses as a 
 gift to grace the feast. For the child, waiting innocently 
 to see whether the king will not appear and praise the 
 
 1 'Appearance and Reality,' 533. 
 
 2 ' Philosophy of Religion,' ch. iv. 41. 
 
THE PROBLEM OF GOD. 445 
 
 welcome flowers, grows at last weary with watching all 
 day and with listening to harsh words outside the palace 
 gate amid the jostling crowd. And so in the evening it 
 falls asleep beneath the great dark walls, unseen and for- 
 gotten ; and the withering roses by and by fall from its 
 lap, and are scattered by the wind into the dusty highway, 
 there to be trodden under foot and destroyed. Yet all 
 that happens only because there are infinitely fairer treas- 
 ures within the palace than the ignorant child could 
 bring. The king knows of this yes, and of ten thousand 
 other proffered gifts of loyal subjects. But he needs them 
 not. Eather are all things from eternity his own." l 
 
 Nay, but to the very palace of the King every child of 
 man can bring a gift and treasure which He will not de- 
 spise the priceless gift of a free and loving service, the 
 treasure, more precious than all besides, of a will touched 
 to goodness. We cannot believe that man's good and evil 
 are indifferent to God, that evil is only " an element, and 
 a necessary element, in the total goodness of the Universal 
 Will," that in God our " separateness is destroyed," and 
 with our separateness our " sin," that our goodness fol- 
 lows, like our sin, from " the necessity of the divine 
 nature." In our good, as in our evil, we feel that our 
 life is our own, personal, separate from God as it is 
 separate from Nature, our own to give to Him who gave 
 it to us, or to withhold even from Him. 
 
 Instead of surrendering the idea of Personality, we must 
 cherish it, therefore, as the only key to the moral and 
 religious life. It is the hard-won result of long experi- 
 ence and deep reflection. The depth and spirituality of 
 
 1 ' Religious Aspect of Philosophy.' 
 
446 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. 
 
 the conception of God have grown with the growth of the 
 idea of human personality. It is the presence and opera- 
 tion of this idea that distinguishes Christianity from other 
 religions, that makes Hebraism a religion, while the lack 
 of it makes Hellenism hardly more than a mythology. 
 As man has learned to know himself, he has advanced in 
 the knowledge of God. Our age is the age of science, its 
 prevailing spirit is what we may call the " intellectualism " 
 of the scientific mind. Its ambition is to understand, and 
 to understand Nature. As in the earliest age of Greek 
 philosophy, the eye of thought is directed outward. The 
 task is a great one ; no wonder that the energies of the 
 time are wellnigh exhausted by it. But, sooner or later, 
 the view must be turned again inwards, and when it is, 
 the eternal spiritual realities will be found there still, and 
 the lessons which were not written upon the face of Na- 
 ture will be found graven on the " living tablets " of the 
 human heart. Man is not all intellect; and if intellect 
 now thrives at the expense of the rest of his nature, as 
 in the Middle Ages intellect was itself in large measure 
 starved and sacrificed that morality and religion might 
 develop, it only means that the " education of the human 
 race " is conducted, like the education of the individual, 
 bit by bit, step by step. But the education cannot stop 
 until, in insight as in life, humanity has attained the 
 measure of its divine perfection. 
 
447 
 
 CHAPTEE III. 
 
 THE PROBLEM OF IMMORTALITY. 
 
 1. THE third postulate of morality, according to Kant, is The aiter- 
 the immortality of the moral being. If we have found thought, 
 it impossible to demonstrate the Freedom of the Will and 
 the existence of God, as the term demonstration is used 
 in the exact sciences, we need not hope to succeed in 
 demonstrating Immortality. All that we need attempt 
 is to understand the bearing of our view of man's nature 
 and life upon the question of his destiny. For the 
 problem of the ultimate issues of the moral life is as 
 inevitable as the problems of its origin and its relations 
 to the universal Eeality, nor can the first question be 
 separated from the other two. And if, in a sense, moral- 
 ity may be said to depend upon immortality, in another 
 sense and, in Aristotle's phrase, " for us " immortality 
 must be said to depend upon morality. Our answer to 
 the question, What is the destiny of man ? must depend 
 upon our answer to the previous questions, What is 
 man ? and What is his proper life as man ? Our answer 
 to the question whether the moral life points to immor- 
 tality as the destiny of the moral being, depends upon our 
 
448 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. 
 
 interpretation of morality. And ultimately destiny, like 
 life, must depend upon the nature of the being whose 
 life and destiny we are considering. Hence it is that we 
 do not generally find the problem of immortality dis- 
 cussed with anything like the same fulness or explicit- 
 ness as the other problems we have been considering. 
 The answer to this question is contained in the answers 
 to the others; the position taken here is a corollary or 
 deduction from the positions already taken on the nature 
 of the moral being and the consequent nature of the 
 Moral Ideal. Two main lines divide philosophical opin- 
 ion. The affirmation or denial of immortality follows in 
 the first place from the acceptance, respectively, of an 
 idealistic and transcendental, or of a naturalistic and em- 
 pirical, interpretation of morality. If man is a merely 
 natural being, nature's destiny must be his also; if the 
 Ideal of his life does not transcend his present experience, 
 the present life must be his all-in-all. But, in the second 
 place, the affirmation or denial of immortality follows 
 from the acceptance or the rejection of personality as the 
 key to the interpretation of man's nature and life. Pan- 
 theism has not, any more than Naturalism, a place for 
 personal immortality, because it has no place for person- 
 ality. In Spinozism and Hegelianism , as truly as in Sen- 
 sationalism, there is no survival of the Self because there 
 is no Self to survive. Let us glance in turn at these 
 alternatives of thought : our own position has been suffi- 
 ciently foreshadowed in the preceding discussion. 
 
 immortal- 2. The implication of Immortality in a transcendental 
 imputation view of the moral life is most explicitly stated by Kant. 
 
THE PROBLEM OF IMMORTALITY. 449 
 
 The " Thou shalt " of moral law implies " Thou canst," and of Morai- 
 an infinite " Thou shalt " implies an infinite ability to ful- 1 y ' 
 fil it. But an infinite Moral Ideal cannot be realised in 
 finite time ; it follows that man, as the subject of such 
 an Ideal, must have infinite time for the task of its realis- 
 ation. A man is immortal till his work is done, and the 
 work of man as a moral being is never done. 1 It is true 
 that Kant states this argument in the negative form re- 
 quired by his ethical theory. The Moral Ideal is for him 
 a life of pure reason in which the surd of sensibility has 
 been eliminated, and it is the eternal presence of this 
 fatal surd which constitutes the Kantian argument for 
 Immortality. The moral task is not accomplished till this 
 surd has disappeared, but it never disappears from the 
 life of man, mixed as his nature is of reason and sensi- 
 bility ; therefore the task must always remain, and, with 
 the task, the possibility of its accomplishment. The 
 essence of the argument, however, is independent of this 
 particular view of the ethical life, and Kant's own deeper 
 argument for Immortality we might consistently accept. 
 Kant's real deduction of Immortality is from the tran- 
 scendental source and significance of the Moral Ideal. 
 Faithfulness to the true Self means that we live as if 
 we were immortal ; in the moral life we constitute our- 
 selves heirs of immortality by living the life of immortal 
 or eternal beings. Man's true life is not, like the ani- 
 mal's, a life in time ; its law issues from a world beyond 
 " our bourne of Time and Place," from a sphere " where 
 time and space are not." In every moral act, therefore, 
 man transcends the limits of the present life, and becomes 
 
 1 Cf. Caird, ' Critical Philosophy of Kant,' Bk. ii. ch. 5. 
 2F 
 
450 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. 
 
 already a citizen of an eternal world. He has not to 
 wait for his Immortality ; it broods over him even in the 
 present, it is the very atmosphere of his life as a moral 
 being. This is an argument as old as Plato and Aristotle ; 
 it is the real argument for Immortality. Man is, as such, 
 an " eternal being " ; he not only can, but must transcend 
 time in every act of his moral life. The law of his life 
 comes from that higher sphere, to which, in his essential 
 being, he belongs. Is he called to an illusory task to 
 live as an immortal while in reality he is only mortal ; 
 to conduct himself as a citizen of eternity while in reality 
 he is only a denizen of time ? The strenuous and ideal- 
 istic moral temper is rooted in the conviction of the 
 eternal meaning of this life in time, and is willing to 
 stake everything on this great Perad venture. Nay, it is 
 not to it a Peradventure, but a silent certainty, under 
 whose constraining power considerations of time are scorned 
 as mere irrelevancies. Such a life Browning has pictured 
 in "The Grammarian's Funeral." He has chosen the 
 scholar's devotion to his ideal, but that is only a type 
 of what the good life always is a life " not for the day, 
 but for the day to come," a life that knows it has the 
 leisure of eternity for the execution of its eternal tasks. 1 
 
 1 " Others mistrust and say, ' But time escapes ! 
 
 Live now or never ! ' 
 He said, ' What's time? Leave Now for dogs and apes, 
 
 Man has Forever ! ' 
 Was it not great? did not he throw on God 
 
 (He loves the burthen !> 
 God's task to make the heavenly period 
 
 Perfect the earthen?" 
 
 It is noteworthy that the two great poets of our time Tennyson and 
 Browning have been almost equally fascinated by this problem, and have 
 dealt with it so philosophically that quotations might be multiplied almost 
 indefinitely from their poems, especially those of Browning. 
 
THE PROBLEM OF IMMORTALITY. 451 
 
 There is surely a great ethical truth, if only one side 
 of the truth, in the Platonic and Mystic, the Mediaeval 
 and the Kantian, view of Time as the antechamber to 
 Eternity, of this life as a pilgrimage, a place of tabernac- 
 ling, an inn where we abide for a night, to go farther on 
 the morrow nay, even as the prison-house of the eternal 
 spirit, from which it must take its flight to its home in 
 the unseen and eternal world whence it has come and 
 where its real interests and concerns are. Everything 
 perishes with the using everything but man, the spec- 
 tator of the universal change and passing away, who 
 feels amid it all that he is living a life which has no 
 essential relation to change or death, a life which these 
 things do not touch. For is he not building in the 
 eternal world of his own spirit a " house not made with 
 hands" of virtuous character, which no storms of time 
 can reach or move from its foundation ? 
 
 " Sweet spring, full of sweet days and roses, 
 A box whose sweets compacted lie, 
 My music shows ye have your closes, 
 
 And all must die. 
 Only a sweet and virtuous soul 
 Like seasoned timber never gives ; 
 But though the whole world turn to coal, 
 
 Then chiefly lives." 
 
 The refusal of man to accept Time as the measure of 
 his life's possibility manifests itself in the essentially 
 prophetic nature of the moral consciousness. This is the 
 meaning of progress, the distinctive attribute of human 
 life. The present life, man feels to the end, is a probation, 
 a school where his spirit is learning lessons which shall 
 
452 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. 
 
 serve it after it has passed far beyond the limits of the 
 school. " No end of learning," and no time here to put 
 the lessons into execution. Can it be that just when we 
 have learned our lesson best, when we have best mastered 
 the " proper craft " of living, the tool is dashed from our 
 hands, the activity for which we have been preparing is 
 shut against us ; that just when, through the illumination 
 of life's experience, the true meaning of life becomes most 
 clearly visible, that insight shall prove futile ? 
 
 " We spend our lives in learning pilotage, 
 And grow good steersmen when the vessel's crank ! " 
 
 Shall we not be promoted to a nobler craft when at last 
 we have mastered something of the currents of "that 
 immortal sea " ? There is no fruition and fulfilment, no 
 perfect realisation, in this life, of this life's Purpose. Life 
 is a preparation, a discipline, an education of the moral 
 being. Is all this elaborate and painful work of moral 
 education to be undone ? Is death the consummation of 
 our life, its grand catastrophe and cttnoument ? Were 
 not this Failure absolute and supreme, Failure at the heart 
 of things ? as if the universe could not support the moral 
 life to which it had given birth, as if here it failed and 
 could not realise its own end ? Against such a contradic- 
 tion between man's being and his destiny, between the 
 magnitude of his task and the narrow limits set to its 
 execution, our whole moral nature rises in protest. If we 
 regard man as a merely natural being, part and product 
 of Nature, we can well believe that for him too death is 
 the end ; but if we regard him as for ever Nature's 
 superior, as made in the divine likeness and " but a little 
 
THE PROBLEM OF IMMORTALITY. 453 
 
 lower than God," we cannot think of him as sharing 
 Nature's destiny. "Poor man, God made, and all for 
 that!" Man's very greatness, his capacity for thought 
 and action, and for ideals that always put his attainments 
 to the blush, were then the grimmest of all ironies, con- 
 trived to mock him into despair. " "What a piece of work 
 is a man ! How noble in reason ! how infinite in faculties ! 
 in form and moving, how express and admirable ! in 
 action, how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a 
 God ! the beauty of the world ! the paragon of animals ! 
 And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust ? " 1 The 
 shadow of that contradiction would lie across man's life 
 in the present, and darken all its joy; the knowledge 
 of that ultimate Failure would make all success unreal. 
 Well might we wish that we had never heard of " those 
 ineffable things which, if they may not make man's happi- 
 ness, must make man's woe," 2 had never been " summoned 
 out of nothingness into illusion, and evolved but to aspire 
 and to decay ! " 3 
 
 The question of Immortality is the question of the 
 reality or illusoriness of the moral life. It is only 
 another aspect of the question discussed in last chapter 
 viz., whether " morality is the nature of things," whether 
 
 1 Hamlet, act ii. sc. 2. 
 
 2 Myers, ' Science and a Future Life,' 70. 
 
 3 Ibid., 75. Cf. Thomas Davidson, "Ethics of an Eternal Being" 
 ('International Journal of Ethics,' April 1893): "Sense, as such, has a very 
 limited range, and hence its correlate, instinct, can be satisfied with very 
 finite things. Intellect, on the contrary, from its very nature, knows no 
 limits ; and hence its correlate, will, can be satisfied with nothing less 
 than the infinite. If that infinite were unattainable, man's gifts of intelli- 
 gence and will would be the cruellest of mockeries, and human life the 
 saddest of tragedies." 
 
454 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. 
 
 the Moral Ideal has its correlate in universal Beality. 
 Here, once more, the good man gives hostages to fortune, 
 and casts 011 the universe the burden of completing his 
 efforts after an End too great to be attainable in the 
 present. He trusts that what he has done shall not be 
 undone by the Universal Power, since he believes it to be 
 " a Power that makes for righteousness." Were it not so, 
 life would lose its meaning, and, with the discovery of 
 the hollowness of its make-believe, all earnestness of 
 moral purpose would be exchanged, in an earnest nature, 
 for cynicism and despair. 
 
 Personal 3. But it is denied that personal immortality is the 
 taiity. necessary completion of the moral life. Our attitude to 
 this question must depend upon our attitude to the pre- 
 vious question of the Moral Ideal. The ideal life, we have 
 found, can be determined only by a consideration of the 
 nature of the being whose life we are considering. Des- 
 tiny and life, therefore, ultimately depend on nature. 
 And the view which we have been led to adopt is that 
 man is, in his deepest nature, a Person, a Self whose total 
 being, rational and sentient, is expressed in the activity 
 of will. The Moral Ideal, therefore, we have inferred, is 
 an ideal of character; the typical and characteristic 
 activity of man is Self-realisation, " realisation of self by 
 self." Man's " proper business " is in the inner world of 
 his own being, not in the outer world of material produc- 
 tion. Producer and product are here one ; the moral 
 activity is an end-in-itself, or, if it has a further end, it 
 is only the acquisition of a higher capacity for such 
 activity. What is really being accomplished in the moral 
 
THE PROBLEM OF IMMORTALITY. 455 
 
 life is, therefore, always an invisible and spiritual result ; 
 whatever the man seems to be doing or making, he is 
 really always making himself, actualising the potentiality 
 of his own nature. The Moral Ideal is an ideal of char- 
 acter, and this personal ideal implies a personal destiny. 
 
 The problem of Immortality is thus the old Aristotelian 
 problem of the Opportunity of the moral life. We must 
 repeat, though in a somewhat different sense, Aristotle's 
 demand for " length of days " as the condition of a com- 
 plete moral life. No finite increase of time would suffice 
 for the accomplishment of an infinite task. And the 
 moral task is, we have concluded, an infinite one; the 
 capacity of the Self which we are called upon to realise 
 is an infinite capacity. The reality of the moral life 
 implies the possibility of attaining its ideal ; a potenti- 
 ality that cannot be actualised is a contradiction in terms. 
 But the opportunity is not given in this life, however well 
 and wisely this life is used, for the full activity of all man's 
 powers, intellectual, aesthetic, or volitional. At the end 
 of the best and fullest life, must we not " contrast the 
 petty Done, the Undone vast " ? And even if, in the eye 
 of the world, the accomplishment seems great and the 
 life complete, shall not the worker himself inscribe upon 
 it " Unfinished " ? He knows, if others know not, the 
 unrealised potentiality that is in him, the character yet 
 unexpressed and waiting for its more perfect expression, 
 the capacity yet unfulfilled and waiting for its fulfilment. 
 If we add to this consideration of the universal human 
 lack of moral opportunity the consideration of the in- 
 equality of opportunity in the present, and the sacrifice 
 which many make ofjthe = .iprtunity they have that 
 
 0? TH* 
 
 nrxTiRsxfr 
 
456 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. 
 
 they may enlarge the opportunity of others, above all, 
 if we think that, without a Future Life, not only is the 
 opportunity of further moral progress suddenly and for 
 ever foreclosed, but the work already so laboriously done 
 is all undone, the fruits of moral experience, so care- 
 fully gathered and garnered, are all wasted, the character 
 so hardly acquired is all dissolved, and, in a moment, is as 
 though it had never been, are we not compelled, in the 
 interests of clear and coherent thought about the meaning 
 of our life, to postulate the Immortality of our moral 
 being ? Has not the moral individual, as such, a claim 
 upon the universe ? Is not this the axiom of his life ? 
 Would not annihilation mean moral contradiction ? 
 
 But, it is said, the completion of the work of the 
 individual is in the larger life of the race ; the true 
 immortality is not personal but "corporate." The race 
 shall live on, though the individual passes away; and 
 he ought to be content to work for the race rather 
 than for himself. Other battles will be fought, and other 
 victories won. He has played his part, and it is time for 
 him to make his exit ; why should he linger on the stage ? 
 The individual falls, like a withered leaf, from the tree of 
 Life ; but the tree itself will feel the renewing breath of 
 spring. It is through the constant death of the individual 
 that to the race there comes a continual resurrection. 
 As for the individual, he ought to rest with satisfaction 
 in the anticipation of that moral influence which he 
 bequeaths to his successors, and find in that influence 
 his real immortality. This changed view of immortality, 
 it is insisted, " lends life a new meaning. The good we 
 strive for lives no longer in a world of dreams on the 
 
THE PROBLEM OF IMMORTALITY. 457 
 
 other side of the grave ; it is brought down to earth and 
 waits to be realised by human hands, through human 
 labour. We are called on to forsake the finer egoism 
 that centred all its care on self-salvation, for a love of 
 our own kind that shall triumph over death, and leave 
 its impress on the joy of generations to coine." 1 
 
 In answer to this, I would remark (1) that such an 
 argument is strictly irrelevant to the question at issue. 
 Can a life which, throughout its course, is personal, end by 
 becoming impersonal or by passing over to other persons ? 
 The question is whether the individual has, in these brief 
 earthly years, lived his life, and realised his total Good. 
 Moral progress is progress in character, and character 
 cannot be transferred ; if at death the Self ceases to exist, 
 the task of its life is ended and undone. (2) The Good 
 of others is, like my own, a personal and individual Good, 
 and if there is no permanent Good for me neither is there 
 for them. Thus the Good of others to which we had 
 wedded our souls is, like our own, destined to disintegra- 
 tion. Has the transition for the individual to the race ac- 
 complished what it promised viz., the substitution of an 
 abiding Good for the perishing Good of the individual life ? 
 The answer is, Yes ; the permanence of the Good of Hu- 
 manity is founded in the unity and solidarity of the race. 
 We are not to work even for other individuals (at least not 
 for any particular individual or group of individuals), but 
 for the Eace. This forces us to ask (3) whether the race 
 itself is permanent ? The writer just quoted from raises 
 this question, and answers : " The question as to the final 
 destruction of the human race, whether by sudden catas- 
 
 1 C. M. Williams, ' A Review of Evolutional Ethics,' 580. 
 
458 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. 
 
 trophe or slow decay, can little affect happiness, at pres- 
 ent, or for very many ages to come. . . . The pessimist is 
 fond of making much of the final end of our planet ; but 
 the healthy and successful will be happy in spite of 
 future ages, and the extent and degree of happiness will 
 continue to increase for such an immense period of time 
 that there is no reason for considering the destruction of 
 our race as exerting any important influence on ethical 
 theory." l But we must face this future, and think our 
 way through it, to the darkness and nothingness beyond. 
 Would not that Beyond turn all the joy of the present to 
 dust and ashes in our grasp ? Or must we cease to think, 
 as the writer seems to intimate that the healthy and 
 successful will do. That we cannot, without being false to 
 our highest nature. Is this, then, the " Future of the 
 Species " for which we are to work ? All this progress, 
 progress towards Nothing ! Surely, if life is worth living, 
 there must be something that does not suffer shock and 
 change. But nowhere can that something be found save 
 in the spiritual sphere ; only character is permanent. 
 
 The Absolute Idealist will still refuse to entertain the 
 plea for individual immortality, on the ground that eter- 
 nity belongs to Thought, not to the individual thinker, 
 since, truly understood, the finite Self is not a Self at all, 
 but must be resolved either into the universal Thinker or 
 into universal Thought. This raises anew the questions 
 which we have discussed in more than one connection 
 already : (1) whether we can conceive of Thought without 
 a Thinker ; (2) whether, admitting the necessity of a Sub- 
 ject of thought, we must not admit the reality of the 
 
 1 Loc. cit. 
 
THE PROBLEM OF IMMORTALITY. 459 
 
 finite subject; and (3) whether, in the moral life, if not in 
 the intellectual, we must not assert the relative indepen- 
 dence of the finite Self, the active if not the intellectual 
 independence of man. Our answers to these questions 
 about the ultimate meaning of our life in the present must 
 determine our answer to the question about our future 
 destiny. If a regard for moral reality forbids us to re- 
 solve the present life of man into the life of God, such a 
 resolution in the future must be no less illegitimate. 
 
 The Idealistic objection to the immortality of the indi- 
 vidual seems to me to rest upon two misunderstandings : 
 (1) the misinterpretation of individuality and of finitude 
 in general, which finds expression in the principle Omnis 
 determinatio negatio est. Spinoza, subject as he is in large 
 measure to this principle, suggests the deeper truth viz., 
 that the finite, instead of merely negating, realises the 
 Infinite, that the perseverare in esse suo of the finite is also 
 the "perseverance" of the Infinite in its proper being. 
 And we have found that, in the moral life as we know it, 
 the finite principle of individuality does not contradict 
 the infinite principle of personality. Why, in the future 
 more than in the present, should the finite contradict the 
 Infinite ? (2) The objection rests upon a confusion of 
 moral with intellectual unity and identity. The ethical 
 unity, which consists in identity of will, implies, we have 
 seen, a real independence of will ; apart from such inde- 
 pendence, there could be no surrender of the finite will to 
 the Infinite. The maintenance of the ethical relation be- 
 tween God and man implies, therefore, the persistence of 
 the human will or Self-hood in the future as in the pres- 
 ent. The dissolution of this would mean the dissolution 
 
460 METAPHYSICAL IMPLICATIONS. 
 
 of the ethical life, and the grounds on which we refuse to 
 accept this have already been sufficiently indicated. 
 
 Our Origin and our Destiny are one ; it is because we 
 come from God that we must go to him, and can only rest 
 in fellowship with him who is the Father of our spirits. 
 That fellowship the fellowship of will with Will in the 
 present is our best pledge of its continuance in the future. 
 The fellowship with the Eternal cannot but be eternal, 
 and such fellowship is of the very essence of the moral 
 life. God is the Home of his children's spirits, and he 
 would not be God if he banished any from his presence, 
 nor would man be man if he could reconcile himself to 
 the thought of such an exile. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 PRINTED BY 'rt'lLLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SOXS. 
 
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