_ i^"-;'"-^' 

 
 UNIVERSITY .. ...LIFOPNI; 
 
 AT 
 
 LOS AKGKlPs 
 LlbRARY
 
 SOME SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited 
 
 LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA • MADRAS 
 MELBOURNE 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 MEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO 
 DALLAS • SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 
 
 TORONTO
 
 SOME SUGGESTIONS 
 IN ETHICS 
 
 BY 
 
 BERNARD BOSANQUET 
 
 D.C.L., LL.D. 
 
 FELLOW OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED 
 
 ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 
 
 1919 
 
 "' ' ) 9 2 '^ 
 
 '- J <J i^ k7 ij
 
 COPYRIGHT 
 
 First Edition 1918 
 Reprinted with additional Chapter; 19 19
 
 3;X HRL ^ 
 
 1 oas 
 
 <^ PREFACE 
 
 
 The aim of the following pages is to be 
 
 ^ of service to ordinarily thoughtful persons 
 
 ^ who are interested in reflecting upon 
 
 morality. I do not believe in casuistry 
 
 as a guide to conduct ; but I hope that 
 
 suggestions drawn from moral philosophy 
 
 may here and there throw light upon per- 
 
 V plexities due to unchallenged assumptions 
 
 which are not true. Must a man be selfish, 
 
 for instance, because he does not " live 
 
 for others " ? Can morality be hostile to 
 
 i beauty, or vice versa ? Is it true that 
 
 <5 retributive punishment is a mere survival 
 
 A of vindictiveness ? If evil is real, does 
 
 that make it certain that the universe 
 
 cannot be perfect ? Have we any right 
 
 to be stupid ? On difficulties of this kind
 
 vi SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS 
 
 I thought that some suggestions might be 
 helpful. And if I was wrong, there is no 
 great harm done. 
 
 A chapter on Conscientious Objections 
 has been added in the second impression. 
 
 BERNARD BOSANQUET. 
 
 OxsHOTT, May 1919.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Living for Others ...... i 
 
 CHAPTER n 
 
 The Social Good . . . . . . 25 
 
 CHAPTER m 
 
 Value and Goodness ...... 46 
 
 CHAPTER IV " 
 Unvisited Tombs ...... 66 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 " On Doubting the Realitv of Evil " . .88 
 
 vii
 
 viii SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 PAGE 
 
 "How IS ONE TO KNOW WHAT TO DO ? " . . I26 
 
 CHAPTER VH 
 
 Something worth knowing? . . . .161 
 
 CHAPTER Vm 
 
 On the growing Repugnance to Punishment . 181 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 "We are not hard enough on Stupidity" . 213 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 Conscientious Objections ..... 246 
 
 INDEX 262
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 LIVING FOR OTHERS 
 
 When we say of any one that he or she — 
 it is more often said of a woman — " lives 
 wholly for others," we mean it to be un- 
 qualified praise. We mean to indicate the 
 height of unselfishness, to suggest a char- 
 acter wholly devoted to service. 
 
 We find no practical difficulty in inter- 
 preting the phrase, although, taken quite 
 literally, it seems indefinite. We insert 
 into the words " for others " the assump- 
 tion of an interest or purpose in life which 
 is such as we hold desirable. 
 
 And yet the phrase " for others " .raises 
 questions which it does not answer. Of 
 the golden rule itself it has been said, 
 *' what we would that men should do to 
 
 1 B
 
 2 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 us " is not a safe guide to what we ought 
 to do for them. Do we wish the judge to 
 pronounce a just sentence when it would 
 condemn us ? Do we wish our neighbour 
 sternly to refuse connivance at our in- 
 directnesses and misdoings ? And are we 
 entitled ourselves to fail in justice and 
 uprightness in so far as we do not actually 
 wish our neighbours to exhibit these 
 qualities towards us ? 
 
 We see that even the golden rule gives 
 us no trustworthy criterion of our be- 
 haviour to others, and that some more 
 definite standard is necessary. And in 
 fact, as we may learn from the English 
 Church catechism, we do construe our duty 
 towards our neighbour by help of a number 
 of positive interests and obligations which 
 interpret for us that traditional rule. 
 
 Common sense will carry our answer a 
 little further. In two cases out of three, or, 
 if we prefer to say so, nine out of ten, we 
 have no mistrust of the character implied 
 in the description " lives for others." But 
 here and there we shall find ourselves
 
 I LIVING FOR OTHERS 3 
 
 asking, " Lives for others ? But what on 
 earth has he to offer to others ? Does he 
 know what to do for them in the special 
 troubles of their lives ? Does he study 
 or understand their interests or welfare ? 
 Does he even sincerely and unselfishly care 
 for them ? Perhaps he takes no money 
 from them ; but has he a hundredth part 
 of the value for them that a hard-working 
 doctor or a gifted inventor has ? " It is 
 a formidable question, which all who 
 aim, say, at social service should put to 
 themselves, " What have I to offer to 
 others ? " 
 
 This makes clear, what common sense 
 and the facts of all good service confirm, 
 that " living for others " is a great positive 
 responsibility. For it means, and must 
 mean, promoting for or in others, definite 
 interests or purposes, in a word, values. 
 And in this work as in any other it is 
 possible to fail by misfortune or by fault. 
 The would-be servant of others may have 
 no real gift that way ; or his would-be 
 service may be the mere trifling and self-
 
 4 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 importance of a busybody, the polar 
 opposite of strenuous devoted work at any 
 positive duty or problem. 
 
 So far we are clear that living for others 
 must involve some definite and positive 
 value which we strive to maintain or to 
 create. 
 
 But it is natural to return upon the 
 problem, and to say, " But are not un- 
 selfishness and self-sacrifice good in them- 
 selves, and are not they the same thing as 
 living for others ? " We have seen enough 
 already to throw doubt on this being 
 always the case, and we must look 
 closer. 
 
 The fact is, that in everything we do 
 we give up something, and attain some- 
 thing. In every act, therefore, there is 
 really a double character present. In very 
 many cases one side of it or the other may 
 not be noticeable, but both are always 
 there. Whenever you do anything, you 
 must abandon your status quo ante, and 
 you must produce some positive result, or 
 some positive change intended to lead up
 
 1 LIVING FOR OTHERS 5 
 
 to a result.^ You may think that a certain 
 act is wholly gain and no loss ; but it is 
 obvious on consideration that in acting you 
 have moved out of a status quo which as 
 such is gone for ever, and so have given 
 up something, though you may hold your 
 loss a gain. Moreover, if you seem in 
 acting merely to have lost and to have 
 gained nothing, that is your estimate of the 
 result. But none the less it is plain that 
 you have gone on to and acquired some- 
 thing new as well as moved away from 
 something old. Always both sides must 
 be there, positive and negative. 
 
 If a man makes the uttermost sacrifice — 
 we may take as typical that of life, for it 
 involves the entire surrender of our familiar 
 existence — there is, nevertheless, a positive 
 value for the sake of which he has made it, 
 the promotion of something which at the 
 
 ^ It is no exception, if your " action " consists in carrying 
 out a resolve to stand fast or endure, though here no external 
 change takes place. In this case you count your action as 
 a resistance to what would naturally or most easily have 
 happened, and this latter, the line of least resistance, you 
 reckon morally as the status quo, which your action departs 
 from.
 
 6 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 moment he held worth the sacrifice. This 
 value is affirmed, at least in will, and so 
 while giving up even his whole existence, 
 the man asserts himself in something which 
 does not die with him. Or take such a 
 case as this, which happens from time to 
 time. A scholar, growing old, surrenders 
 the materials and the goodwill, so to speak, 
 of his lifework to a younger man, thinking 
 that the work will so be sure of getting 
 done, and perhaps better done. Here it 
 is even uncertain how the elements of self- 
 assertion and self-sacrifice should be ap- 
 praised. Was it the scholar's main purpose 
 that the work should be well done, or that 
 he in particular should do it ? In the first 
 case the sacrifice seems lighter, just because 
 from the beginning the aim was less self- 
 centred. In the second case the sacrifice 
 was harder, just because the purpose held 
 more of the ordinary self. But in either 
 case and in every case the man parts 
 with something and achieves something 
 else. 
 
 Now we, as a rule, approve of both these
 
 1 LIVING FOR OTHERS 7 
 
 sides in an action. We approve of values 
 achieved or attempted, and we approve of 
 self-sacrifice. And this is just because 
 we assume that they go together ; and we 
 have seen that at bottom they cannot be 
 altogether divorced. But from this general 
 way of looking at the matter something 
 further follows. The law of sacrifice has 
 no special relation to actions in favour of 
 other persons. It refers to something 
 wider and deeper than living for others. 
 The secret is that values are impersonal, 
 and to live for them means self-sacrifice 
 certainly, but primarily for impersonal 
 ends, and only secondarily and incidentally 
 for ends which involve the furtherance of 
 others' existence and happiness. It is just 
 as hkely, and indeed certain at times, to 
 involve antagonism to others' life in such 
 respects as these. To live for beauty or 
 truth means a very austere self-suppression, 
 and a suppression not of self alone, but of 
 others so far as we influence them. We 
 all recognise in practice that in pursuit of 
 a great value you may rightly be hard on
 
 8 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 others ; and so long as you are equally hard 
 on yourself, people will not greatly dis- 
 approve. It does not matter to the value 
 whether it is A or B who is sacrificed to it. 
 This is the ruthlessness of the will for value ; 
 and though it may have been rhetorically 
 overstated, it is an error to suppose it 
 immoral. On the contrary, all sound 
 moral philosophy accepts it as funda- 
 mental. When Palissy the potter burnt 
 his wife's furniture to keep his kiln alight, 
 he may have misjudged the value of a 
 new enamel as against kindness to his 
 family. This is a question of value against 
 value. But that a great invention in the 
 arts has a certain claim upon all who can 
 subserve it, and not merely on some one 
 person who is first interested in it, of that 
 no competent moralist will entertain a 
 moment's doubt. There is, and ought to 
 be, sacrifice everywhere ; but only as one 
 side of the affirmation of a value. 
 
 We see, then, that it remains true that 
 we approve self-sacrifice ; but we saw that 
 self-sacrifice is a much wider and deeper
 
 1 LIVING FOR OTHERS 9 
 
 thing than living for others, and depends 
 on a principle which may involve the 
 sacrifice of others no less than of self. It 
 is a matter of degree, and very various 
 and surprising in its applications. The 
 simple case, as we have seen, is when our 
 attempts to realise values threaten or 
 abandon all or part of our famiUar em- 
 bodied existence — hfe, comfort, pleasure, 
 or particular normal aims on which we 
 have set our heart. And this is what we 
 call self-sacrifice par excellence, as a special 
 mode of conduct which we approve ; dis- 
 tinct from self-affirmation, which we also 
 approve, in my station and its duties or 
 some analogous completion of the self. It 
 is conceivable that a sacrifice of high 
 values may be right, in deference to very 
 homely duties ; and even that something 
 very near a sacrifice of morality itself 
 might be demanded, if, for example, an 
 imperative call for help compelled us to 
 enter what we knew to be for us a danger- 
 zone of temptation. The principle of sacri- 
 fice really rests on the same ultimate fact
 
 10 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS cha?. 
 
 as the conflict of duties, and the two are 
 at some points undistinguishable. The 
 fact in question is that we are an infinite 
 spirit lodged in a finite environment, and 
 nothing which we do can satisfy either 
 our whole claim or the whole demand 
 upon us. What we are actually called 
 to is a matter of what we must practically 
 set down as chance ; " the readiness is 
 all." There is always something to be 
 affirmed and something to be let go. We 
 necessarily approve of both, but only on 
 the latent assumption that they go to- 
 gether ; and if taken really quite apart, 
 each becomes valueless, and each as an 
 extreme passes into the same worthlessness 
 as the other. The miser's life is as much 
 a profitless waste and extravagant expendi- 
 ture of opportunities as the profligate's 
 is a narrow concentration upon a wretched 
 fragmentary satisfaction. 
 
 What is meant by saying that values 
 are impersonal ? It is not hard to see 
 what is meant in case of beauty and truth, 
 but in matters like love and life there seems
 
 I LIVING FOR OTHERS 11 
 
 a difficulty, and so again in speaking of 
 justice. Do not these latter just consist 
 in relations of persons or in what con- 
 stitutes personal existence ? And all 
 values, it seems obvious, have a personal 
 side, and wholly apart from persons would 
 be nothing. 
 
 It is not really a difficulty. We shall 
 see more fully below that values can only 
 have full subsistence through the valua- 
 tions of self-conscious beings, because only 
 such beings can feel and judge, and 
 valuation implies feeling and judgment. 
 It implies, indeed, as we shall see, some- 
 thing more than these terms naturally 
 express. It implies an immanent and im- 
 plicit standard of perfection. Now when 
 values are called impersonal, it means that 
 though they are qualities revealed in and 
 through persons, yet they are imperatives 
 or notes of perfection to which the persons 
 as facts are subordinate. Love, for ex- 
 ample, arises in a relation of person to 
 person ; but it does not consist in such a 
 relation. It is an imperious value, which
 
 12 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 may descend upon any persons, and tran- 
 scends all others in the severity with- 
 which it rules and refashions a personality. 
 Persons are to love like facts to truth, a 
 medium in which something is revealed 
 greater and deeper than the particulars 
 concerned. 
 
 So in the case of justice. You have to 
 hold the balance fair between one and 
 another, and especially between yourself 
 and others. Well, then, it is said, you 
 admit that the value depends on the 
 distinction between one and another, be- 
 tween me and you. It consists in treating 
 A and B alike when their circumstances 
 are alike, and therefore it cannot be im- 
 personal. But there is no contradiction. 
 In securing justice the care you have to take 
 is precisely to be impersonal — indifferent, 
 as it used to be called. This is to be 
 guided by the value and not by the person. 
 The starting-point of consideration, A, B 
 or C, is iijelevant. What matters is the 
 connection between the quality and the 
 treatment appropriate to it. If you con-
 
 I LIVING FOR OTHERS 13 
 
 sider personal relations, you consider them 
 to exclude them, unless, of course, they are 
 relevant to a claim. A son has claims 
 which a stranger has not. In justice, these 
 have to be distinguished according to the 
 respective obligations which a good system 
 of life — one promotive of values — implies. 
 All the above, I believe, is true. But 
 there seem still to be some obvious facts 
 outstanding unaccounted for. In every- 
 day good-fellowship and politeness, and in 
 many crises and emergencies, it is un- 
 questionably thought right to give way to 
 others, or to sacrifice yourself for them, 
 merely because they are others. So much 
 so, that if it were not for general rules 
 which apply positive marks, like seniores 
 priores, or for the host's right to marshal 
 his guests, it would be difficult to get a 
 score of people out of one room into 
 another, because no one would be willing 
 to go first. Often an ordinary plain man 
 will risk his life to save that of another 
 ordinary plain man ; still more constantly 
 to save that of a woman or a child. The
 
 14 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 latter choice is perhaps partly accounted 
 for by a special presumption that the 
 stronger exists to help the weaker. And, 
 on the whole question of hazarding life 
 for others, we must bear in mind that it 
 can hardly ever be a certainty that one 
 life must be sacrificed. There is the chance 
 of saving the one without losing the other, 
 which is a clear gain if we assume life to 
 have any value. Still it remains that a 
 man will often deny himself or sacrifice 
 himself for any other as such, without 
 calculating on coming off scot-free, and 
 without thinking of any special value in 
 the other. And we think it right and 
 fine ; we would not for the world impair 
 the tradition or suggest that it is irrational. 
 How can we account for this on the basis 
 of always aiming at a positive value ? 
 We may assume, as we said, that life has 
 always a potential value. But that cuts 
 both ways. The life which is risked has 
 also a value. Why should it be sacrificed to 
 the other, as, in will and intention, it often 
 is ? Why should we approve the sacrifice ?
 
 I LIVING FOR OTHERS 15 
 
 It seems true and worth observing that 
 our approval of such conduct appKes 
 exclusively to two classes of cases ; first, 
 to trivial matters, which fall within the 
 province of polite behaviour, i.e. where 
 no very grave interests are at stake ; and, 
 secondly, to extreme and sudden emer- 
 gencies, where remoter interests, however 
 grave, cannot be weighed, and one must 
 act on prima facie presumption or not at 
 all. 
 
 Experience is especially decisive about 
 cases of the first type. In minor matters 
 we give way to others without any thought 
 of their merits or capacity. But when 
 serious things are at stake, we say, " There 
 is no room for politeness here ; the work 
 comes first ; we must have A, the better 
 man, and turn out B." 
 
 The second type of case is really difficult 
 and very interesting. " This is what we 
 have in exchange for Beauchamp ! It 
 was not uttered, but it was visible in the 
 blank stare at one another of the two men 
 who loved Beauchamp, after they had
 
 16 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 examined the insignificant bit of mudbank 
 life remaining in this world in the place of 
 him " ^ (the little boy he had saved from 
 drowning before, in his continued effort, 
 he perished). 
 
 We must say, I think, to begin with, 
 and as prima facie covering both sets of 
 cases, that there is a presumption in 
 favour of others, because devotion to them 
 shares with the higher values the tendency 
 to set at naught the agent's immediately 
 private concerns and physical existence. 
 This is not by itself a solution of the 
 problem ; for in sacrificing his own physical 
 and private existence, the agent may be 
 ruining hundreds of serious aims and 
 interests possessing presumptions of value 
 equal to or above anything attaching to 
 the person, or it may be a favourite animal, 
 for whom he gives his life. It is not 
 enough to show that there is a presump- 
 tion of an ideal value in the object ; we 
 have to explain why it overcomes, and 
 we approve of its overcoming, any equal 
 
 1 Conclusion of George Meredith's Beauchamp's Career.
 
 XIVING FOR OTHERS 17 
 
 or greater presumption of value in the 
 agent. 
 
 To explain the facts, I think, we have 
 to take this first presumption arising from 
 the common feature that our own physical 
 bemg is set at naught by all great values 
 though not by all in the same way, along 
 with the presumption that there is some 
 value attached to any person or perhaps 
 to any sentient being — almost to any 
 existent ; and both of these along with the 
 assumption that the emergency excludes 
 all careful reflections and comparison of 
 values. All you have time to see is, " Here 
 is hfe in danger beyond my own skin; 
 It— because it is beyond— comes first." 
 
 Especially the second presumption is 
 important. An orthodox Christian not 
 long ago would have said, " Oh, save him 
 he may not be fit to die." And mutat/s 
 mutandis some such ignorance plays in 
 our mind the part of exalted knowledge. 
 You cannot limit the possibilities of value 
 in an act which recognises the ideal as 
 imperative, either in its positive object,
 
 18 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 or in its assertion of a principle. In other 
 words, then, we approve the prima facie 
 presumption that mere private existence 
 should be very lightly held by its possessor 
 in comparison with values beyond it, which 
 are recognised by the common feature of 
 exhibiting it as comparatively trivial. 
 
 But can tliis be right ? All I can 
 directly save by the risk of my life is the 
 other's mere existence. If we contemplate 
 a very possible case, in which, at the 
 sacrifice of high values on one side, known 
 high values are conserved on the other, 
 we are in the region of action with deter- 
 minate positive aims, and beyond the 
 province of self-sacrifice "for others" 
 simply. But keeping to our simple case, 
 I cannot make sure of the other's exist- 
 ence involving high specific values, and I 
 may know that very high values, say, 
 very important issues, attach to mine 
 which I contemplate hazarding. There 
 need be no vanity in this perception ; it 
 might be merely that an income, which 
 supports infirm dependants, dies with me.
 
 I LIVING FOR OTHERS 19 
 
 Can it be right to hazard known great 
 values for an uncertainty ? 
 
 The answer must lie, I think, in the 
 third feature we recognised, in the sudden- 
 ness of the emergency. It seems irra- 
 tional not to raise the question of the 
 values for which we hazard all ; but, 
 according to the facts as we have accepted 
 them, we do not in the emergency advert 
 to this question. I can suddenly deter- 
 mine to risk my own being ; I cannot sud- 
 denly succeed in using in the emergency 
 the aid of any one else, nor putting in 
 force a considered plan by which perhaps 
 all the issues at stake might be satisfied. 
 Ex hypothesi, it is for me to act, and I 
 must act on a quick presumption, or do 
 nothing. Suddenness operates here as 
 triviality in the case of politeness ; here 
 there is no time to think about compara- 
 tive values, as there it is not worth while. 
 
 Where these features or presumptions 
 are absent serious comparison of values 
 does influence us and we approve it, though 
 there is a very difficult border-line.
 
 20 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 Where a man is not dealing with his 
 own risk, and the presumption against 
 one's own physical existence is therefore 
 absent, he certainly discriminates between 
 more or less valuable men in sending them 
 to extreme hazard. '' Ali Gul at once 
 volunteered to swim across the river in 
 face of the enemy and bring back a boat. 
 His commanding officer could not, how- 
 ever, spare so valuable an officer for so 
 desperate a venture, and forbade him to 
 make the attempt. Two other men volun- 
 teered and were permitted to go." ^ 
 
 Even in one's own risk, when the 
 presumption of value in " the other " is 
 more or less countered in a very obvious 
 way, the comparison is allowed to operate. 
 A man would hardly be approved who 
 gave his life to save a favourite dog's, 
 though he might be admired. If it were 
 a child, every one would approve. A 
 man, it is said, gave his ration of water 
 to a coffee plant he was in charge of, in a 
 boat after shipwreck. As towards a mere 
 
 1 A Soldiefs Memories, Younghusband, p. 52.
 
 I LIVING FOR OTHERS 21 
 
 plant, this act would hardly be approved, 
 but circumstances might make it admirable. 
 The whole edible banana supply of the 
 Pacific once depended on a single plant.^ 
 Of course the degree of risk tells heavily 
 here. And as a rule, if the rescue is 
 successful, the rescuer's life is not lost. 
 This consideration is important through- 
 out. 
 
 When suddenness is absent, as in plan- 
 ning a General's duties, I imagine the con- 
 sideration of a man's value to the service 
 
 « 
 
 is allowed to weigh. But if by chance 
 he suddenly finds himself under fire, or 
 with an opportunity of saving life at a 
 great risk, what is his impulse and duty ? 
 Probably the consideration of the men's 
 moral would by itself decide him in favour 
 of the risk ; and the indisposition to con- 
 sider one's own value, along with the pre- 
 sumption against one's private existence, 
 would be very strong. It would be in- 
 teresting to know what an experienced 
 soldier would say. Yet put a slightly 
 
 1 Tlie New Pacific.
 
 22 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 different case. I take it he could not 
 conceivably stop in directing an important 
 movement to go and pick a child out of 
 a ditch where it was drowning, though he 
 would send a man if he could possibly 
 spare one. 
 
 The conclusion seems pretty clear. 
 There are distinct beings, each specially 
 related to a body. These beings are singly 
 or conjointly the basis of all interests and 
 values. Our main approval is for the 
 higher positive values and for conduct 
 that promotes them. And these higher 
 values reveal in various ways incompati- 
 bility with full unperturbed physical exist- 
 ence ; if we want an example, we have only 
 to think of love. Now to every distinct 
 being the existence of others presents 
 this same prima facie aloofness. It can be 
 asserted against one's own being as love 
 or duty can, and as one's own private 
 existence ex hypothesi cannot. Therefore 
 if the two private existences collide, the 
 quick presumption is against my own, and 
 for the other's ; against that which cannot
 
 1 LIVING FOR OTHERS 23 
 
 be an ideal counter-claim, and for that 
 which can. 
 
 The relation contains the self-contra- 
 diction of altruism, for the two opposite 
 presumptions are on a level : mine in 
 favour of you, yours in favour of me. 
 But in the conditions we are considering 
 this matters less, because we are assuming 
 the power of helping to be on one side only. 
 The presumption in favour of others is a 
 wholesome one, and we should all be sorry 
 to see it undermined by reflection. Re- 
 flection on our own value, unless practically 
 necessary to serious interests, is a vicious 
 thing. It cuts at the root of morality and 
 religion ; for the essence of these is in the 
 conviction of our own nothingness, except 
 when recognising our union with some- 
 thing greater. And to bring such reflec- 
 tion in aid of clinging to our own physical 
 being with its incidents of pleasure and 
 comfort is on the road to terrible self- 
 deception. 
 
 Both here and in politeness, then, we 
 are dealing with a prima facie presumption
 
 ^4 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS ch. i 
 
 which the existence of others shares with 
 ideal values, as denying what all ideal 
 values in some degree deny. It does not 
 arise from any positive value in you simply 
 as other to me, and does not conflict with 
 the primary truth that all conduct is 
 guided by positive impersonal values 
 directly or indirectly. When I say " in- 
 directly," I mean " by a presumption that 
 positive values are involved, transcend- 
 ing that which is sacrificed." " Living for 
 others " as an expression of unqualified 
 praise is founded on an unduly amplified 
 analogy, drawn from the two sets of cases 
 we have considered.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE SOCIAL GOOD 
 
 To say that a man is devoted to the social 
 good is not quite the same as to say that 
 he lives for others. In this case we say 
 something which indicates a recognised 
 bond of union ; and we escape the initial 
 puzzle of treating a man's own welfare as 
 something which it is right or fine for him 
 to disregard. Because the welfare of his 
 society certainly includes his own, although 
 perhaps with reservations. 
 
 Will this idea of social welfare or a 
 social good give us all that it is necessary 
 to say about the good which we are bound 
 to pursue ? There seem to be two ways 
 of treating it ; perhaps both of them may 
 
 25
 
 26 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 be right and serviceable. Let us take 
 them in turn. 
 
 We may begin by noting the conception 
 of Justice. I have spoken of it at length 
 elsewhere^ and will only make use of it 
 here to start our discussion. 
 
 Justice, if it is to have a really special 
 and definite meaning, might be treated as 
 the first effort of individualism to improve 
 itself away. It is, one might say, the law 
 that everything must have a reason, 
 applied to the distribution of advantages 
 between individuals. It has no meaning 
 unless you are dealing with the application 
 of rules to cases. A rule is founded on 
 some common feature of particular cases ; 
 and so here you have an elementary recog- 
 nition of something social, something 
 shared by a number of persons. Here is 
 a set of people with prima facie similar 
 claims. They belong to the same lot or 
 group, and you must treat them all alike, 
 unless there is a reason for treating some 
 
 1 " Three Lectures on Social Ideals," in Social and Inter- 
 national Ideals.
 
 n THE SOCIAL GOOD 27 
 
 of them differently. If you treat any of 
 them differently, they will ask "Why?" 
 And this power to ask why is the main- 
 spring of what is called the equality of 
 man. Ultimately, you can only govern 
 him by his own consent. He demands to 
 be " satisfied " — to see the reason for the 
 way he is treated. He knows that different 
 people need different things ; but he does 
 not think he has justice unless he approves 
 the reason for the difference. Prima facie 
 to break a rule of treatment is unjust ; 
 that is, it is unjust unless it is done because 
 of a better rule. 
 
 Pursuing this line of thought, we find 
 ourselves building up an idea of what 
 every one is bound to aim at, out of the 
 separate claims to pleasure, welfare, or 
 material resources, of all the persons belong- 
 ing to the group he recognises. It is pre- 
 supposed that all these persons' claims are 
 equal, because of their primary nature as 
 human units. If they are to be different, 
 there must be a reason for the difference. 
 And if we start from the claims of units,
 
 28 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 the reason must reduce itself to this, that 
 real equaUty cannot be attained except 
 through a prima facie inequahty. To 
 satisfy equal individual claims is the end ; 
 the machinery of functions, duties, classes, 
 and positions is nothing but a means to 
 that end. This way of looking at things 
 is particularly characteristic of views which 
 have started from pleasure as the end, 
 because pleasure is private to each parti- 
 cular person. But long after it has been 
 seen that you cannot by any machinery 
 guarantee equality of private pleasure, 
 there persists this method of building up 
 the social aim which the individual is 
 bound to recognise. The aim is my own 
 welfare, or opportunity for welfare, modi- 
 fied by the arrangements necessary to the 
 welfare or opportunities of every one else — 
 that is, of every one else within the group 
 which I recognise as concerning me. 
 
 This principle, that one creature's wel- 
 fare is as much to be regarded as another's, 
 in other words, that so far as may be practic- 
 able, equality of well-being is to be sought
 
 THE SOCIAL GOOD 29 
 
 after as between members of a group which 
 recognises membership, may be stated and 
 explained in more ways than one. And 
 there is a difficulty attaching to one mode 
 of the statement which illustrates, perhaps, 
 a weakness in the whole of this first method 
 by which the notion of social good can be 
 approached. Thus, if we start from the 
 idea of a group of individuals having prima 
 facie equal claims and apply it as a test of 
 the desirable consequences of actions, it is 
 natural to lay down such a rule as, " Every 
 one to count for one, and no one for more 
 than one." That is to say, an action is 
 approved by the test, in so far as it is 
 compatible with the equal claims of all 
 members of the group, or conducive to 
 them. Now, of course, if we take it that 
 the claim rests on the equal desirability of 
 equal amounts of happiness, and add that 
 one person is capable, say, of twice the 
 amount of happiness which is within the 
 capacity of another, the plain meaning 
 which the principle has for common sense 
 is overthrown. The double quantity
 
 30 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 needed to fill my capacity is as desirable 
 as the unit quantity needed to fill yours, 
 and I, therefore, have practically the right 
 to twice the happiness which you have the 
 right to. This interpretation destroys the 
 merit of the principle in affirming the 
 equality of persons, though it has the 
 advantage of recognising in a roundabout 
 way that a true respect for the good will 
 level up but not level down. On the other 
 hand, we may support the principle, " One 
 to count for one," by the argument that 
 successive increments of resources produce 
 diminishing effects in the way of enjoy- 
 ment. If we take it thus, we have a fair 
 practical reason for the natural interpreta- 
 tion of the principle. On the whole, the 
 more resources one person has in excess of 
 a certain sufficiency, the less his enjoyment 
 is increased by each successive augmenta- 
 tion of them. 
 
 But this way of building up the social 
 good to which individuals are supposed 
 bound to direct their conduct has other diffi- 
 culties. What is the group to be considered.
 
 n THE SOCIAL GOOD 31 
 
 and how can you limit its extension ? Can 
 it fall short of humanity ? Does humanity 
 include future members of the race, even 
 those whom one course of conduct might 
 bring into existence, and another might 
 not ? And if the object of the claims is 
 pleasure, how leave out the sentient world, 
 including for all we know not only the 
 lower animals, but the higher plants ? 
 If we adopt the ground we took up at first, 
 this latter paradox does not affect us. 
 The claim for equality, the innate demand 
 for a reason why, does not exist in the 
 lower animals. They are objects of duties, 
 but not subjects of rights. But the diffi- 
 culty of taking as a standard the claims of 
 human beings as a multitude, including an 
 undefined posterity, remains so long as we 
 start from individual welfare. 
 
 No doubt it is possible to construe the 
 facts of morality upon this basis. The 
 main root of individual morals is in social 
 function — my station and its duties — which 
 has throughout a reference to the well- 
 being of other members of the group which
 
 32 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 we recognise as concerning us. Moreover, 
 extensions and amendments of moral prac- 
 tice are suggested by our acquaintance 
 with social custom beyond our immediate 
 social group, and also by definite demands 
 for remedies, springing from obvious pain 
 and hardship in the lot of members of our 
 own or other groups, and suggestions for 
 their removal. These ideas furnish matter 
 for social ideals, and extended social ideals 
 may certainly appear applicable to the 
 welfare of all conceivable members of 
 humanity. 
 
 And further, the supreme goods, truth, 
 beauty, goodness, religion, can in one 
 aspect of them be construed as instru- 
 mental to the welfare of civilised society, 
 and even, ultimately, to that of all human 
 individuals. Here, indeed, we are con- 
 fronted by a well-known paradox. All of 
 these high values are in a sense " uni- 
 versal " ; that is, they have in them some- 
 thing fitted to appeal to what is best, 
 and, in a way, most characteristic, in man, 
 and there are instances in which this
 
 THE SOCIAL GOOD 33 
 
 potentially universal appeal seems on the 
 road to become a fact ; when supreme 
 beauty or goodness seems for a moment 
 to exercise a conquering power over great 
 masses of mankind. But, as a rule, we 
 know it is not so. Man is, we may argue, 
 most human when he appreciates Shake- 
 speare, or brings home to himself the life 
 of Christ in its full and simple significance. 
 But the *' universal " is not the " general." 
 We might as well say that man is most 
 human when he is physically and mentally 
 perfect. But then the most human would 
 be the rarest specimen of humanity. This 
 difficulty, which we confront at the climax 
 of our first way of contemplating the good, 
 will serve to indicate a further and different 
 procedure. But so far we have seen that 
 there are reasons in favour of the con- 
 ception that the good which I am morally 
 bound to pursue is the welfare of all the 
 individuals who compose my group, in- 
 cluding my own welfare. This assumes 
 equality of treatment as the prima facie 
 rule, only to be departed from in any one 
 
 D
 
 34 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS ohap. 
 
 sense, in order to secure it in another and 
 more effective form. Obviously, for in- 
 stance, to assign every human being in a 
 country identical rations of identical food 
 would be the most horrible waste and 
 injustice. 
 
 On this method all the great values of 
 life would have to be represented, and can 
 to some extent be represented, as means 
 to the aggregate social welfare, that is, to 
 the welfare of all the individuals who are 
 members of the group to be considered. 
 
 The strong point of this first way of 
 construing the moral good is its regard for 
 the welfare of all individuals. The good 
 which a man is bound to aim at is built up 
 of the amounts of welfare or satisfactory 
 consciousness attainable by all individuals 
 of a group ; and the values of life are all 
 to be derived from the consideration of 
 these, and esteemed as instruments to them. 
 
 When we consider the working of any 
 coherent community, the plausibility of 
 such an account is in some degree shaken. 
 Not to speak of the category of " others,"
 
 to THE SOCIAL GOOD 35 
 
 which we do not find admitted in it — for 
 every one recognised by the community is 
 recognised in virtue of some definite station 
 or function — the claims of " all " under 
 the heading of Justice are but poorly 
 satisfied. " So much the worse," we may 
 retort, " for the community." That criti- 
 cism we may accept. But yet there is 
 something further to be noted, which the 
 claims of " others " and of " all " did not 
 suggest, though, having it before us, we 
 made shift to accommodate it to them. 
 There is a distinctive and interesting 
 communal life, which seems rather in fact 
 to absorb individuals and to provide them 
 with purposes or values, than to be itself 
 deducible from an accumulation of private 
 lots, as it were, or claimable portions, of 
 welfare, each lot to each individual. 
 
 This social substance or single social 
 life, in which individual members blend 
 their minds and wills by directing action 
 to common indivisible purposes, is hard 
 to represent as merely derivative from the 
 separate claims of individuals to welfare,
 
 36 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 and as taking its value from being instru- 
 mental to these. It has rather the air of 
 something new ; of something which comes 
 out of the co-operation of individuals, but 
 reveals a fresh character in them, and 
 exhibits them as something, which, qua 
 mere units set side by side, they would not 
 appear to be. In such a life the object of 
 desire for all persons presents a peculiar 
 character. It tends, as we said, to become 
 one and indivisible. That is to say, it 
 tends to become such that you cannot will 
 one part of it, or as much of it as concerns 
 one person, without willing a great deal 
 more, and what concerns a great number 
 of persons. And this latter statement 
 can have two meanings. It may only 
 apply the principle, " If you will the end, 
 you will the means," and that is the point 
 of view from which society was regarded 
 in the former construction which we sug- 
 gested. I may support the best scheme 
 of national education, but only because 
 I think that it is a good way of securing 
 the happiness and efficiency of individuals
 
 n THE SOCIAL GOOD 37 
 
 one by one. But again, this is a difficult 
 point of view to keep to. The means are 
 continually offering to take control and 
 become the end. It is not merely that if 
 you recognise the utility of education to 
 individuals you must support a sound 
 educative system as the means to individual 
 welfare. It is that if your will is directed 
 towards the sort of value which a good 
 educational system offers to any individual, 
 you find included in it indivisibly the good 
 of a better way of thinking and feeling in 
 the whole social group and concerning the 
 affairs of the entire community. Such 
 things are in their nature single objects, 
 imperative values. You cannot wish a 
 healthy life even for your own mind, with- 
 out wishing it to include a certain attitude 
 to the minds of others, which demands and 
 depends on a healthy life in theirs. It is 
 not that every man wishes for all persons' 
 well-being, and accepts the training of the 
 people's minds as a means to this. It is 
 that men, on the whole, start with in- 
 terests in life and knowledge, and these 
 
 _ '-. :i --^ J •?
 
 38 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 dictate to them what they are to mean by 
 welfare, and the methods by which it may 
 be achieved. 
 
 There was a difficulty in our first way 
 of considering the individual's desire for 
 good which we did not insist on, because it 
 was perhaps even there not fatal, but which 
 vanishes entirely from our present point 
 of view. If the good which I desire is 
 built up out of the welfare of a number 
 of persons, it is not obvious on what 
 principle or for what reason I should 
 recognise it to be a good. If it is a good, 
 it is my good ; that is clear from the 
 meaning of the term good. Every good 
 is every man's good ; i.e. is a value which 
 it is incumbent on him to realise. It is 
 only practical considerations which can 
 make one factor of good more imperative 
 on him than another. The cross-over 
 from me to you is already made when I 
 recognise your welfare as a good ; it is not 
 necessary to say as my good. All the same, 
 it may not be easy to say why, if your 
 welfare is a thing that you claim, while
 
 THE SOCIAL GOOD 39 
 
 mine is a separate thing that I claim, either 
 of our welfares should be admitted as a 
 good. A great deal of attention has been 
 given to this question, and it has been 
 said to be obvious that one person's welfare 
 is as much a good as another's ; so that if 
 I assume my own to be a good, I must 
 logically assume every one else's to be so. 
 This argument seems to have a sound basis 
 in what we called the principle of Justice ; 
 but this, we saw, does not deal with in- 
 dividuals in their complete separateness, 
 but involves the first recognition of a 
 common nature in them, on the conscious- 
 ness of which their common claim to 
 reasonable treatment is founded. I do 
 not wish to deny that the cross-over from 
 my desire to your welfare and vice versa 
 can be supported in this way. But it 
 seems less complete and convincing than 
 the nature of a social will for which the 
 object is a system in which your welfare 
 and mine appear as indivisible sides of the 
 same thing, such that each interpenetrates 
 the other and intensifies it. We experience
 
 40 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 this unity when we will the preservation 
 of our country, or — it is a very simple and 
 familiar case, though negative — when we 
 will the extinction of some social evil 
 which is a shame and a sore to the con- 
 sciences of all respectable citizens. Here 
 we all feel, simply and directly, the same 
 yearning and desire, so to speak, for a 
 purer air, as a value without which life 
 hardly seems worth living. Our desires 
 meet in the one indivisible object, " This 
 shame must cease." 
 
 On this our second way of considering 
 the social good, how do we maintain the 
 necessity of justice ? The great types of 
 social excellence and attainment here come 
 first as obvious values — the achievements 
 of beauty, knowledge, and goodness. 
 Individuals recognise these as the good 
 for which they exist, and no longer as 
 means to their several shares of well-being. 
 The " happiness " of the community comes 
 first, as a famous paradox puts it. The 
 " happiness " of individuals is secondary. 
 This can onlv mean, of course, that a
 
 u THE SOCIAL GOOD 41 
 
 community is to be judged by such achieve- 
 ments and attainments as are proper to 
 individuals considered as participating in 
 a communal life and activity, while the 
 share of comfort or satisfaction which, if 
 any, they might reserve for themselves in 
 abstraction from social attainment is of 
 less account. Still, a community without 
 justice to all is very imperfect, and we 
 must see, if we begin with high achieve- 
 ment and not with separate welfares, how 
 the condition demanded by Justice is to 
 be deduced as necessary. 
 
 The answer is not difficult. We all feel 
 it in ourselves in such experiences as were 
 mentioned above. The great values draw 
 out the powers of mind, and harmonise 
 them in a many-sided whole. But the 
 presence of disvalues counters and opposes 
 this process, and each member feels the 
 imperfection, oppression, and incapacity 
 of any members within his community as a 
 load on his aspiration, and a contradiction 
 in his otherwise harmonious attainment. 
 It has been well said that if I but note a
 
 42 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 bad arrangement of trains in Bradshaw I 
 am tempted to try and have it put right, 
 altogether disinterestedly. I do this, it 
 seems clear, merely because it is a disorder 
 in my world, which obstructs my inherent 
 endeavour to introduce order. Still more, 
 if there is a contradiction, a distress and 
 oppression burdening a whole class of lives, 
 so that they conflict with themselves and 
 with the communal aim, this constitutes 
 an immediate misery and obstruction in 
 every mind that has the communal spirit. 
 In principle, it would take a perfect com- 
 munity to elicit and harmonise the whole 
 mind of its members. A community in 
 which there is injustice must be full of 
 pain and bad conscience in as far as its 
 mind is active. 
 
 This second way of representing the 
 nature of social good seems more in har- 
 mony with social fact than the first. 
 From the first point of view the governing 
 term was " social " ; and the " good," 
 the general idea of good being once pre- 
 supposed, was in its actual nature com-
 
 THE SOCIAL GOOD 43 
 
 posite, derivative, instrumental. It was 
 the way in which milHons of welfares could 
 be best subserved. From the second point 
 of view, what comes first is the term 
 " good," that is, the imperative relation 
 of values to intelligent beings. The ad- 
 jective " social " is then secondary, and 
 simply marks the character of values as 
 impersonal, and so not coincident in their 
 demand or realisation with individual 
 persons each to each. Society then would 
 be regarded as existing because values 
 demand a single co - operative life with 
 diverse capacities. Values would not be 
 regarded as being built up as means to 
 separate welfares. 
 
 And if once more we ask why on this 
 second principle there should not be whole 
 populations subject to narrowness and 
 oppression for the sake of supreme values 
 enjoyed by a few, the answer has been 
 indicated already. Values are the develop- 
 ment of capacities. It takes the whole 
 system of values to draw out the whole 
 capacity of man ; it takes the whole
 
 44 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 capacity of man to be the basis of a perfect 
 system of values. If in any community 
 there are undeveloped capacities, so far 
 the system of values is straitened and 
 obstructed. This is the same as saying 
 that a social sore is a sore in every mind, 
 or else convicts it of an insensitive spot, 
 which in itself is a contradiction and 
 defect. 
 
 How do we know this account of values 
 to be true ? We know it first by observa- 
 tion of the moral consciousness, which 
 plainly declares that goodness, beauty, 
 truth, and religion are more than instru- 
 mental, are imperative values, for the sake 
 of which man and society recognise them- 
 selves to exist, although as the central 
 characters of life that is worth living they 
 may in a certain sense be set down as 
 instrumental to it, being related to it as 
 sine quibus non. 
 
 We know it secondly by a consideration 
 of the nature of values and their kinship 
 with mind and reality, which we are now 
 about to discuss.
 
 n THE SOCIAL GOOD 45 
 
 Both the points of view which have 
 been dwelt upon are instructive, though 
 the second is the more natural — for you 
 will never persuade a sensible man that 
 goodness or beauty are mere means to the 
 happiness of groups — and the most com- 
 plete. But if you are interested in start- 
 ing from the individual's care for others 
 and seeing how it develops, you can find 
 your way up to the idea of good on that 
 path, though your goal will be marvellously 
 transformed en route.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 VALUE AND GOODNESS 
 
 Value, worth, and goodness seem all to 
 be names for the same character of objects. 
 It involves the experience that some objects 
 prima facie are welcomed and approved 
 in a way in which others are not. A certain 
 character, indicated by terms like these, 
 is attributed to such objects ; and we take 
 it to be in principle the same in all cases. 
 But its nature is not in everyday think- 
 ing expanded into an explanation. (For 
 simplicity's sake we may suppose that we 
 can distingLiish " intrinsic " value from 
 value as a means, and speak of the former 
 only. Probably this is not quite true.^) 
 a. This feature is insisted on by those who 
 
 » See p. 62 below. 
 46
 
 cHin VALUE AND GOODNESS 47 
 
 say that value is indefinable, and compare 
 it in this respect with unanalysable qualities 
 given to sense-perception, e.g. yellowness 
 or sourness. To define it, to say that it 
 is one with some other term, is alleged to 
 be substituting the other term for it, and 
 so removing and abandoning the idea 
 itself. But this seems merely to be saying 
 that it is a thing you cannot explain, i.e. 
 exhibit more clearly by tracing its essential 
 properties, and this again seems to be in 
 every case a question of fact and degree. 
 Why should value have no essential pro- 
 perties and relations ; and if it has them 
 why should you not explain it by analysing 
 them ? To find anything indefinable is, 
 it would seem, a mere mark of ignorance. 
 You say you can recognise it, but you 
 cannot tell me how. But this indicates 
 as a rule a want of attention. Of course 
 an object is definable only in proportion 
 to the degree of structure which it presents. 
 The most purely sensuous quality is least 
 so ; but ultimately everything must have 
 structure. You cannot draw a line in the
 
 48 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 attribution of properties to any object, 
 and say "Here its definite connection 
 with the system of reaUty must stop. It 
 cannot be expressed any further." This, 
 if not purely provisional, is sheer assump- 
 tion. 
 
 This reason for pronouncing goodness 
 or value indefinable, viz. that we have 
 not at first sight analysed its struc- 
 ture, seems to be reinforced by another, 
 viz. the idea that you must not use an 
 attitude or perception of the human mind 
 to express a quality of a real thing. Now 
 it is true that this must be done with 
 precaution. You must not say down- 
 right that the red of a rose is a sensation 
 in my mind. Nevertheless, if you persist 
 that no use can be made of what I experi- 
 ence to characterise real objects in any 
 way, you are obviously back in the doctrine 
 of the Thing-in-itself — in an attitude which 
 forbids us to pronounce anything good or 
 beautiful or real or sweet. All this is 
 involved in the only grounds, besides de 
 facto ignorance, which are or can be alleged
 
 m VALUE AND GOODNESS 49 
 
 for pronouncing value and goodness inde- 
 finable. Prima facie, they can be ex- 
 plained or defined in terms of the character 
 fixed upon them by the functions they 
 exhibit in the context of experience. At 
 most you might be able to show that 
 attempts to demonstrate such a char- 
 acter have hitherto failed. But to assert 
 that they must fail is clearly a 'priori 
 scepticism and so irrational. 
 
 In fact, I take it, this whole demurrer 
 against value being definable is an awk- 
 ward version of the truth that it is unde- 
 signable — cannot be indicated with the 
 finger — which is really opposed to that 
 demurrer. Yellowness and sourness are 
 designable by pointing to sensations, but 
 are prima facie indefinable so far as they 
 are mere sensuous qualities, though ulti- 
 ^mately no doubt definable as knowledge 
 progresses. But worth or goodness is not 
 a sensuous quality ; you cannot point 
 it out with your finger. It is more com- 
 parable to number or causation, being a 
 feature of structure and function char- 
 
 E
 
 50 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 acterising experiences which have other 
 features besides it. 
 
 In a word, good or value is a category, 
 and not a datum of sense-perception. 
 Things fulfil it more or less, but it is not 
 any one thing. 
 
 Pleasure is a simple illustration. It 
 seems to be the one thing whose very 
 essence is to be what we want and all that 
 we want, and it is natural at first sight to 
 take it to coincide with good. 
 
 Yet the moment we look at it carefully, 
 we see that pleasure is only one thing 
 among others that are good. It has good- 
 ness or value in its own way, according 
 to what its own peculiar nature can offer 
 and provide ; that is, it is not good in 
 every way, but only in its own way, and 
 there are many other things besides 
 pleasure which, each in its own way, are also 
 good. Such are the concrete things which, 
 because we want them, give us pleasure ; 
 such again are beauty, knowledge, social 
 life. No one of all these is mere or perfect 
 good ; none of them include the good-
 
 VALUE AND GOODNESS 51 
 
 nesses of all the rest. Each is good, we 
 shall see, by being such as to fill its place 
 or satisfy its correlative need ; and to fill 
 its peculiar place it must be determined 
 in its scope and structure by its peculiar 
 character. 
 
 Goodness, then, is not given in experi- 
 ence as one kind of thing you can point 
 out. It is a feature attaching more or 
 less to many such ; we cannot exclude the 
 possibility that in a sense it may attach to 
 all. It is, as we said, a category, of which 
 at least a great many objects present the 
 character, but which is itself present as 
 a whole in none. It is not given in per- 
 fection anywhere, at any rate in such 
 experience as ours. This is what is ex- 
 pressed in an awkward way by calling it 
 indefinable, and comparing it to qualities 
 like yellowness and sourness. It is so 
 hard to explain or define, that to recognise 
 it as we recognise them would be con- 
 venient if we could do it ; and the rough 
 initiative of doing it we have in the judg- 
 ment of immediate approval. But really,
 
 52 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 definable, by properties and function, is 
 just what it is, and indefinable — merely 
 designable by pointing — is just what it 
 is not. 
 
 yS. The central problem and interest of 
 philosophy is in recognising the attributes 
 of what is real as characters within experi- 
 ence. To make affirmations of value with- 
 out reinforcing them by such characters 
 is to separate value from reality, and to 
 abandon philosophical enquiry. 
 
 It will be worth while to point out 
 shortly and simply how the affirmation 
 that something is good — the judgment of 
 value — can be confirmed and expanded 
 by analysis. The method may be called 
 Inductive, if we understand the mean- 
 ing of the term. But it does not mean, 
 of course, an enumeration of apparently 
 similar instances without analysis. Its 
 formula, in plain language, is, " Show me 
 an instance of good or value, and I will 
 show you that it has the general character 
 which I claim for these attributes." 
 
 What is good or has value is naturally
 
 VALUE AND GOODNESS 53 
 
 observed as possessing the general char- 
 acter of what a human being ^ wants. 
 
 This may be expressed by saying that 
 it is the object of desire, or which satisfies 
 desire, or that it is anything in which we 
 find ourselves affirmed. Of course not all 
 that is good is the object of desire of every 
 man at every moment. This is why we 
 spoke of " the general character." As a 
 rule we can only enjoy one thing at a time. 
 In a mixed enjoyment we do not fully 
 enjoy two or more things. We enjoy a 
 combination, which is an enjoyment differ- 
 ent from any one of them, and alternative 
 to them all. Moreover, the desires for 
 different objects are often incompatible 
 states of mind, and the nature of our 
 practical world very narrowly limits the 
 multiplicity of experiences which any in- 
 dividual can attain. But these restricting 
 and diversifying conditions cannot affect 
 the general character of value. For this, 
 
 ^ The argument could be extended mutatis mutandis to 
 angels or the lower animals. But it is enough to deal with 
 the experience which is most familiar to us.
 
 54 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 the quality of the object, obviously could 
 not consist in the variable external fact 
 of being actually desired by this or that 
 individual at this time or that. To say 
 so would be like treating the quality of 
 yellowness or sourness as simply the same 
 thing with being seen as yellow or tasted 
 as sour. 
 
 This slight risk of misconception in the 
 phrase " object of desire " is partly re- 
 moved in the expression " that which I 
 approve " or "in which I find myself 
 affirmed." For this does not presuppose 
 an antecedent want directed to the object 
 in question, nor, indeed, a very special 
 preoccupation with it at all, but merely a 
 recognition of its character. Thus in the 
 judgment of beauty, it is commonly held, 
 all will or desire directed to the object ^ is 
 absent, and even perhaps all enjoyment 
 
 ^ There is, I think, often a confusion about this. No one 
 says that it spoils your beauty-loving attitude if you will 
 ardently to see a beautiful picture of a house or a woman, 
 or even to buy it. It is if you begin to think of buying the 
 house or the woman that you have fallen out of the aesthetic 
 attitude.
 
 m VALUE AND GOODNESS 55 
 
 of the beautiful may be absent com- 
 patibly with recognition of its quality. 
 
 This general character may be further 
 analysed thus : When we scrutinise any 
 instance of value, we find its capacity to 
 meet our need and sustain our self-affirma- 
 tion to be one with what above we spoke 
 of as its structure. That is to say, its 
 mode and amount of positive being is such 
 and so arranged as to present in determin- 
 ate harmony a relatively great variety 
 of featm'cs, or, in other words, to cover 
 solidly — that is, without internal dis- 
 crepancy — a relatively large area in our 
 experience. This is what we mean when 
 we say of great men or thoughts or books, 
 or of beautiful works, that they have " so 
 much in them " ; that they " feed " us ; 
 that they " satisfy " us. They meet our 
 nature's want or need, that is, amply and 
 enduringly, at many points, without lead- 
 ing up to failure and self-contradiction. 
 They show in some degree the quality of 
 the " living water which he who drinks 
 shall not thirst again," or of the object
 
 56 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 which, as it is more real, and has more of 
 being, so more really and essentially fills 
 our nature's want. Such a stable and satis- 
 factory object is such as to satisfy desire ; 
 it has the property of satisfactoriness. 
 
 This property has at bottom a logical 
 aspect. It is one with the nature of any 
 experience in which self-discrepancy is to 
 a great extent banished, not by vacancy, 
 but by comprehension and positive unity. 
 This is what you feel, to take simple 
 instances, in a sound political constitution* 
 in a good life, whether communal or in- 
 dividual, in beauty, truth, physical health, 
 and the material strength of things. The 
 attribute is ultimately the same — a strong 
 and complete self-maintenance — whether 
 in a theory so far as it answers all questions, 
 an institution so far as it deals with all 
 emergencies, or an experience so far as it 
 satisfies all wants. The human agent or 
 recipient, uniting himself with such an 
 object, is so far reinforced and given solid 
 ground against discord, and against the 
 narrower objects or paths of conduct which,
 
 VALUE AND GOODNESS 57 
 
 set against one another and against his 
 wider wants and powers, must inevitably 
 engender discord. 
 
 The recognition that in any such object 
 we are affirmed or reinforced, and the 
 inherent conation towards unity and self- 
 completeness — the judgment and the aspir- 
 ation — seem to be merely different forms 
 of the same central feature of our life. 
 To ask whether it is a matter of intellect 
 or of feeling appears unintelligent. The 
 quality both is obvious to apprehension 
 and makes a difference to vitality. It is 
 appreciable therefore both by reason and 
 by feeling, and must always in some degree 
 be evident in a reaction upon both, 
 although either may predominate. There 
 is nothing in which the grades of its nature 
 are more manifest than in lower and higher 
 appreciations of beauty. To be willed by 
 the good will — the will and objects which 
 are comprehensive and harmonious — is 
 merely a special form of the same character. 
 
 The main point, then, is clear. The 
 quality of goodness or value is one which
 
 58 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 is recognised in various degrees throughout 
 human experience and by its character. 
 But this does not in any way interfere with 
 the attribution of it as a quahty to objects 
 in the real world. We cannot find a 
 difficulty in this qualification of the real, 
 unless we are prepared to revive the doc- 
 trine that real objects are things in them- 
 selves which cannot exhibit their qualities 
 in human experience. 
 
 7. We can now take a further step. 
 We have seen that value, worth, or good- 
 ness is a certain quality of objects, bona 
 fide belonging to them, but especially re- 
 vealed in their manifestations within the 
 attitude of human minds (the minds of 
 finite spirits). Why has it been thought 
 that goodness in the strict and ultimate 
 sense is reducible to goodness of the human 
 will, that is, of will as manifested in finite 
 spirits ? What connection is there, if any, 
 between the quality revealed in judgments 
 of value and the quality present in the will 
 that wills the good ? 
 
 " Nothing can possibly be conceived,
 
 VALUE AND GOODNESS 59 
 
 in the world or out of it, which can be 
 considered good without quaUfication ex- 
 cept a good will." 
 
 Why does this sentence come home 
 directly to the hearts of many men, and 
 why have great philosophers accepted a 
 view akin to it or founded upon it ? We 
 have seen that, prima facie, value need not 
 be willed. It need not be good in the 
 current sense of being a quality of human 
 conduct. It is prima facie a large and 
 general feature of objects of experience, 
 and the good will, the will for good, may 
 even be held good as a means to realising 
 it, rather than value be held reducible to 
 the simple case of the moral will. 
 
 But there is something more to be said. 
 It is well, I think, to begin the investiga- 
 tion of values from the large and general 
 experience of all that man does value or 
 approve. But having begun it so, it is 
 also well to push the enquiry to the end. 
 The quality of value may have more con- 
 ditions than we have noted. Can ob- 
 jects conceived in isolation, for example,
 
 60 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 abstracted from the context of experience, 
 possess the quaUty as we have defined it ? 
 It has been said that " all other values are 
 relative to value for, of, or in a person." 
 Does this suggest anything which we have 
 so far failed to consider ? Is value really 
 intelligible apart from incorporation in a 
 whole where its quality and structure can 
 deploy itself and be appreciated ? Sup- "^^ 
 posing that we mean by the good will not 
 an objectless aspiration, , but a character 
 complete in many-sidedness, while moulded 
 and stimulated throughout by a compre- 
 hensive idea of perfection, is it not plain ■ 
 that at least in such a personality all 
 values must receive a completeness which 
 otherwise they could not attain ? Can 
 any value really, as has been argued, be 
 itself by itself ? 
 
 We seem here to have developed a 
 double-edged suggestion. Moral goodness 
 will after all be the essence and centre of 
 value ; but then moral goodness will be 
 much more than the good will used to 
 mean.
 
 m VALUE AND GOODNESS 61 
 
 8. Let us draw out this suggestion for a 
 moment. 
 
 Truth, for instance, is a value. And we 
 know that bizarre suggestions have been 
 made for reducing all immorality to false- 
 hood. If you steal, you are asserting 
 something to be yours which is not so ; 
 and so again, if you corrupt another man's 
 wife. This is an obvious encroachment of 
 truth on morals ; but we perceive, I think, 
 a certain affinity between the two provinces. 
 To possess truth is indeed not the same as 
 to be truthful ; and to be truthful cannot 
 be expanded into being wholly good. Yet 
 to possess truth is to be, in a certain 
 province of our living, regulated by sound 
 and comprehensive ideas, to be free from 
 discord, narrowness, and superstition, to 
 be, in short, so far organised as a spiritual 
 creature should be. This can certainly be 
 regarded as a region of morality, even if 
 an outlying region conveniently designated 
 as a rule by a different name. So it is 
 with the valuation of beauty. In it we 
 are quiet, sane, and harmonious. And
 
 62 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 thus we are led on to the coherence of 
 all the qualities which go to a complete 
 personality, and we recognise that their 
 separate names are provisional and popular 
 distinctions, but that really and genuinely 
 each is such as to presuppose all the rest. 
 This is especially true in a social whole. 
 All minds throughout the community give 
 and take their colour from each other, or, 
 more truly, partake in different degrees of 
 the one social mind and character. None 
 are purely instrumental. Every means, so 
 far at least as it is a mind, partakes of the 
 nature of the end. For the end is the 
 whole of which the so-called means is a 
 member, and each learns from others their 
 special sides of goodness. Our popular 
 moral doctrines are in nothing more defec- 
 tive than in their lack of this insight, which 
 to the Greek moralist was so transparent. 
 I quote ^ an illustration of this : " We must 
 have observed in any such form of conduct 
 as an act of beneficence or mimificencc, 
 how infalHbly the churl in spirit betrays 
 
 1 From The Principle of Individuality and Value, p. 397.
 
 in VALUE AND GOODNESS 68 
 
 himself, to use Aristotle's phrase, in the 
 quantity or degree or time or place or 
 manner of his action. Only the true 
 motive gives you the perfect act. The 
 brave man again ; how hard it is to be 
 brave and gentle and modest and calm and 
 wise. The brave and noble soul, and it 
 alone, will ring true in every side and 
 aspect of its act ; time, place, manner, 
 degree, behaviour to persons ; all the 
 characters which make up an act whose 
 quality takes form in quantity, and is 
 adapted to the situation with a beautiful 
 adequateness, neither too little nor too 
 much, like the petals of a rose. ... If the 
 motive or attitude of soul were in any way 
 wrong or imperfect the act would betray 
 it at once by passing over into some ex- 
 aggeration or deficiency at some one of its 
 innumerable aspects and peculiarities. 
 What should be courage, for example, 
 would be vulgar, or ostentatious, or rash, 
 or false, or wanting to itself in resolution 
 or tranquillity or gentleness." 
 
 It is only a character thus complete that
 
 64 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap 
 
 could possess the good will in perfection ; 
 it is only in a good will so perfected that 
 each separate value could really come to 
 its own. A lesion anywhere in the soul 
 must affect its receptivity throughout, and 
 a sore in the society is a lesion in every soul 
 that is a member of it, as a communal 
 greatness exalts every particular mind. 
 
 Thus it would seem that it is only in a 
 full experience that value or goodness can 
 be real with a complete development ; and 
 that a full experience can only be present 
 in a complete personality. Under other 
 conditions the value of objects may be 
 recognised, but in proportion to the defect- 
 tiveness of the conditions they must be 
 truncated and curtailed of their attributes. 
 " Minor moralities " the values less neces- 
 sary to social existence might be called by 
 some, and life can no doubt dispense with 
 them. Others would retort that the 
 cardinal virtues themselves are but instru- 
 mental, and that the enjoyment of beauty 
 and of human kindliness form the primary 
 worth of life. It is not difficult to
 
 m VALUE AND GOODNESS 65 
 
 estimate these counter -conceptions. All 
 the goods or values are instrumental to 
 each other ; all are cognate expressions of 
 the same category. It is an error to give 
 preference to any as the exclusive end, for 
 it is only in the whole of being that each 
 can find full expansion. " The world of 
 reality is the world of values." 
 
 It seems to follow that there can hardly 
 be existence without some value. Such 
 an existence would in principle be one 
 which could earn no recognition and claim 
 no attention. Whatever fills a place and 
 occupies thought and feeling must ipso 
 facto, however slightly, present a value. 
 That individuals may, in fact, not recognise 
 it is merely a case of the narrowness of the 
 particular finite mind.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 UNVISITED TOMBS 
 
 " The number who hved faithfully a hidden life, 
 and rest in unvisited tombs." 
 
 1. We thought it not enough to say that a 
 man should " Hve for others." It seemed 
 necessary to indicate more positively what 
 sort of thing, if he would live well, he was 
 to do for them and indeed for himself, who 
 could not be omitted from his own duty 
 and welfare. Thus we were led to con- 
 sider the social unity, and ultimately the 
 great values which seemed to be its quint- 
 essence, though not directly social, not 
 appeals or services from some of us to 
 others as to social units. Though personal 
 in quality these great values appeared to 
 be impersonal in function and service, and 
 
 66
 
 UNVISITED TOMBS 67 
 
 in reaching the core of social good we found 
 ourselves beyond directly social trans- 
 actions. Beauty, knowledge, and universal 
 love, though the birthright of all, are not 
 so constituted as to appeal directly to the 
 multitude. 
 
 Thus, in that high region of the un- 
 questionable values, we found ourselves 
 using in the main illustrations from the 
 most exalted gifts of the individual, and 
 from his most perfected life. Even his 
 morality, though a central and universal 
 character of human living, took an ideal- 
 ised form, as we attempted to see its connec- 
 tion and interdependence with the system 
 of those qualities which we value most. 
 
 But this result ought to leave the student 
 discontented. He has been driven back, 
 in a sense, to the individualism which 
 he had rejected. He has been forced to 
 find the centre of life in achievements and 
 utterances which come only in special con- 
 ditions and through exalted saintliness or 
 genius. His own scientific convenience, so 
 to speak, has promoted this result. In
 
 68 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 considering what value is, he naturally 
 turns to achievements which stand out 
 from ordinary life, and whose nature is 
 the constant object of contemplation and 
 analysis. Poetry, music, the plastic arts, 
 all perceptions of beauty, the work of 
 science and philosophy, or, if he reflects on 
 society, the ideas of statesmen, publicists, 
 and moralists, lie near at hand for him to 
 utilise. Religion, too, if he is wise enough 
 to appeal to it, comes to him in a crystal- 
 lised form, from great saints and prophets 
 and preachers, from the scriptures of many 
 faithsj and from the highest poets. 
 
 In all this material, which has been said, 
 and rightly said, to form the characteristic 
 province of philosophy, the philosophical 
 student feels himself somewhat withdrawn 
 and remote from the common life — common 
 in a double sense — in which actual humanity 
 is concerned. And yet surely he is right, 
 is indeed uttering a tautology, when he 
 says that existence which presents no value 
 is worthless. His view tends to be aristo- 
 cratic and exclusive ; not in the least, I
 
 IV UNVISITED TOMBS 69 
 
 think, through his intention, in which the 
 impersonaUty of values — the widow's cruse 
 of goods — bulks much larger than the 
 special personality which is their condi- 
 tion ; but mainly for the reasons of con- 
 venience and facility in exposition which 
 lie in the conspicuousness of the supreme 
 excellences, and the logical purity which 
 attention focussed upon them has given to 
 their theoretical analysis. 
 
 But the result is in some sense indi- 
 vidualistic and aristocratic. The theory of 
 values is directed to high achievement ; 
 and in speaking of man's function, his 
 " work," his raison d^etre and hope or 
 right of continuance, the student is apt 
 to fix his eye on the leaders of mankind 
 in great vocations, and on their nearest 
 followers. Though well aware that their 
 work is for mankind he finds a difficulty in 
 exhibiting the value or values that come by 
 and through mankind. Perhaps the present 
 writer may tell a story against himself 
 which illustrates this weakness of the 
 scholar. In a youthful college essay on
 
 70 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 some such topic as the extension of the 
 franchise he had given vent to extreme 
 hopes and theories respecting general educa- 
 tion and the " ladder from the elementary 
 school to the university." But from his 
 college tutor, the sturdy democrat, T. H. 
 Green, his speculations only elicited the 
 remark : " If you imply that no one is fit 
 to have a vote who has not had a uni- 
 versity education I don't agree with you." ^ 
 This conception of function and value — 
 or rather this natural bias in elucidating 
 it, for it amounts to no more than that — 
 has more important echoes, perhaps, than 
 one might suppose. Particularly, I sug- 
 gest, it is powerful in the current concep- 
 tion of a future life. " Man is immortal 
 till his work is done." One may ask a 
 distinguished student, free from theological 
 bias, to tell one as frankly as possible what 
 
 ^ Tliis criticism ought not to be recorded without reference 
 to his well-known aspiration that " the time will come when 
 the phrase, ' education of a gentleman ' will have lost its 
 meaning, because the sort of education which alone makes 
 the gentleman in every true sense will be within the reach 
 of all." — Nettleship's Biography of T. H. Green, p. 80.
 
 IV UNVISITED TOMBS H 
 
 is his fundamental desire and expectation 
 about a future life. And one is not un- 
 likely to get the answer : " Well, I should 
 like to complete my work." A feeling of 
 this kind is also noticeable with reference 
 to the promise of youth cut short in war. 
 " How necessary to think of such splendid 
 forces as continuing their work elsewhere." 
 I will return to this idea. There is also 
 the very real difficulty of discerning a 
 quality of humanity which may command 
 our loyalty and devotion, coextensive with 
 the actual multitude of mankind, especially 
 if past and future lives are to be included. 
 This is a difficulty which hardly can be 
 disposed of altogether, though its arduous- 
 ness may in some degree be mitigated by 
 what we are about to say. 
 
 2. No doubt the recognised forms of 
 social relations and intercourse, involving 
 loyalty and affection, are without difficulty 
 admitted as a value. They meet one 
 whole side of our being, and obviously 
 have in themselves a quality of satis- 
 factoriness. They actually arise in man's
 
 72 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap 
 
 endeavours to confront with increasing 
 completeness his growing wants and needs. 
 But even this recognition, it appears to 
 me, is inadequate to the value implied in 
 humanity as such, if indeed there is a 
 value which is thus rightly designated, 
 instead of being merged in the worth of 
 Nature in the largest sense, which certainly 
 must in some way be taken into our 
 account. 
 
 For want of some conception of this 
 latter kind, we get two antithetical errors 
 in dealing with the social whole. Some 
 apply the idea of means and ends sharply 
 on one side, some on the other. The 
 justification and worth of life, we are told, 
 is in the high achievements of the foremost 
 men or castes, and the bulk and multitude 
 have only a derivative value, from their 
 position as a sine qua non of these great 
 things. An opposite error — for, though a 
 well-meaning error, it is one in principle — 
 is that of which the writer was self- 
 convicted above. Man, it urges, must not 
 be a mere means ; and as value lies only in
 
 IV UNVISITED TOMBS 73 
 
 high achievement, such achievement and 
 its condition must be made the lot of every 
 mortal. We are very willing that this 
 should become a truth, and it may be one 
 already, far more profoundly than we can 
 know. But it does not adequately cover 
 the ground, and there is something more 
 fundamental to be said. 
 
 We want to find an expression for the 
 value of mere humanity ; for that which 
 is present wherever there is man. We have 
 certainly made a step towards what we 
 want in reflecting on the contagiousness 
 of values, and the truth that in any com- 
 munity the units and strata, however 
 apparently divided into means and ends, 
 borrow colour and character from each 
 other — the " highest " from the " lowest " 
 no less than otherwise. 
 
 A first suggestion comes from applying 
 this idea to the great community of the 
 universe. Our most comprehensive con- 
 ception of human values, it may be, is not 
 to be sharply limited to the species of homo 
 sapiens. Traditional and crystallised re-
 
 74 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS cha^. 
 
 ligion has perhaps never played us a more 
 injurious trick than when, by dwelUng 
 on our ultimate destinies, it drew an 
 absolute demarcation between ourselves 
 and the lower animals. Even if we adopt 
 the view, which has certainly a measure 
 of truth, that it is in intelligent finite 
 spirits, and in the filling of their minds, 
 that nature becomes most fully what 
 it is capable of being, still the mode 
 and type of such a filling is not confined 
 to the mpst highly individual among 
 human attainments. Here we might be 
 thought to have in mind the fashionable 
 topic of the subliminal self; but without 
 entering into controversy I will only say 
 that what I am speaking of is something 
 simpler and more evident. At any rate, 
 then, as between social classes, so in the 
 community of the universe, the higher 
 and the lower both nourish and colour one 
 another, and the total resulting experience 
 is far richer and more solid than it could 
 be if per impossibile any part of the whole 
 could be removed.
 
 UNVISITED TOMBS 75 
 
 But there is again more than this, or 
 at least a further special emphasis on one 
 aspect of it. It is not merely that our 
 minds are filled from nature and from our 
 sympathy with the lower organic world. 
 This might be said in a sense of every 
 finite mind in its most lofty creations. 
 What we are trying to call attention to is 
 a unity which underlies this filling and 
 forms its unreflective foundation ; some- 
 thing which it is difficult to name except 
 by some such colourless and uninteresting 
 phrase as "The sense of the unity of things." 
 Creation, a great mystic said after his 
 conversion, " had a new smell.'' ^ Some- 
 thing between these two extreme expres- 
 sions is the rendering we desire. First 
 there are the minimum basal facts of 
 human life itself ; love and labour and 
 the family or its simplest equivalent. 
 And then follows the recognition of all 
 this or rather the direct touch with it, 
 as rooted in external nature and in con- 
 tinuity with the animal mind ; what is 
 reflected in a very exalted form by Words-
 
 76 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 worth, and with more affinity to the 
 earthy quaUty we are now considering, in 
 Meredith's nature poems. The spirit in 
 nature I take to be a reaUty, though not 
 separately self - existent. It is hardly 
 necessary to cite in illustration the texts 
 which, I suppose, as later utterances often 
 push home points of a creed, elicited the 
 possibihties of Christianity in a slightly 
 new direction.^ 
 
 Here we are led to reflect upon the 
 values which man inherits without being 
 able to name any benefactor to whom he 
 owes them.2 And these, in a word, com- 
 prise nearly the whole of his life. For 
 the name itself, even when it can be named, 
 indicates in a great measure a focus of 
 
 ^ From the Logia : " Raise the stone, and there thou shalt 
 find me ; cleave the wood, and there am I " ; or, less known, 
 I think, " Who are those that draw us to the kingdom, if the 
 kingdom is in heaven ? The fowls of the air, and all beasts 
 that are under the earth and upon the earth, and the fishes 
 of the sea ; these are they which draw you, and the Kingdom 
 of Heaven is within you, and whosoever shall know himself 
 shall find it." 
 
 * Value and Destiny, 263. The reference of a trade to 
 a god as originator is a suggestive meeting-point of the 
 nameless and the divine.
 
 IV UNVISITED TOMBS 77 
 
 origins and surroundings, whose real 
 growth is beyond analysis. Inventions 
 are in part no doubt creations, but in a 
 great part they are growths. The trades ^ 
 the habits, the solid virtues which are the 
 main quality of humanity all come to us 
 from the nameless ones. And more than 
 this ; they come not from the nameless ones 
 as a crowd of individuals, but from unities, 
 families, communities of all sorts and sizes, 
 in which the spirit of things has taken 
 form and grown. In all this medium of 
 unity, which, though unreflective, is not 
 subliminal, we have an undeniable human 
 value of a direct and universal type, in 
 which there cannot be a human creature 
 who is not a partaker in some mode or 
 degree. 
 
 Another side of the same character is 
 the touch of the trades and crafts with 
 
 ^ I repeat from the reference in the last note part of 
 Goethe's lines on the mason : 
 
 The mason's ways are 
 A type of existence, 
 And his persistence 
 Is as the days are 
 Of men in the world.
 
 78 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 external nature. It is easy here to go 
 astray into sentimentalism ; but any one 
 who has noted the facts will not easily 
 surrender the conviction that here the 
 unity of things finds a peculiar and valu- 
 able utterance. It might be fanciful to 
 say that the quality of the sea, the forest, 
 the mountain, or the arable field, passes 
 directly into minds and bodies occupied 
 with them. But that corresponding 
 qualities, tinged with some of the nobility 
 of these external features, are elicited by 
 preoccupation with them seems to be a fact 
 which admits of no doubt, and is, of course, 
 perfectly natural. All dealings with ex- 
 ternals must promote relevant qualities. 
 It seems sentimentalism to speak of " the 
 veracities of nature," for nature makes 
 no assertions. But there is something 
 which everybody feels who has touched 
 constructively the material world, some- 
 thing to which and in which his heart 
 goes out to meet it, and through which he 
 feels it his fellow-worker and almost his 
 comrade. This is a value — this spirit of
 
 UNVISITED TOMBS 79 
 
 insight, sympathy, reliance, and resigna- 
 tion, in face of the course of nature — which 
 is in all humanity, and which all humanity 
 realises, I believe, as a unity transcending 
 its mere self, and blending it with a wider 
 world. 
 
 And a word should be said of our 
 relations to the lower animals. That it 
 reduces mankind, in their hope and destiny, 
 to the level of the beasts that perish, has 
 always been a cutting reproach against 
 paganism or infidelity. But even if level- 
 ling up were here altogether inconceivable, 
 it could not be right to deny a con- 
 tinuity which obviously exists. Everyone 
 who has had a friend among dogs or horses 
 or birds must have felt himself enlarged 
 in sympathy and in faith and courage by 
 having a representative, so to speak, at the 
 court of Pan. Just because it lacks the 
 intelligence directed to a whole beyond 
 the individual, which forms the glory and 
 the imperfection of man, the lower animal 
 carries in itself a peculiar anticipation of 
 the Absolute. The dog which runs beside
 
 80 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 one seems a middle term and an inter- 
 preter between one's worrying mind and 
 the tranquil life of things. This quiet- 
 ness and simple trustfulness of an animal 
 which is once your friend is surely the 
 secret of its attractiveness. It is, I have 
 fancied, as if the Absolute came to eat out 
 of your hand. It is a little world or king- 
 dom, foreign and unbiassed by interests, ^ 
 which recognises you of its sovereign in- 
 dulgence. See two or three people in a 
 garden, and how gratified that one is to 
 whom a robin makes advances, just as if 
 it were a child or a king that did so. 
 
 And with joy the stars perform their shining, 
 And the sea its long moon-silvered roll ; 
 For themselves they live, nor pine with noting 
 All the fever of some differing soul. 
 
 This, perhaps, we can neither assert nor 
 deny ; but it verges on the pathetic fallac)^ 
 Of the lower animal, on the other hand, 
 something of the kind is a simple truth. 
 And if the brutes that perish do not make 
 
 1 I do not think it spoils the relation that they are at- 
 tracted by food. This is not always so, and when it is, the 
 friendship becomes in the end a separate thing.
 
 UNVISITED TOMBS 81 
 
 each for himself the enormous claims of 
 our spiritual individualism, it may be 
 that, without lowering our standard, we 
 have something to learn from them in 
 humility and resignation. That is, in 
 what, translated into our mentality, must 
 bear these characters, though in them it 
 is a sheer consequence of a simpler mode 
 of mind. 
 
 An analogous set of considerations can 
 be applied, and must in some sense be 
 applied, as Matthew Arnold's verses showed 
 us, to the whole of external nature. It 
 forms the world we live in ; it imparts 
 qualities — I do not say its qualities — to us ; 
 we may shun as a fallacy individualistic 
 animism, but that through nature in a 
 great degree we imbibe the faith which 
 makes us one with the universe it seems 
 impossible to doubt. 
 
 The spirit of the worm beneath the sod 
 In love and worship blends itself with God. 
 
 In seeking, then, the most universal 
 value of mere humanity as such, we have 
 found something more, something with 
 
 G
 
 82 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 which it is continuous, and from which it 
 is inseparable. And this something seems 
 to be a sense of rehance, of belonging, and 
 of absorption, which has kinship with the 
 essence of religion. Humanism 'per se, and 
 cut off from this pervading sense, is arti- 
 ficial perhaps, and unstable. " The high 
 Renaissance pride and glow are apt to 
 leave this bitter taste in the end. Absorp- 
 tion in man as the centre of the world and 
 the hero of existence leads certainly to 
 loss of that sanity and sweetness which 
 an openness to the abiding presence of the 
 non-human living world around us infuses 
 into life. It is not by that absorption that 
 we shall find the full meaning or animating 
 power of our Western faith that in man 
 the divinity is revealed." ^ 
 
 The neglect of these most general values 
 is the key to much pessimism, the out- 
 growth of unintentional but ignorant arro- 
 gance. The average reader must surely 
 stand amazed at times, when he realises 
 a common literary or publicistic attitude 
 
 1 J^aurence Binyon, Painting in the Far East, p. 24,
 
 UNVISITED TOMBS 83 
 
 to all forms of life in succession, to the 
 slum, the suburb, the country village, 
 the great country house, the industrial or 
 plutocratic city. If we add to these " the 
 middle -class paradise " of the summer 
 assembly at Chautauqua Lake, as treated 
 with a kindly contempt by William James,^ 
 we shall observe that every typical form 
 of human life, whether with squalor and 
 misery or without it, lies open to destruc- 
 tive criticism from the standpoint of those 
 lofty values which we described as universal 
 in potency but not general in appreciation. 
 Now one does not suggest that this criticism 
 is to be repudiated as baseless. One does 
 suggest that it is under grave misappre- 
 hension as to its own importance. 
 
 " He cares for the big things — ambition, 
 popularity, a prominent position, luxury. 
 He will enjoy being a personage, and 
 having wealth at his command. For my 
 part, I care infinitely more for the small 
 things of life — love, friendship, sympathy. 
 
 " ' The small things ! Good Lord I ' said 
 
 » Talks to Teachers, etc., p. 268 ff.
 
 84 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 the bishop, and his jaw dropped. He also 
 dropped the subject." ^ 
 
 Miss Octavia Hill, with a life -long 
 experience in the poorest homes, although 
 an impassioned advocate of beauty and 
 knowledge, spoke in the same sense : that 
 our urgency to promote these special 
 values is because they need promotion. 
 The greatest things of all no one can 
 take away. This is the mood for which 
 humanity as such is a value, and the line, 
 as we saw, cannot be drawn even there. 
 
 3. These considerations have an echo 
 in our attitude to death and survival. The 
 student or statesman who longs for a 
 continuance in which he may " complete 
 his work " — some task in the universe 
 analogous to his function on earth, is 
 thinking mainly of those high values of 
 which great individuals are the vehicle. 
 One dares not say that he is wrong ; but 
 the consideration of the vast masses of 
 humanity suggests supplementary ideas. 
 If not the pre-eminent, yet the widest 
 
 ^ Prisoners, by Miss Cholmondeley, p. 113.
 
 UNVISITED TOMBS 85 
 
 work of the world is nameless, general, 
 indivisible. To the student who uttered 
 his desire to complete his work elsewhere 
 some of us would hold it natural to answer, 
 " But no man completes his work himself." 
 The honour and responsibility of an 
 achievement can never truly and justly 
 be laid upon any individual, not even in 
 the crystallised achievements of poetry, 
 knowledge, beauty. Still less can it be 
 so considered when we reflect upon the 
 general indivisible spirit of things. 
 
 To any one strongly influenced by 
 reflections like these, the ending of life 
 on earth presents itself not quite as it did 
 to the student whom we imagined above. 
 Such a one is undogmatic as to what may 
 come, but he needs no primary reliance 
 on individual survival as instrumental to 
 continuing or completing in his own person 
 his earthly functions or their analogue. 
 He does not even feel that he is losing hold 
 on his work, and preparing to bequeath 
 it to a successor, either another on earth 
 or himself in a new life. Rather it
 
 86 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 seems to him to be resuming its absorption 
 in the general thought and effort of the 
 world, from which, as ascribed to some one 
 worker, it was discriminated for a time 
 only, and that most arbitrarily and super- 
 ficially. It is passing away on every side, 
 he feels, not by death and destruction, but 
 by transformation into kindred forms of 
 the spirit through which the unity of things 
 affirms itself in humanity. If the sea in 
 which Da\ddson's runnable stag found rest 
 and refuge were not to be felt as an 
 enemy, but as a friendly medium into 
 which the brave deer's spirit passed freely 
 and gladly away — and something of this 
 kind, I fancy, was in the poet's thought — 
 it might be taken as a figure of what is 
 meant. The work, which was never separ- 
 ate from the general effort, grows at every 
 point into the general vitaUty which sur- 
 rounds it ; and in merging itself in the 
 common task and becoming nameless, like 
 the mason's or the ploughman's labour 
 and habit or the citizen's traditional 
 loyalty, it resumes its indefeasible right
 
 IV UNVISITED TOMBS 87 
 
 as a factor, however trivial, in the general 
 human value. In a word, he does not feel 
 himself to be dying, but to be re-living at 
 countless points in a new life, infinitely 
 greater than his own. Nearly all mankind 
 rest in unvisited tombs, and leave behind 
 them a common undistinguished work, 
 and it is the value of this general life that 
 we have been trying to appreciate and 
 aspiring to share.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 ON " DOUBTING THE REALITY OF EVIL " 
 
 It is one of the everyday jeers or impeach- 
 ments against students of philosophy that 
 they doubt the reaHty of evil. It is urg^d 
 that to do this is to invite moral apathy, 
 to admit that evil is something of the 
 nature of good, and so to weaken the 
 moral will, whereas the only way to think 
 of evil truly, and without danger to 
 morality — " to think of it as good," the 
 paradox is accepted — is to consider it as 
 a-bsolutely and finally evil, without any 
 kind of affinity to good. 
 
 Let us trace this line of thought and see 
 where it would lead us. 
 
 1. You are paltering with evil — this 
 is the starting-point — if you do not regard 
 
 88
 
 CH.V REALITY OF EVIL 89 
 
 it as absolutely real. Grant that it may- 
 be " overruled " with good results, e.g. in 
 history, still you are in moral danger if 
 you confuse the instrument with the 
 result. You must not only not do evil 
 that good may come. You must not in 
 any way acknowledge kinship between the 
 evil instrument and the good consequence. 
 As evil has no good in it, the war be- 
 tween the two is to be a war of extermina- 
 tion. Its aim is to extinguish evil by the 
 triumph of good. As there is a great deal 
 of evil, the extinction is drawn out into a 
 process which we hope to be a progress. 
 How do we regard this progress ? Is 
 progress going on for ever the end, i.e. 
 the best we are to hope for ? Or do we 
 believe in the total extinction of evil one 
 day by the triumph of good ? And if we 
 believe in this, is it to take place in time, 
 in our world as we know it, or beyond time, 
 in another world, whose conditions are 
 presumably different ? Then what about 
 the past evil, if at a certain point evil 
 ceases ; or about the evil continuing in
 
 90 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 this world, if it goes on here, and only 
 ceases elsewhere ? The answer has usually 
 been " compensation." There must be 
 compensation, or the universe is funda- 
 mentally unjust, and the evil in it is not 
 only real but so far triumphant, a positive 
 quantity not in any way cancelled ; pain 
 and badness which we must simply grin and 
 bear, putting up perhaps the best fight 
 we can in detail. Though, indeed, if there 
 is no " recompense," it is very doubtful 
 if we can be expected to put up a fight. 
 Thus to believe in a recompense has often 
 been held necessary if you would have 
 credit given to your testimony on oath, or 
 be admitted to serve as a magistrate. The 
 moral government of the world, of which 
 we elders were taught in our youth, was 
 by rewards and punishments. 
 
 2. Here we see a strange medley of 
 fact and improbability. We will begin by 
 pointing out some distinctions. 
 
 " Evil is real." Take as types of it 
 pain and the bad will. These are facts. 
 All of us experience both of them pretty
 
 REALITY OF EVIL 91 
 
 nearly every day. And the lower animals 
 are continually experiencing pain. 
 
 " Evil is absolutely real, and has no 
 kinship with good." " Absolutely " ought 
 to mean something. It should mean at 
 least, " according to a character wholly 
 its own, unaffected by relations or con- 
 nections, what can never be seen or thought 
 of otherwise." Of course such a thing 
 would be a world of itself ; it is a contradic- 
 tion to treat it as a part within a larger 
 world. And so it looks very improbable 
 that anything absolutely real can be ex- 
 tinguished at all. 
 
 But we shall perhaps find out what is 
 meant if we proceed. " Evil can be over- 
 ruled into good, but you must not there- 
 fore think it akin to good." If you do, 
 you are in danger of taking evil for good 
 and weakening your moral will. War is 
 an example. It may give rise to excellent 
 by-products, but you are not to say it 
 is good, or to be weakened in your will 
 to prevent it. Absolutely real, then, is 
 what has its own nature and must not be
 
 92 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 explained away into anything else. Evil 
 is evil, and you must not explain it away. 
 It is positively effective, has its own quality ; 
 it is not true to say, " It is null, is nought." 
 This seems to be what " absolutely " 
 means ; otherwise it would mean too much 
 for the doctrine which uses it, that is, it 
 would mean that evil was ipso facto un- 
 conquerable and the moral hope would be 
 gone. So far we assent. We are not to 
 palter with evil and call it something 
 else. 
 
 Now for the consequences. One possible 
 result was, " The End is Progress," a 
 motto one has seen written up in a chapel 
 of advanced thought. You are bound to 
 fight evil, but you have no ground to think 
 it can be totally extinguished. If it is 
 absolutely real, as we saw, it cannot. If it 
 is just a fact, we can only tell by trying. 
 You observe it diminished here and there, 
 and there is probably, as we shall see,^ 
 
 1 This is anticipating; but the common belief could not 
 be made plausible for a moment without something of this 
 kind. See below, p. 115 ff.
 
 y REALITY OF EVIL 93 
 
 something beyond your observation, which 
 makes you beheve that it is in some degree 
 being got the better of. So you acquiesce 
 in progress as the end, that is, as all you 
 can hope that the world can attain. Obvi- 
 ously, if taken literally, the words are a 
 contradiction. Unending progress cannot 
 be the end. The spirit of this meliorism 
 is in some ways fine, but fundamentally 
 unhappy. It is summed up in the slang 
 phrase, " Do your d — d duty." 
 
 But again, if we take a distinction we 
 can see a profound truth in this conse- 
 quence. In the finite creature, as he 
 stands, it is impossible that evil should be 
 extinguished. He is so limited in body 
 and mind. How can he become invulner- 
 able to pain, and sure of seeking satis- 
 faction in what satisfies ? It is a true 
 conviction that evil must be overcome. 
 It is a true conviction that in us as we 
 stand it cannot be overcome. It is when 
 we weld these truths together and say, 
 " It shall then be overcome in our likes one 
 day — after an unending progress," that we
 
 94 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 have flatly contradicted both of them. We 
 have said, " It will be overcome at the 
 Greek Kalends in om- world without any 
 radical change of its nature." 
 
 Or, once more, the progress is to have 
 an end in time. In this world, indeed, 
 hardly. The reasons for the unending 
 progress have disposed of that possibility. 
 But in another world under different 
 conditions. This again bears witness to 
 a truth. If evil is extinguished, it must 
 be in some way which gets over the 
 difficulty of our feeble body and mind, in 
 some way different in principle from our 
 daily progress. But then, what about the 
 evil of this world, which is to go on, or at 
 least has gone on for ages ? We were told 
 it was absolute ; we admitted it was real. 
 Would a future perfection cancel it ? 
 How could this be ? 
 
 The answer was, through compensation. 
 There will be a supernatural recompense 
 which will cancel previous pain, and fulfil 
 all unfulfilled moral striving. The lower 
 animals, indeed, hardly enter into the
 
 V REALITY OF EVIL 95 
 
 insurance scheme ; but, on the whole, the 
 recompense, as we saw, is necessary to 
 make the universe seem just, and justice 
 is the ultimate law. Here again we have 
 some truth. Evil, as a fact and act, 
 cannot be undone. It is rooted in the 
 finite creation. This is admitted when 
 you appeal to compensation. Compensa- 
 tion is not annulment. It is a pis alter, 
 employed when annulment is impossible. 
 Still, by admitting compensation you show 
 that you desire annulment and half believe 
 in it. Something more, something which 
 the first experience of pain and badness 
 does not offer, is to be brought in, and 
 the " absolutely real " evil is in some way 
 to have its sting drawn. 
 
 Finally, we may note the consequence 
 to heroism and self-sacrifice. In principle, 
 if you admit compensation as a working 
 necessity, morality is done away. You 
 are afraid to admit that self-sacrifice is a 
 reality and heroism a genuine fact. You 
 have entertained a " why ? " which is 
 fatal to the moral attitude, which at least
 
 96 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 demands that good shall be aimed at for 
 its own sake. 
 
 And all this comes from confusing " is 
 a fact " with " is absolutely real." Evil 
 must be overcome, although it is a fact. 
 But if it is " absolutely real " it cannot be 
 overcome ; if it is a fact rooted in our 
 nature it cannot be overcome apart from 
 some realised change in us ; and in trying 
 to get round these results all these make- 
 shifts and contradictions are incurred. In 
 the whole point of view the one thing that 
 survives and is solid is that evil is evil, and 
 cries out to be overcome. 
 
 3. The line of thought we have been 
 tracing is that of mere morality. And it 
 is well to note that this is partly a theory. 
 Ordinary life is not despairing ; but if its 
 experience bore out that line of thought, 
 it would be pure despair, and indeed could 
 not be lived. Our imperfections, all of 
 which are evil, would be too heavy for us 
 to bear. We are full of error and selfish- 
 ness. Unless we knew, in some way, that 
 there is a way out, an escape from our
 
 V REALITY OF EVIL 97 
 
 badness, here and now, without our be- 
 coming perfect beings which we see to be 
 impossible, we could not live on.^ 
 
 And it is noteworthy, and should be 
 helpful to plain persons, that this narrowly 
 " moral " line of reflection has always been 
 held to be that of the fanatic, and has been 
 condemned by the heart of peoples and 
 by great religions — perhaps much the same 
 thing. Plain men and women, though well 
 aware of their imperfections, are yet, as 
 a rule, not at odds with reality, and do 
 not believe that in being as they are they 
 are exhibiting moral apathy. It is not 
 an accident that " morality " in a certain 
 sense has been the hete noire of religion ; 
 not, for example, that Scott has put in 
 the mouth of a woman of almost perfect 
 saintliness such words as these : " Mony 
 a hungry, starving creature, when he sits 
 down on a Sunday forenoon to get some- 
 
 1 If I understand the attitude of Friends aright, this 
 perfectibility of the individual in time is a weak spot in it — • 
 a sheer contradiction. It is motived, I suppose, by the dread 
 of moral apathy which also sustains the view we are con- 
 sidering. 
 
 H
 
 98 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 thing that might warm him to the great 
 work, has a dry clatter o' morahty driven 
 about his lugs." ^ The characteristic term 
 for the preaching so stigmatised, which he 
 repeats by her mouth more than once, is 
 " fizzenless," that is fushionless, foisonless, 
 without sap or life, without the principle 
 of nutrition.^ It is not ill-meant towards 
 men and women whom I highly esteem, 
 and of whose movement I was a member 
 for a considerable time, if I venture to see 
 inevitably and by no personal fault some 
 such character in the " ethical culture " pro- 
 paganda, as also in the Positivist doctrine.^ 
 
 What is it that is, I think by experience, 
 as also according to theory, " fizzenless " 
 in all these reflective theories of the duty 
 of extinguishing evil by actual progress ? 
 
 I remember hearing the late Sir Alfred 
 Lyall say, in insisting on the underlying 
 unity of Indian religion which free sym- 
 
 1 Old Mortality, p. 398, ed. of 1871. 
 
 2 Andrew Fairservice applies it to rubbishy manure. 
 
 * Cf. note above on the Friends. There seems to be a 
 common reason why none of these sects can get to the heart 
 of a nation.
 
 V REALITY OF EVIL 99 
 
 bolic interpretation made possible, that 
 if you asked any member of that religion, 
 from the most learned teacher to the most 
 ignorant peasant, what he expected from 
 it, he would answer with the same word, 
 "Liberation." What did Scott's old 
 woman expect to be emphasised in the 
 Calvinistic preaching her heart yearned 
 for ? What did John Bunyan's Christian 
 expect when he carried his burden to the 
 foot of the Cross ? Again " Liberation," 
 was it not ? or what in more doctrinal 
 language has been called salvation. The 
 precise nature of this hope and expectation 
 will occupy us below. The present point 
 is merely that it exists ; that the common 
 and instinctive conviction pronounces evil, 
 though ineradicable for us, yet not to be 
 absolute, and to be conquerable, but other- 
 wise than by progress ; that this is the 
 fundamental faith both of the social mind 
 and of all great religions, and that the 
 sentence is true which tells us, " Make the 
 moral point of view absolute, and you have 
 become not merely irrational, but have
 
 100 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 broken with every considerable religion." ^ 
 To do so is, I repeat, an outcome of theory 
 and reflection. It is against the conviction 
 of tribal or social man, or of the deepest of 
 all human reactions to the world, the uni- 
 versal reaction of religion. When a man is 
 in his will and heart at one with something 
 above him, with a social group in which 
 he has " his station and its duties," or with 
 a spirit which he divines in the universe, 
 he is not driven to despair by his own or 
 others' evil. There need be in no sense or 
 degree a failure to recognise it for what 
 it is — a social sore, we have seen above,^ 
 is a sore in every member's mind qua 
 member — but yet he has strength to dis- 
 own it. By will, and in the social whole 
 by sight, in the religious whole by faith, he 
 throws himself beyond himself, and in 
 spite of his badness and suffering, and fully 
 confronting it, he claims as his own the 
 good into which he has thrown his heart.^ 
 
 1 Bradley, Appearance, 500-501 . ^ P. G4 above. 
 
 3 " Throw your heart over the fence," I have read tliat 
 the liunting man says, and you and your horse will follow. 
 The Roman soldier, the story goes, threw his eagle into the 
 thick of the enemy. Wliere it was, he knew that he must be.
 
 V REALITY OF EVIL 101 
 
 4. In religious theory the name that 
 has been given to this principle is Justifica- 
 tion by Faith ; and the dangers of moral 
 apathy, which are admittedly real, have 
 long ago been elaborated and refuted, even 
 within the New Testament itself, in the 
 controversy of Faith and Works ; which 
 anticipates in essentials the modern anti- 
 thesis of goodness in the good will and in 
 the consequences of action. Recent criti- 
 cisms of the Absolute, as offering a moral 
 holiday and repose to indolent characters, 
 or an escape from conscience to wresters of 
 the truth, are akin to the charge we are 
 considering ; and as we have quoted Scott 
 on the dryness of mere morality, we may 
 show by a reference to him how fully we 
 appreciate the perils of Antinomianism.^ 
 Beyond all question, religion has its 
 dangers. You do not handle a force that 
 can remove mountains without grave 
 hazards from neglecting the conditions of 
 safety. None the less, though religion is 
 
 1 Trusty Tomkins in Woodstock, and Thomas Trumbull 
 in Redgaunilel.
 
 102 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 not itself without morality, yet morality ^ 
 is an impossible attitude without what is 
 essentially reHgion. The point of the whole 
 matter is that the finite being cannot attain 
 perfection in itself, for finiteness excludes 
 perfection. Of this, surely, fact and 
 observation allow no doubt whatever. The 
 only way is, to abandon the pretension to 
 perfection as a finite individual, and to 
 claim it in virtue of absorption of heart and 
 will in^ a greater being. The antagonism 
 to evil and the progressive conquest will 
 remain as in morality ; but they will only 
 be one consequence of a change in principle 
 which takes the universe in a new light and 
 character, opposed to 'prima facie sight. ^ 
 We have admitted the perils of this atti- 
 tude. But it is man's fundamental atti- 
 tude, and the theory which opposes it 
 we have seen to be mere one-sidedness. It 
 is the characteristic of such common-sense 
 
 1 I repeat that " morality " in this sense, that which we 
 have been criticising, is a thing of theory. It is not the 
 moral world or total of observance and institutions in which 
 man finds himself realised, and in some degree justified. 
 
 * See p. 75 above on the mystic's conversion.
 
 V REALITY OF EVIL 103 
 
 reflection, which takes itself to be decisive 
 and resolute, not to have room for more 
 than one idea. 
 
 There is a famous passage in which 
 Hegel ^ has said in effect that evil is an 
 illusion which prevails in all finite spirits. 
 Perfection is in reality achieved and does 
 not wait upon you and me to be so, but 
 finite beings cannot see it thus. This is 
 just their task, and the interest which 
 moves the world, to learn to see through 
 the illusion. This saying has proved too 
 hard for many who are not disinclined to 
 reflect profoundly on the problem of evil. 
 The essential objections to justification by 
 faith reappear. " If the whole arrange- 
 ment, as we see it, is a deception, and our 
 only task is to believe so, the reality of the 
 moral life, of ' works,' is unmotived and 
 abolished, and the alleged interest in getting 
 rid of the illusion falls dead." On the 
 contrary, it is urged, perfection does wait 
 
 ^ The passage from Hegel is translated and commented 
 on by Professor Pringle Pattison in his Gifford Lectures, 
 The Idea of God in Philosophy, p. 412. The reference to 
 Hegel is Encycl. sect. 212, Zusatz.
 
 104 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS cha^. 
 
 upon you and me to be realised ; it is 
 always being realised, as alone it can be, 
 through our works. Yet the meaning of the 
 passage has always seemed to me simple 
 and convincing, in the light of such facts 
 as we have been reciting. Undoubtedly 
 you are here confronted with what is a 
 plain contradiction to reflective common 
 sense. ^ In it you are given a supreme 
 test of courage and devotion, a supreme 
 adventure. This is what the critics say 
 they desire. They reject and despise a 
 moral holiday ; an easy belief, an arm- 
 chair religion. Well, it seems to me, that 
 here they have their wish. It is a hard 
 test ; but it is the supreme test of a man, 
 and yet one, as we have seen, to which all 
 sound and w^hole-hearted men respond, 
 each after his manner.^ Evil is evil ; once 
 more, you have not to palter with this 
 
 ^ Common sense is practical, and deserves all respect. 
 Reflective common sense, or common -sense theory, is neither 
 fish nor flesh. " That wildest of all theorists, tlie practical 
 man," Bonamy Price used to say. 
 
 ' The bad and desperate man responds after his way. 
 His despair is that he cannot hold to the faith which yet he 
 cannot escape.
 
 V REALITY OF EVIL 105 
 
 truth ; but, all the same, it can be overcome ; 
 not at a distance, but now and here ; and 
 the secret of overcoming it is to feel that 
 it is overcome, and to treat it practically 
 as a conquered thing. Such is the faith 
 of science in its battle with appearances ; 
 it does not suppose some to be intelligible, 
 and some not. If it did, it could not work. 
 And such must be in effect the faith of 
 the good man, if he is in any place or 
 time to overcome the world. He must not 
 suppose that here and there he may light 
 upon an absolute evil which is in principle a 
 separate thing, unresolvable and insuper- 
 able. His faith is essentially universal 
 and practical. If it Were not universal, it 
 could not be practical. He could not tell 
 at what points he must let evil triumph. 
 The critic rejects this faith on the 
 plea that it is too easy ; but we must 
 be forgiven for suspecting that he really 
 finds it too hard. And in a degree, in 
 the progress of the world, you can see 
 your faith justified, and gain sidelights 
 on the nature of evil which reveal to you
 
 106 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chat. 
 
 precisely how, under what conditions, it 
 must be evil, but how also in principle it 
 must continually lend itself to be over- 
 come by good ; continually, but, in the 
 finite world, never completely. 
 
 5. One of these sidelights we will consider 
 briefly ; for it explains to us something 
 of the nature of evil, and something of the 
 helpfulness of trying to understand it. 
 
 What is the nature of the bad self, or 
 
 the evil will ? I have never seen noted 
 
 the extraordinary boldness with which 
 
 Dante indicates the fundamental point. 
 
 Che se potuto aveste veder tutto ^ 
 Mestier non era partorir Maria. 
 
 We are not here to pause upon distinctions 
 of intellect and will ; the saying is above 
 all that ; just as Christ was when he said, 
 " Father, forgive them, for they know not 
 what they do." The meaning is simple and 
 is familiar ; but is not enough considered. 
 It is the narrowness of man's mind which 
 makes him do wrong. He desires more 
 
 1 " If you (human beings) had been able to see the whole, 
 there would have been no need for Mary to bear a son." — 
 Purg. 3. .38.
 
 V REALITY OF EVIL 107 
 
 than he can deal with ; indeed, he aspires 
 to be self-complete. But what he can make 
 his own, as a set of values which do not 
 conflict, is but little. And of what is 
 extruded something refuses to be sup- 
 pressed and forms a nucleus of rebellion. 
 Thus the good we are able to aim at is 
 narrow and distorted, and more than that, 
 the elements of good which our narrowness 
 forces us to reject lie in ambush to conflict 
 with the good we recognise, itself poor and 
 narrow and so weakened for the struggle. 
 Life and literature are full of examples, 
 and every one knows this in himself. A 
 secondary self is formed out of the con- 
 flicting stuff, rebellious, in constant readi- 
 ness to embarrass and overthrow the will 
 which represents our best. The constitu- 
 ents of this bad self may not be bad ; so 
 far as they are positive interests, and in 
 the main there is nothing .else they can 
 be, they are not bad in themselves. If a 
 girl goes to work in a hospital when — 
 assume it — she ought to have stayed at 
 home to help her mother, you cannot say
 
 108 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 that her interest in the hospital is a bad 
 purpose, though she may have been selfish 
 or self-willed in asserting it against a more 
 imperative duty. But, you may say, this 
 is at worst a mistake of judgment, biassed, 
 perhaps, by a desire for freedom. You 
 could not treat it as an example of the bad 
 self. Well, that is the point. The ques- 
 tion is harder than it seems at first. 
 You may have, it seems, two conflicting 
 selves, say family duty and a " career," 
 and it may be impossible to say which you 
 are right in preferring. Then whichever 
 you choose, you may say, you are not bad, 
 but at worst mistaken. 
 
 I should agree that this may be so. 
 But the mistake itself, we must remember, 
 comes of narrowness. If we could see 
 completely, or be complete, we should 
 make no mistakes. And thus there is a 
 continuity between such alternatives, and 
 developments in which the bad self is 
 unmistakable. Consider a biassed choice.^ 
 
 1 It is coming to be held once more that all error is moral. 
 I do not think so ; but undoubtedly a great deal of it is due 
 to non-intellectual bias, which passes into moral fault.
 
 V REALITY OF EVIL 109 
 
 Let one course be or involve an attach- 
 ment conflicting with your position as 
 husband or wife, and the other be the 
 normal discharge of your duties in and to 
 the family ; and you feel at once the re- 
 current conflict and discord of the incom- 
 patible selves, tearing the mind in two, 
 and tinging the lawless attachment, which 
 may in other respects be the better and the 
 nobler, with the colour of vice and rebellion. 
 Need the lawless course always represent 
 the bad self, and the other the good ? 
 Not necessarily ; no rules are absolute. I 
 shall recur in a following chapter to the 
 problem of what is right in conduct. 
 
 But the difficulty of judging just illus- 
 trates the continuity of the two selves. 
 What is certain is, that there is some self 
 in which we feel that we are doing and 
 willing our best — affirming the greatest 
 values which on the whole we can — and 
 that there is some self, some habit, desire, 
 rebellious temper, course of conduct, in 
 which we know that we are conflicting 
 with our best, and depressing the highest
 
 110 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 accessible values. Both might be right 
 for us, if we could have both ; but we find 
 them to conflict, and thus one of them 
 becomes bad. Why is it bad ? Because 
 it is in contradiction with the good. We 
 have amply seen that it may not be bad 
 in itself. It is not true that possible acts 
 and feelings are painted white and black, 
 so to speak, as good and bad in them- 
 selves, and that it is our task to choose 
 the white and refuse the black. How easy 
 life would be if this were so ! 
 
 But from the moment that a habit, a 
 course of conduct, a habitual desire, inter- 
 feres with our best, lowers our standard, 
 silences or weakens our will to good, then 
 it takes on, so far and for us, the colour of 
 evil, and certainly its own essence seems 
 to become infected, perhaps gradually, 
 by the evil taint, and its own character 
 to change. It is still a positive, but it 
 carries with it a negative, and in willing 
 it we know that we are willing against 
 what is good ; we are negativing our 
 highest values, affirming their destruction.
 
 V REALITY OF EVIL 111 
 
 Is not all this, it may be asked, needlessly 
 hesitating and artificial ? Are there not a 
 huge number of moral vices, religious sins, 
 which are condemned by their mere names, 
 and the willing of which, or any of them, 
 is what distinguishes the bad self ? We 
 see at once that " is what distinguishes 
 the bad self " carries us too far. You can 
 have a very bad self without any distinct 
 and nameable vice. But if you have vice, 
 must you not have ipso facto the bad 
 self ? Practically, no doubt, it would be 
 so as a rule. The case seems to be that 
 vices are habits whose names are taken 
 to imply a collision with every possible 
 good will. Sloth, cruelty, jealousy, coward- 
 ice, lust, these are judged when their 
 names are applied. But, of course, not all 
 actions which look like them merit these 
 names. 
 
 We apply them roughly and provision- 
 ally by an average external standard. 
 But we ought not to affirm the condemna- 
 tion they convey without grave reflection ; 
 ^nd perhaps, ultimately, not about others
 
 112 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 at all. For it is the opposition to the 
 good will that makes the passion or habit 
 a vice. And it cannot be pure opposition ; 
 there can no more be an opposition without 
 a positive value behind it, than there can 
 be a denial without a positive reason behind 
 it. There is at the root of the opposition 
 some positive need or desire which, if we 
 could have united it with our main set of 
 values, would have added value to theni. 
 But because owing to our narrowness we 
 cannot, we are bound to suppress it, and 
 it fights against suppression, and so far 
 as unsuppressed it is vicious. And to 
 many a bad self, in its main outline, you 
 cannot apply the habitual appellation of 
 vice. It has not taken a form which is 
 antagonistic to every possible good will, 
 but only one which is antagonistic to my 
 special good will here and now. You can- 
 not name an hour of rising in the morning 
 to be later than which constitutes sloth ; 
 that is, is indolence incompatible with any 
 good will. The man may be a night worker. 
 But not to rise at six, if I am able, and
 
 V REALITY OF EVIL 113 
 
 bound by my vocation, to do so, is certainly 
 of evil; and the habit of failing to do it 
 would, in that case, prove a nucleus of 
 bad ways and contribute to debilitate the 
 will. 
 
 1^ It is not necessary to dwell on the sub- 
 ject and its complications at greater length. 
 The principle is clear. And returning to 
 the proposition from which we started, 
 we now understand, not that evil is good, 
 but that it is made out of the same stuff 
 as good ; the stuff of life, its passions and 
 values. It is evil when it is evil, that is, 
 when it is antagonistic to good, and 
 impairs our values or the will to them. 
 But the same stuff is not evil in its positive 
 nature, and the gain from understanding 
 this is that we see how, in the actual moral 
 progress, it can be overcome and overruled 
 by good. Remove the exclusiveness which 
 limits the good, give a man or a people 
 freedom and opportunity, and much which 
 was wrong will come right. A wider stuff 
 will be reconcilable with the good will, a 
 stuff which would otherwise have turned
 
 114 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 to poison and hatred. The student's tend- 
 ency is not really to call evil good because 
 of its apparent results, but where you find 
 good in the result to look for the good in 
 the cause. The pessimist's view of causa- 
 tion is generally undiscriminating. Only, 
 the finite is finite, and can never cease to 
 err. The step it gains, the stuff with which 
 it widens its will to value, becomes a basis 
 for new contradictions and new vices. 
 Women — ^it is not the only aspect of the 
 question, but that it is a real one I fear 
 there is no doubt — women become com- 
 fortable and economically independent — 
 a manifest gain — and then a new terror 
 assails society. They rebel against bearing 
 children. Some of their reasons, we may 
 admit, are very likely sound, but sheer 
 selfishness is surely one of them. 
 
 Thus, as in the old controversy, "good 
 works " are a necessary token of " saving 
 faith," and indicate how good is present 
 in the stuff of life. But it is not the works 
 of finite beings which constitute the divine 
 perfection ; nor is it the fact of moral
 
 V REALITY OF EVIL 115 
 
 progress,^ though a clue to the weakness of 
 evil, which constitutes the perfection of the 
 universe. Rational and necessary though 
 it is, there is no steeper and braver adven- 
 ture than the faith of religion that in the 
 perfection of the universe we have our own. 
 6. The proposition we have been dis- 
 cussing, that evil is " absolutely real," is 
 closely akin to a proposition expressed or 
 implied in much popular argument. It is 
 this, that pessimism alone is faithful to 
 " the facts." You gather together some 
 of the horrors which any newspaper will 
 furnish, and you conclude upon them that 
 what these people £xperience is Reality — 
 they are the persons best qualified to have 
 experience, and so forth. The attitude is 
 quite common, and is usually attended by 
 
 ^ We see here why we cannot help believing in it ; it is 
 not because our observation could warrant this belief. It is 
 because it is a symbol of the perfection which our faith 
 guarantees. See above, p. 115. 
 
 We see also that, good being narrow, and opposed by 
 omitted elements in the character of evil, the affirmation 
 made by evil is a necessary factor of perfection. We have 
 seen, in principle, how the antagonism which makes it evil 
 depends on finiteness, and must vanish if finiteness is 
 transcended.
 
 116 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 a good deal of arrogance and self-laudation. 
 " We have no prejudice ; we are not to be 
 blinded ; we see things not couleur de rose, 
 but as they are." 
 
 Those who see differently, who look 
 steadily at the great values of life, while 
 denying none of its hazards and hardships, 
 are treated as if what they saw in some way 
 did not exist, as if, when you come to look 
 at a great vista of things in their connection 
 and significance, you in some way depart 
 from reality and enter a province of shadow 
 and illusion. 
 
 Pretty plainly there is here prejudice 
 and superstition. What is its nature and 
 motive ? Shakespeare gives us the first 
 clue. The temper is unintelligent, because 
 malicious. " Love speaks with better 
 knowledge, and knowledge with dearer 
 love." Your care and interest must be 
 wide if your intelligence is to be so. 
 Take even the facts as balanced each to 
 each, and say, what is ridiculously false, 
 that they are equal on either side, the dis- 
 values and the values. Even so, it would
 
 V REALITY OF EVIL 117 
 
 be sheer malice to say of the disvalues, these 
 are the facts, are the reaUty. And of course 
 the supposition is ridiculous. The world 
 is full of greatness, beauty, and love. Its 
 tragedy — its hazard and hardship — is the 
 price it pays for its freedom. You cannot 
 have finite beings at a cheaper rate, so far 
 as we can possibly understand. 
 
 But why these particular sufferers ? 
 Here is another prejudice — that justice, 
 the equal dealing with individuals, is an 
 ultimate law of things. Plainly it is not 
 so. It is not so in any community, and 
 only prejudice suggests that it should be 
 so in the world. You cannot assert it, 
 while admitting any individual difference 
 at all, without being back in the old 
 absurdity of compensation. It is of 
 course impossible to dogmatise about the 
 probability of a future life as a fact ; but 
 to make religion rest upon it as an instru- 
 ment of compensation and as a reason for 
 assuming a God to guarantee it, is to 
 degrade religion to an egoistic level and 
 deny the unity of spirits. We shall never
 
 118 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 get a popular conception of religion that 
 is clear and sane until this perpetual 
 hankering after a future life as a means of 
 recompense is laid to rest. A man who is 
 radically unhappy and out of tune with his 
 world must probably in any case be made 
 again and made different before he could 
 be happy in another life.^ Why not 
 simply say, " He has served his turn ; he 
 has at least explored a cul-de-sac of life, 
 and tempered the world-experience by a 
 significant negation ; ^ let him rest, and a 
 different being take his place " ? 
 
 A very popular case of this pessimism is 
 expressed in some such saying as, " Why 
 not try Christianity ? " or " Try the re- 
 ligion of Christ " (implying an opposition 
 to de facto Christendom^). This throws a 
 
 1 The Pope in the Ri7ig and the Book — 
 
 " Else I avert my face, nor follow him 
 Into that sad, obscure, sequestered state. 
 Where God unmakes but to remake the soul 
 He else first made in vain, which must not be." 
 
 In any case it would seem the soul remade must be a 
 new being. ^ See p. 115 note. 
 
 * I venture to refer to my essay, " The Civilisation of 
 Christendom," in the volume with that title, published 1893.
 
 V REALITY OF EVIL 119 
 
 strong light on the prejudice in question. 
 A well-known publicist headed a pamphlet 
 with the supposition, " If Christ came to 
 
 Chicago ." Another, I believe, offered 
 
 as a completion of the sentence, " If Christ 
 came to Chicago, he would see something 
 he had never seen before, and that is a 
 great city." 
 
 The idea that a better life for modern 
 peoples than that existing to-day could be 
 evolved directly from a few unharmonised 
 texts of Scripture, belonging to an age when 
 no such life was possible, is of a piece with 
 the blind pessimism we were considering. 
 Heaven knows, the problems of modern 
 life are difficult enough, however freely 
 and sanely you may approach them. But 
 if you make dealing with them a meeting- 
 point of extremes between the fanaticism 
 of one-sided morality and the superstition 
 of text-worshipping religiosity, their solu- 
 tion, which was arduous before, has simply 
 become inconceivable. Every one must 
 be struck, I think, by the incredibly low 
 level of all public discussions in which
 
 120 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 appeals to Scripture figure on either side. 
 The reason is plain. In order to make 
 full use of human experience you must 
 start freely and frankly from your present 
 position as a whole, and give to all special 
 or historical suggestions just the value to 
 which their rank in presence of that whole 
 is found on discussion to entitle them. 
 It is not only that the attention is wrongly 
 focussed and the mind is wearied and irri- 
 tated when you treat as important, for 
 example, the texts in the Bible about 
 marriage, and so initiate a controversy 
 which is wholly irrelevant to the present 
 problem of marriage law and divorce. The 
 greater evil is that in repelling the false 
 pretence of authority you are apt to be 
 misled into supposing that you have re- 
 futed the substantive reasons which it was 
 foolishly employed to corroborate. And a 
 plain and open discussion on the merits, on 
 the arrangements which are best for modern 
 society in view of the freedom and happi- 
 ness of men and women, is a thing hardly 
 to be attained.
 
 V REALITY OF EVIL 121 
 
 So with the whole of the Sermon on the 
 Mount. It belongs, surely, to those early 
 aphorisms which occur to gifted hearts 
 and minds from the beginning of recorded 
 culture and before the stress of life had 
 created the setting in which their main 
 difficulty will consist. It is easy and 
 pleasant to rest in the contemplation of 
 such sayings. But the work of spiritual 
 progress lies in perfecting the possibilities 
 they suggest through the innumerable 
 strains and stresses of a complex life. 
 And through this process their value is 
 not diminished, but reaches higher levels 
 as the life to which it is a clue becomes 
 profounder. 
 
 I take a simple example. The incredibly 
 low level at which all popular discussion 
 of the rightness and wrongness of war is 
 carried on seems to me ultimately to be 
 determined by a single false assumption.^ 
 
 1 I could argue, if it were necessary, from actual conduct 
 and from inconsistencies of speech, that Christ, probably, 
 did not wholly surrender his habit of mind to this falsity. 
 But such argument is against my plan. It is confusing a 
 question of right and wrong with a matter of historical 
 curiosity.
 
 122 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap 
 
 It is the assumption that love has only a 
 single form, and excludes all use of force 
 and all strife between those whom it 
 unites ; in other terms, that it manifests 
 itself externally in gentleness and non- 
 resistance only, and has no other word to 
 say. Tlie doctrine seems to me to be 
 false, mean, and shallow. Love does not 
 aim at the pleasure or ease of its object ; 
 it aims at his salvation. For its mani- 
 festation the whole gamut of passion and 
 action is there, and it burns with the flame 
 which the contact demands and speaks in 
 the language which will be understood. 
 It has become a cheap old jest to say, " To 
 punish you hurts me more than it hurts 
 you " ; but it is one of the mischiefs of 
 our vulgar literature that the caricatures 
 of deep but dangerous truths are found so 
 piquant that the truths themselves are 
 discredited. All deep truths are danger- 
 ous ; but to live therefore with none but 
 shallow truths is degrading and rots the 
 soul away. 
 
 Love which avails itself of this truth
 
 V REALITY OF EVIL 123 
 
 to the full — and no day passes in any social 
 bond without its doing so in part, and war 
 is such a bond — assumes of course a terrible 
 burden of bona fides as against temptations 
 to hatred. Still, we may see it on the 
 whole triumphant over the difficulty. The 
 courage of hate and anger, as already the 
 pagan knew, is a hideous and bestial 
 courage. The true warrior is the knight 
 of the holy spirit, and in the modern 
 soldier at his best we find more than traces 
 of his temper. 
 
 Now of course it may be said, " You are 
 jesuitically defending war, separating the 
 intention from the act." I should reply 
 that this is just a case of the prejudice 
 I am attacking. I have not defended war. 
 I have, on the contrary, explained the 
 general type of its prevention. I have 
 only advocated the first principles of any 
 rational discussion on the subject. If you 
 wish to be rational, you must discuss how 
 to avoid it, not condemn it when you have 
 made it unavoidable. The love of man, 
 and of God if you come to that, is a passion
 
 124 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 for achieving the highest values and the 
 best hfe for all — in a word, salvation. 
 The idea of attempting this without being 
 ready to face pain and sacrifice is almost 
 blasphemous. Do we really think we are 
 to enter into life just as we happen to grow, 
 without experience of conflict and dis- 
 cipline ? It would be a way out, in some 
 degree, if the conflict and discipline in 
 which we take a part could always end with 
 our own particular suffering and not in- 
 volve that of others. But men have known 
 since reflection began, that this is an 
 absurdity. The unity of man forbids it. 
 You cannot attack an evil nor achieve a 
 good without inconveniencing some one, 
 and the natural man resents being in- 
 convenienced, and never more than if, 
 rightly or wrongly, the interference aims 
 at his salvation. Of course you want to 
 hurt any one as little as possible. But 
 you cannot make it a principle that no 
 one is to be hurt at all. 
 
 No recurrence to ancient creeds will 
 help us, except in as far as all suggestions
 
 REALITY OF EVIL 125 
 
 have continually to be considered. The 
 point at which we stand is the outcome of 
 our best efforts, and in any case it is from 
 this point, and it can be from no other, 
 that our advance has to be made. It is 
 not " doubting the reality of evil " to say 
 that both in actual progress, by sight, and 
 in the whole by faith, we are assured of its 
 subordination to good, and of the absorp- 
 tion, if we could see the whole, of both, 
 together with our finiteness which is the 
 cause of their antagonistic existences, in 
 perfection.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 " HOW IS ONE TO KNOW WHAT TO DO ? " 
 
 Can moral philosophy help us here ? This 
 is itself a subject of dispute ; and I follow 
 the view that directly and positively, by 
 advice on particular issues of conduct, it 
 cannot help. 
 
 On the other hand, just by explaining 
 why this is so, and what is the nature of 
 the moral choice which practical life in- 
 volves, it is possible that some current 
 errors may be avoided, and a general 
 attitude suggested, fruitful of good results, 
 even in the way of preference. 
 
 I will lead up to the problem by ap- 
 proaching the general attitude to begin 
 with. The reason why philosophy cannot 
 give particular instructions will follow 
 
 126
 
 cH.yi WHAT TO DO? 127 
 
 simply, if we master the principle which 
 operates in moral choices. 
 
 1. To begin with, we have to recall two 
 steps which were made above, and which 
 are all-important for the problem. 
 
 (i.) In the first place, we saw reason to 
 think that there is a common structure or 
 quality in all values, and, depending on 
 this, an interconnection between them. 
 They form, we held, a system of positive 
 self-affirmation and reciprocal reinforce- 
 ment, such that the enhancement of any 
 one tends to the enhancement of all the 
 rest, and by the depression of any one all 
 the rest are dulled and lowered. It is 
 nothing against this that in a mind or body 
 of limited energy, as of course every mind 
 and body must be, it is possible for the 
 assertion of one value to depress another — 
 for moral activity, for example, to lower 
 and obscure the sense of beauty. This is 
 not the case necessarily nor always. It is 
 just a hazard of the finite, as going a walk 
 beyond our powers may cause us to be 
 sleepy, when after it we intended to enjoy
 
 128 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 poetry, while if well within our powers 
 it will strongly reinforce our enjoyment. 
 There is a common basis of values, and to 
 fortify it helps all alike, though in calling 
 upon it there is a point where the reserves 
 of energy show exhaustion. 
 
 To appreciate the common nature of all 
 values, as experiences which have the 
 property requisite to filling and satisfying 
 a mind, is the first step to understanding 
 the meaning of a sane and fruitful attitude 
 in moral preferences. 
 
 (ii.) The second step carries the same 
 principle further. It is that the medium 
 and atmosphere of all values, and itself a 
 comprehensive value, is the good will. 
 
 In saying this, I take the good will to 
 mean what I have above described it to 
 mean.^ And I think that this follows from 
 a reasonable and necessary interpretation 
 of the famous principle which is known by 
 that name. It means, as I understand, a 
 will whose object is a connected system of 
 values, knit together in a harmonious whole 
 
 1 p. CO above.
 
 VI WHAT TO DO ? 129 
 
 through their common quaHty, and ruling 
 the character of the individual whose will 
 it is in a steady pursuit of its object so 
 far as power and situation admit. The 
 acts of such a will, though individual and 
 concrete, are affirmations of universal law, 
 because they are so adjusted as to con- 
 tribute to an orderly life in which, so far 
 as the man's limitations allow, all values 
 and all individuals have assignable places. 
 The social will is the familiar example. 
 In it, I will the general object of the com- 
 munity, but not merely, perhaps not at 
 all, in general. A peasant, for instance, 
 has probably never reflected on it. My 
 daily will is adjusted to a certain set of 
 values, embodied in, and governing, the 
 relations of a certain set of persons. All 
 of these, to an extent varying with my 
 knowledge and interest, I reinforce and 
 sustain by my particular and detailed 
 action. It need not be said, that the 
 whole system grows, by the assimilating ^ 
 
 1 Assimilating in the sense in which digestion is assimilat- 
 ing, the permeation and appropriation of new material. 
 
 K
 
 130 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 impulse of reason, and there is constant 
 friction and disagreement of volition in 
 particulars. Nevertheless, the whole, so 
 far as it works, is an example of law uni- 
 versal, and my volition, so far as willing it, 
 is a will which is fit for participation in a 
 system of law universal, and is a value, 
 a personal harmony, directed to a set of 
 values and embodying them ; for example, 
 to the happiness of the society, and its 
 economic, aesthetic, or scientific contribu- 
 tion to the world. A current objection to 
 the notion of the good will may be dis- 
 posed of in a few words. It is held to 
 exclude the affections. Now we are not 
 discussing the history of philosophy ; and 
 what the doctrine plainly may mean, and 
 is right in meaning, is enough for us. And 
 that is, simply, that the good will in- 
 dicates a character trained by subordina- 
 tion to a systematic object in life, of the 
 quality above described. The affections, 
 of course, are embodied in it, but educated 
 and disciplined affections. Any one who 
 objects to this, and claims to prefer the
 
 VI WHAT TO DO ? 131 
 
 affections as natural impulses, without 
 training and discipline, does not know 
 what he is saying. At best he would get 
 the love of the slave or the dog, who fights 
 for his master — or against him — right or 
 wrong, and is incapable of hearing reason, 
 or caring for justice or any social obliga- 
 tion. 
 
 Passing over this, we see from what has 
 been said above ^ that in the object of the 
 good will as fully interpreted the values 
 of life are elements. It is convenient to 
 give them different names, because each 
 of them has its own individual quality — 
 beauty, moral goodness, truth, love — and 
 lends a particular character to the will in 
 which it predominates. But these qualities 
 are individual only par ^excellence ; their 
 root is one, and there can be no life, above 
 that of the brutes, in which all are not 
 present in some degree. Taken at its 
 fullest, the good will is their common 
 atmosphere. It is because of the common 
 
 ^ Pp. 54 note, 60. We spoke adequately of the apparent 
 difficulty that aesthetic experience is not an activity of the will.
 
 132 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 relation to them as their basis and medium 
 that virtue, duty, and the good will are 
 apt to be pronounced instrumental merely. 
 The real values of life, it is held, are its 
 marked and pre-eminent triumphs, as one 
 might call them — the pleasant ways of 
 humanity, the appreciation of beauty. 
 That this is a narrow and supercilious view 
 I think we have adequately seen already.^ 
 The will or character which is the atmo- 
 sphere of values and shares their quality 
 is itself a value, and its aspects are the 
 virtues and duties. If a mind that is brave 
 and humble, honest and religious, has not 
 a value of its own, it would be hard to 
 know where value could be found. What 
 is true is that, as we have amply seen, in a 
 spiritual whole the distinction of ends and 
 instruments has little place, and every 
 instrument is an end, as every end an 
 instrument. Take the most splendid value 
 you can conceive, the worship of beauty 
 or of divinity, and you will find that it 
 cannot help being instrumental to orderli- 
 
 1 Above, p. 67 ff.
 
 VI WHAT TO DO ? 133 
 
 ness and self-sacrifice in the character as a 
 whole, just as orderliness and self-sacrifice 
 are instrumental to it. 
 
 These two steps together bring us to 
 the general principle of the right attitude 
 in conduct. The right attitude depends 
 on forming in the self a good will, which is 
 a will trained and determined by the con- 
 nected system of values, that is to say, 
 by as much of it as we can appreciate. 
 The difference between a good, that is, any 
 value, and the right for me, that is the action 
 which I ought to will in a particular situa- 
 tion, is already in principle overcome, and 
 partly so for practice, by the observa- 
 tion that the object of the good will is a 
 connected system of goods, attached to 
 the individual by a will which links it with 
 his powers and opportunities. The system 
 already tells you something of relative 
 values and of the conditions under which 
 each may be approached. His educated 
 social will tells the private citizen that it 
 is not his business to govern the country, 
 though good government is among the
 
 134 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 greatest goods. It puts him in connection 
 with the good which it is for him to reaUse, 
 and through it, with other goods beyond. 
 
 2. Assuming that we know in general 
 the character of the good will, as directed 
 to the highest and completest system of 
 values possible, a very formidable problem 
 still arises out of the word " possible." 
 How can we know that any good results 
 we may contemplate can really be achieved 
 by the actions which appear to us as 
 calculated to bring them about ? Here 
 emphasis has been laid upon the place of 
 causal judgments in the guidance of our 
 action, and the difficulty that arises from 
 our ignorance of remote and it may be 
 overwhelmingly fatal consequences of acts 
 that promise well prima facie. We are 
 to do what secures the most and highest 
 value for the world as a whole. But how 
 can we possibly know enough to be effect- 
 ively guided by any consideration of the 
 kind ? Our most promising efforts may 
 excite after long periods wholly disastrous 
 reactions in man or in nature, or, at the
 
 VI WHAT TO DO ? 135 
 
 very least, the indifference of nature may- 
 overwhelm them after a longer or shorter 
 lapse of time, and make them as if they 
 had never been. About this latter possi- 
 bility we need not trouble our heads. If 
 it is the way of the universe to utter itself 
 in successive worlds, discontinuous so far 
 as we can understand, they are none the 
 less its utterance, and better is better, and 
 worse is worse. But about the former 
 possibility, which directly affects the guid- 
 ance of our actions in the course of our 
 relatively familiar world, there seems to 
 be something worth saying. 
 
 The question is one of success. Can we 
 count on affecting the course of things, in 
 the direction we desire, by our best motived 
 and considered efforts ? Or may they 
 not be producing just the result which 
 we deprecate and consider evil ? ..An^ is, 
 therefore, any degree of success — assured 
 victory — a thing that the individual has a 
 right to expect and demand as a pledge 
 or seal of the value of his endeavours ? 
 Or is he to maintain his morality and his
 
 136 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 religion wholly without visible encourage- 
 ment, being destitute of rational ground 
 for supposing that his acts produce any- 
 lasting effect of the kind he purposes and 
 desires ? Can he know in the least what 
 he is really doing ? 
 
 To begin with, we have seen that the 
 good will carries in itself what we may call 
 the general form of success ; that is to 
 say, it responds to the quality by which 
 all values show strength and positive 
 power in maintaining themselves. It 
 covers, so to speak, a considerable area 
 with an unbroken line of defence and 
 operation. This is the positive aspect of 
 its self-consistent and stable quality. The 
 general probability is in favour of the 
 effectiveness of the good will. 
 
 But there is something more to be said, 
 which bears on a common defect in our 
 consideration of the moral will. We have 
 already gone some way to rectify it by our 
 view of the interconnection of morality 
 in the narrower sense with the whole 
 scheme of values. In a word, success is
 
 VI WHAT TO DO ? 137 
 
 not merely a probability, not merely based 
 on chance responses from the world, but 
 it is a duty. The severance, in moral 
 estimation, of moral motive from the con- 
 sequences of action is well intended, but 
 easily becomes a dangerous sophism. It is 
 well intended, because it counters the excuse, 
 in case of a bad thing that has occurred, 
 *' I could not help it ; it happened so," 
 with the question, " But did you try to help 
 it ? Was any element of your conduct 
 in the matter good, admitting that your 
 power and knowledge were sadly at fault ? " 
 If you can say, " I would have given my 
 life to hinder it, and I did all I could 
 possibly do to prevent it," then you are 
 so far clear. Your " motive," that is, 
 the point in the sequence of effects which 
 you had at heart, and which indicates your 
 character and desires, was such as we 
 approve. The consequences were such as 
 you " could not help " — your knowledge 
 and resources were not enough to prevent 
 them, and perhaps no one's could in 
 practice have been so.
 
 138 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 Tliat is all very well, and it is a distinc- 
 tion necessary to making fair moral allow- 
 ance for our feebleness. But none the 
 less, considering the interconnection of 
 values, your morality in the full sense was 
 defective. That is to say, the ideas and 
 impulses under which you acted were 
 defective in width and orderliness, and 
 therefore inadequate to produce a desired 
 effect on the real world. It was not that 
 your motive was too good for this world ; 
 it was not good enough. It was not com- 
 pleted and filled out by the qualities of 
 head and heart which would have given it 
 adequate connection with the value you 
 meant it to elicit. You did not understand 
 other people, or the facts of nature ; you 
 were vain, hasty, impatient, ignorant, in 
 . some part of your disposition untrained 
 and undisciplined. You " did not go to 
 work in the right way." I know well 
 that the course of events may, at a 
 given moment, be too strong for any man 
 or every man. But these comments are 
 constantly made upon practical failures.
 
 VI WHAT TO DO ? 139 
 
 and with truth ; and where they are true, 
 they are substantially moral censures ; 
 and in ultimate principle' they are true 
 of every failure. 
 
 The continuity of the good will with 
 the nature of the world, and its hopeless 
 discontinuity with a certain element of 
 things which is apparently irrational and 
 accidental, form a remarkable antithesis, 
 whos,e sides the poets, the deepest seers, 
 have expressed with striking force. One 
 assures us that 
 
 Winds blow and waters roll 
 Strength to the brave, and power and Deity. 
 
 But in another we read : 
 
 Streams will not curb their pride 
 The good man not to entomb, 
 
 Nor lightnings go aside 
 To give his virtues room. 
 Nor is that wind less rough that blows the 
 good man's barge. 
 
 It is not difficult to see in general how 
 the matter must stand. The rationality 
 of the world corresponds to our ration- 
 ality, and its irrationality and chance
 
 140 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap 
 
 medley to our irrationality and blindness. 
 Of the latter, as we have seen, our finite- 
 ness involves a certain measure, which is in 
 principle irremovable. But the continuity 
 of the good will and its effectiveness in pro- 
 moting values is no less certain, and the 
 persistent victory over the seeming indiffer- 
 ence of things, which our finiteness does not 
 forbid, proves that it is so, and is a pledge 
 and earnest of our faith in a perfection 
 whose character can even be asserted in 
 some degree through our action in the 
 world. 
 
 This question of the continuity between 
 the good will and the capacity for success, 
 that is, of success as a moral duty, when 
 all reservation is made for necessary in- 
 dulgence to our feebleness, is a matter of 
 immense practical import. I will take 
 two examples by way of illustration, one 
 from dealing with the irrationality of 
 history, the other from dealing with that 
 of nature. 
 
 The great type of irrationality in history 
 is war. Now we are continually urged,
 
 VI WHAT TO DO ? 141 
 
 both on a scriptural and on a one-sided 
 ethical basis, to deal summarily with the 
 danger of war by moral means. We are 
 to be kind and gentle, to refuse to fight, to 
 respond to aggression by non-resistance. 
 But this is condemned as a moral policy 
 by its incompleteness. It is substituting 
 the bare motive, " I mean well to every 
 one," which is in its nature a plea for in- 
 dulgent judgment of our own action, in 
 place of a reasoned course of conduct fit 
 for a place in a system of law universal. 
 But the moral duty, if we are right, in- 
 cludes making the good will effective ; 
 effective, that is, by means which are its 
 natural and inherent development. It is 
 of no use to mean well by people unless 
 you take measures to acquaint yourself 
 with their difficulties, sympathise with 
 their position, and act so as to undo the 
 entanglements which bring them into con- 
 flict with each other. This is why a policy 
 of mere gentleness or non-resistance, not 
 merely in the middle of a world of aggres- 
 sive policies, but in any world of complex
 
 142 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 relations, is morally inadequate and con- 
 demnable. It is only half a moral policy. 
 If, for example, persons in sympathy 
 with the Society of Friends had been in 
 a position to conduct the entire foreign 
 policy of this country, and, a fortiori, that 
 of more countries than one, since the 
 foundation of that Society, it is quite 
 possible that war might have been put an 
 end to, and the several countries been 
 much more prosperous and successful than 
 they have been in fact. But if this had 
 been the case, it would not have come from 
 a mysterious blessing of Providence on 
 our moral and non-resistant attitude. It 
 would have come from extreme skill and 
 sagacity, together with patience, im- 
 partiality, and good temper in handling 
 our foreign relations.^ In principle, all 
 conflicts of pride and interest are capable 
 of solution in harmony with the claims of 
 
 1 The policy of Penn towards the Indians appears to have 
 been brilliantly successful so long as it was observed. Of 
 course you cannot mix up a policy of this kind with quite 
 opposite policies. Common sense tells you that your policy 
 must be all of a piece.
 
 VI WHAT TO DO ? 143 
 
 both parties, if patience, sagacity, and good 
 temper are brought to bear. Now all 
 these are continuous with the good will ; 
 they are not alien to it, but essential out- 
 growths of it, sharing its quality. If we 
 have not them we have no right to claim 
 that we possess the good will. We are 
 then not too good for this wicked world, 
 but not good enough. But, of course, if 
 you are to use these qualities, they must 
 govern your policy from beginning to end. 
 It is no use to send out an army to fight, 
 and then be seized with a fit of non-resist- 
 ance in the middle of a war. You may 
 say you did not send out the army. No, 
 but with divided counsels your policy is 
 impossible. The incompetence and half- 
 heartedness of our moralists, so far as they 
 preach non-resistance apart from making 
 an imperative moral duty of shrewd and 
 sympathetic dealing with international 
 entanglements, is largely responsible for 
 the continuance of war. They never, I 
 think, put the two requirements, love and 
 wisdom, on the same leveL as continuous
 
 144 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chat. 
 
 elements of the good will. You do not 
 want mere " moral " motives, i.e, desires 
 for peace and happiness ; you want their 
 adequate development into ideas which 
 " have hands and feet." And this the 
 moralist is partly too prejudiced in favour 
 of the undeveloped or " well-meaning " 
 good will, which alone seems to him to be 
 " moral," and partly too incompetent in 
 the region of affairs, to give you. The 
 more careful study which is now being 
 devoted to the needs of other countries, and 
 the deep-lying conditions of a peaceful 
 atmosphere, is changing the situation, and 
 bringing with it some promise of a good 
 will adequately furnished for the pro- 
 motion of peace. An attempt at a good 
 which succeeds and one which fails are 
 not, as a rule and in principle, equally 
 good in will. The former is good all 
 through ; the latter is good at core, but 
 the core has not grown an outside to match 
 it. I do not say but that even so, holding 
 in part the general quality of successfulness 
 in common with all good will, it may be
 
 VI WHAT TO DO ? 145 
 
 self-propagative, and have indirectly re- 
 sults which it misses directly. But so may 
 the successful good will, and the unsuccess- 
 ful one has no claim to special merit on 
 this score, though its apparent simplicity, 
 due to its inadequateness, actually creates 
 a bias in its favour. 
 
 Take, again, an actual victory over the 
 irrationality of nature — the triumph over 
 malaria at the Panama Canal. When the 
 common moralist says, " Nature has no 
 respect for goodness or for your moral 
 purpose," what he means, owing to his 
 narrow idea of the good will, is that if the 
 promoters and agents of a scheme are 
 virtuous persons, i.e. free from intemper- 
 ance and vice, and have aims desirable for 
 mankind, i.e. general prosperity, that will 
 not stop the anopheles mosquito from 
 conveying malaria to their labourers. Per- 
 fectly true. But expand your idea of 
 morality a little. Let the good will in- 
 clude intelligent attention to the conditions 
 under which your labourers live ; no very 
 far-fetched notion, surely, for even the 
 
 L
 
 \/ 
 
 146 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 most elementary morality. Then with 
 care and seeking your good will becomes 
 possessed of the knowledge — I do not know 
 whether it sprang from the managers' own 
 research or was borrowed from elsewhere — 
 that a certain method will put down the 
 malaria. And so your moral will expands 
 continuously, by an extension natural and 
 obviously kindred to it, into an effective 
 process which is successful. Sometimes, 
 I confess, I think it nothing less than a 
 crying shame and scandal that our morality 
 has been taught to take out the motive 
 from an act — a purely artificial abstrac- 
 tion, which is the very root of immoral 
 sophistry — and judge it alone, as if moral 
 obligation stopped at laudable desires, and 
 did not at all extend to making one's will 
 adequate to the situation. " To respond 
 adequately to the situation " is not a bad 
 formula if you want to put the rules of 
 moral guidance in six words. 
 
 I hope that the difficulty of knowing 
 how to act which arises from ignorance of 
 the consequences of our actions has in a
 
 Yi WHAT TO DO ? 147 
 
 great measure been shown by our argu- 
 ment to be imaginary. We know what 
 are values, we know their general char- 
 acter, we know what a will is which makes 
 them its object. We also know, I have 
 ventured to suggest, that a will which 
 makes them its object, and which is not 
 limited by the prejudice that the capacity 
 to unite itself with values is outside moral 
 duty and obligation, is according to the 
 nature of the world on the general road to 
 success. Of course the irrational side of 
 things, which corresponds to our side of 
 incapacity, will frequently upset our plans, 
 and because we are finite, can never visibly 
 and entirely be overcome. Still of the two 
 quotations which we contrasted, the first 
 has the fundamental principle in its favour. 
 And as to the second, the will which puts 
 a steam-engine in the barge, in whomsoever 
 it is found is a part of the general good will. 
 And the good man who cannot expand his 
 will to meet the situation may be as good 
 as the world can produce at the moment, 
 but in principle he is not good enough.
 
 148 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 There are cases, of course, in which the 
 good will has been able to find realisation 
 only through the personal destruction of 
 its bearer. This is only an exaggeration 
 of the universal rule that in all actions 
 something is gained and something for- 
 feited. In the case of the Founder of 
 Christianity the premature loss of im- 
 mediate existence seems to have been the 
 condition of the greatest effect ever pro- 
 duced upon the world by an individual. 
 It was self-realisation — the realisation of 
 values accepted as supreme for the self — 
 by self-sacrifice, and presents no difficulty 
 in principle. The idea that self-realisation 
 implies some form of continued self-enjoy- 
 ment is a mere consequence of thoughtless 
 individualism. 
 
 3. We have seen that a good will is of 
 a general nature such as to command 
 success, and we need not fear that the 
 guidance of conduct is to be obstinicted 
 by complete uncertainty as to the results 
 of our actions. 
 
 But a question remains. Granting that
 
 VI - WHAT TO DO ? 149 
 
 the good will has a fair chance of success, 
 and is in any case contagious, how is the 
 right — the conduct incumbent on me — 
 related to the good — the whole world of 
 values ? 
 
 The answer must be in the main, that 
 your problem is to make a livable life for 
 yourself with the greatest regard for values 
 possible under the conditions. And this 
 brings us the answer to the question why 
 moral philosophy cannot directly proffer 
 guidance in the particulars of conduct. 
 
 For the problem is individual. Values 
 can only be realised in and through a life, 
 and a life itself is an indispensable value. 
 You are not a mathematical point, fitted to 
 enter equally into any conceivable con- 
 struction. You have ab initio the material 
 of a self, and if you could cut yourself 
 loose from it you would be nothing. Your 
 task, then, is original, unique, creative. 
 You have to mould yourself into a living 
 person, whose being shall incorporate what 
 it can of value. The work is therefore, 
 in logical jargon, not deductive. There is
 
 150 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 no deduction unless the matter admits 
 of clear and unambiguous insight into 
 necessary relations, as when you see that 
 two straight lines cannot enclose a space. 
 But the moral and religious life is a busi- 
 ness, if we speak logically, corresponding 
 to the creative step in induction, that for 
 which, admittedly, no rules exist ; that in 
 which a set of facts, hitherto merely 
 grouped in time or space, is bound together 
 by a newly contrived conception or hypo- 
 thesis. Or you may say it is an artistic 
 creation ; the principle is the same. Given 
 an initial self and surroundings, the pro- 
 blem is to find or contrive the life which 
 will do justice to them, which will reveal 
 all the values that can be found in them, 
 which will " meet," or " do justice to, 
 the situation." Nine-tenths of the human 
 race, I should suppose, accept the life that 
 descends upon them, or choose as a whole, 
 at most between two or three familiar 
 alternative paths. And it is doubtful 
 whether those who believe themselves more 
 free are so much happier or better as they
 
 VI WHAT TO DO ? 151 
 
 think. For in the main, the source of the 
 hfe which you accept — whether inheritance 
 or choice — makes Uttle difference. Within 
 every Hfe every step is a creation. At 
 every step an alternative must be accepted 
 and a new shape given to the contour of the 
 self and the situation. There is plenty of 
 suggestion and tradition to work upon ; 
 the social spirit in all its forms due to all 
 its groupings is the main substance which 
 is given you. But operating within and 
 upon all this is the reason of the self ; the 
 impulse to live and to make something of 
 life ; to bring its elements into some kind 
 of shape and connection. 
 
 This being the problem, to know the 
 general outlines of value and goodness is 
 important, but is not enough. It is, 
 indeed, a grave drawback for the formation 
 of the self if its attention has never been 
 called to the varied forms of good purpose 
 which are normally within a man's reach. 
 Defective acquaintance with the extension 
 of the good is a serious hindrance to the 
 preference for the right ; and it is the
 
 15^ SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 task of education to guard against this 
 disadvantage. Nevertheless, the right is 
 different from the good. The right for me 
 is that form or case of the good which, all 
 things considered, I am able to embody in 
 my scheme of life and in my daily conduct. 
 My duty is not necessarily the duty which 
 would be the highest if it were mine. 
 There is a rational necessity here to which 
 insufficient attention is paid in certain 
 types of theory. Why can you not as a 
 rule go out freely into the world and do 
 service to any one you meet or to any 
 cause which attracts you ? Is it not a 
 mere superstitious convention which tells 
 you that mostly your duty lies at home ? 
 I answer No. In general there is a sound 
 practical reason for the presumption, and 
 we can see that where the reason fails the 
 presumption fails also. It is an example 
 of the truth we urged before, that when 
 your " high " ideal is unsuccessful, it is 
 very apt to be so because it is not high 
 enough. The general reason why primarily 
 one's duty lies at home is that the very
 
 VI WHAT TO DO ? 153 
 
 exacting conditions which are essential to 
 the full realisation of good purposes are 
 as a rule, and for normal individuals, only 
 present in very familiar conditions and 
 among affairs and persons which they 
 thoroughly know. Why, when you hear 
 of a gifted child needing some special 
 education, of a family suffering from some 
 removable misfortune, can you not, sup- 
 posing resources to be available, step in 
 at once and play providence ? Not from 
 any superstition that your duty is only at 
 home. Your duty is everywhere where 
 you can find it. But simply because, if 
 you have a right conception of the high 
 conditions necessary to successful inter- 
 ference in unfamiliar lives, you will find 
 as a rule that you cannot fulfil them. 
 Where you can establish the relations of 
 knowledge and continued responsibility 
 necessary to effective interference, and 
 where your home duties, for which no one 
 but yourself is likely to be so well qualified 
 as yourself, are not interrupted by the 
 distraction of your attention, the presump-
 
 154 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 tion against sporadic activity may fall 
 away. But experience, and nothing else, 
 shows us how very frequently the con- 
 ditions of success are really absent, when 
 we had encouraged ourselves to believe 
 them present. 
 
 We can see from this illustration the 
 nature of the constructive task involved in 
 choosing the right conduct, or rather — 
 for this expression veils almost the whole 
 nature of the problem, and is responsible, 
 I believe, for much unnecessary error — in 
 contriving and creating the acts which, 
 in the light of the best we know, confront 
 and do justice to our successive situations. 
 Life is not a choosing between white and 
 black counters. It is making, contriving, 
 inventing. 
 
 Now, I think, we can see why, when we 
 leave the general nature of the good and 
 come to the question of what is right for 
 me, moral philosophy can no longer help 
 us. It is, as we saw above, a question of 
 method. Your life is a construction, and 
 though general elements enter into it, a
 
 VI WHAT TO DO ? 155 
 
 unique and creative construction. No one 
 but yourself really knows your materials 
 and your situations, and he could not 
 know all of them that there is to be known 
 unless he was absolutely one with yourself. 
 We find it in the giving of advice. The 
 recipient can produce from his inner experi- 
 ence consideration upon consideration such 
 as to turn his adviser's conclusions in any 
 direction to which his desires and the drift 
 of his personality are urging him. Rabe- 
 lais' portrayal of a man thus receiving 
 advice whether or no to marry, and 
 reversing his adviser's conclusion at every 
 sentence through several close - printed 
 pages, goes deep into the heart of the sub- 
 ject. In a word, your moral conclusion 
 must issue from your whole self, and be 
 inspired by the convictions which dominate 
 your life and determine your special out- 
 look on your special situation. Casuistry, 
 the application of general principles of good 
 to moral conduct, is necessarily a source 
 of fallacy and sophistry. The reason is, as 
 we have seen, that it is impossible, apart
 
 156 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 from a complete creative construction in 
 terms of a unique complication of demands 
 and materials, to determine which of the 
 innumerable general truths applicable to 
 a concrete course of conduct is to be in- 
 sisted on in a given case. Is it cowardice, 
 or care for your family, to avoid a personal 
 danger ? Is it indolence, avarice, or a just 
 fear of doing mischief that hinders you 
 from a sporadic benevolence ? It is for 
 you to judge, and though general advice 
 may help to put the elements of the situa- 
 tion before you, no mind but your own 
 can strike the decisive balance of values 
 and resources and appropriateness to your 
 scheme of life. 
 
 This may be put in other words by 
 pointing out that general deductions ap- 
 plied to moral complications or conflicts of 
 duty can only be stated in the form of 
 hypothetical cases. But there is no sound 
 inference from hypothetical cases to entire 
 individual situations. No hypothesis can 
 exhaust the whole circumstances, and the 
 circumstance omitted may prove to be just
 
 VI WHAT TO DO ? 157 
 
 the decisive factor. In all dealings with 
 concrete life, hypothetical cases are a 
 dangerous source of fallacy. Of course 
 your own case, when you state it in words 
 to your adviser, becomes a hypothetical 
 case. It is cut off from the full reality, 
 and might be printed as an example in a 
 text-book. 
 
 Thus it is most difficult to understand 
 in many cases what is the meaning of the 
 term Reason or practical Reason as ap- 
 pealed to in ethical treatises. It seems to 
 be something which gives necessary judg- 
 ments on self-evident principles affecting 
 practice. But self-evidence is of one kind 
 only, and depends on the relation of 
 propositions to experience as a whole. 
 There is no special kind of intuition which 
 refers to propositions affecting conduct. 
 The only true and comprehensive meaning 
 of reason is the tendency of mind to 
 construction, 'wholeness, completeness as 
 we. find it in the working out of a theory, 
 or in the creative logic which brings order 
 and positive unity into practice or fine art.
 
 / 
 
 158 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap 
 
 Of this the determination of moral conduct, 
 as we have described it, is a central 
 example, and the mere apprehension of 
 abstract generalities only enters into it as 
 what it always is — a sub-form of know- 
 ledge, which is inferior to concrete under- 
 standing, and which may be auxiliary to 
 any form of insight. 
 
 4. We see, then, I hope, the nature of 
 the problem with which the aspiration to 
 right moral action confronts us. There is 
 no general principle but that of promoting 
 the best life we can. The best, as we saw 
 of all values, is impersonal, though em- 
 bodied in persons. It is the best for the 
 world. The practical difficulty lies in 
 bringing effectively together in our limited 
 existence the characters of " the best " 
 and of " what we can." We saw above 
 that the complexity of causa] relations in 
 the world does not interpose so fatal an 
 obstacle to this connection as might appear 
 at first sight. And the moral of that 
 discussion may be pushed further. The 
 irrationality of the world, which we ad-
 
 yi WHAT TO DO ? ' 159 
 
 mitted, is in some degree everywhere. 
 But the character of responsiveness to 
 the good object is everywhere also. In 
 multitudes of situations there is not even 
 for ourselves any decisive insight as to 
 what is the best or even the better course. 
 But if the uncertainty of the better is 
 common, so also is the certainty of the 
 good. In practice it is more important to 
 see that we get full value from the course 
 we choose than to weary and bewilder 
 ourselves by attempting to secure an 
 infallibility of right preference which is in 
 truth unattainable. To make a livable 
 life, and see that it shall promote something 
 of value, is within the power of all, if we 
 remember that even to sacrifice personal 
 existence for a supreme good which de- 
 mands the sacrifice is also self-realisation, 
 and is one way of affirming or perfecting 
 our being. For our being is not restricted 
 to our physical self, but enters into the 
 unity of spirits. And, in the end, if we 
 have missed a higher life by a defective 
 choice, this is a hazard of our finiteness.
 
 160 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS oh.vi 
 
 But very often the belief that we have 
 done so is an illusion. And every sound 
 assertion of values subserves, as we saw, 
 all others. We may be contributors to 
 a supreme good without having capacity 
 for it in our immediate selves. All lives 
 colour all.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 SOMETHING WORTH KNOWING? 
 
 Und so lang du da3 nlcht hast. Die to live ; for thou who hast not 
 
 Dieses, Stirb' und werde. Made this law thine own, 
 
 Bist du nur ein triiber Gast Art but an embarrassed novice 
 
 Auf der dunklen Erde. In a world unknown. 
 
 We saw what Moral Philosophy could not 
 do for the guidance of conduct. It could 
 not lay down general laws, from which, 
 by deductive process, the Tightness of 
 particular pieces of conduct in particular 
 situations could be derived. It was the 
 function of ethics, we held, to understand 
 the nature of good and evil conduct, but 
 not to take command of individual lives. 
 
 It seemed, perhaps, a hard saying, and 
 while we must, as I believe, strictly main- 
 tain the principle that philosophy has to 
 understand and not to dictate, it is natural 
 
 for the reflective man of good- will to ask : 
 
 161 M
 
 162 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 Can a student — who may be, though he is 
 by no means certain to be, a sensible and 
 experienced person — can a student not 
 proffer anything at all of an intellectual 
 nature that may be helpful to right prefer- 
 ences in practical conduct ? Does he, after 
 all his labour and reflection, not know any- 
 thing about life, to put it brutally, which 
 is unfamiliar to the sensible man in the 
 street, whom business has prevented from 
 giving the same attention to the subject in 
 general ? Of course, the man in the street 
 has his advantage of close acquaintance 
 with practical questions, and a habit of rapid 
 and, at his best, of just decision. The 
 student, if he is wise, certainly observes 
 the practical man and learns from him. 
 The overthrow of Hedonism, for example, 
 depended very much on the observation of 
 the attitude of plain men to their interests 
 and purposes. Can the student on his side 
 furnish nothing that will act, for example, 
 as a clue to insight in prosperity and ad- 
 versity, so that some continuity of mood 
 and temper may be maintained ; so that
 
 vn WORTH KNOWING ? 163 
 
 a man's mind may not be driven about with 
 every wind of fortune ; some pillar of cloud 
 by day in blatant prosperity, and pillar of 
 fire by night in desperate adversity ? 
 
 I venture to think that there are such 
 ideas. They would, of course, not be true 
 if experience did not bear them out, and 
 not be useful if it did not bear them out 
 very continually, and just where life is not 
 all plain sailing. But yet, being perhaps a 
 little difficult, because they require two or 
 three sides of the facts to be held together 
 at once in thought, they are not always 
 noted, and are de facto a little esoteric. I 
 call attention to Goethe's language in the 
 verse at the head of this chapter, the 
 emphasis of which I believe my doggerel 
 version rightly reproduces. The truth he 
 is urging, he seems to say, is an open secret ; 
 i.e. it is obvious in the facts, but yet often 
 ignored, needing some attention and some 
 experience to apprehend. But any one 
 who remains quite innocent of it is really — 
 I am sure Goethe meant to drive this home 
 with all his force — like a man who has lost
 
 164 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 his way in a strange city. He is perturbed 
 and " put about." The turnings do not 
 seem to take him anywhere. He can 
 recognise nothing that helps him or tells 
 him how to judge his situation. In the 
 first stanza of the same lyric Goethe seems 
 to be accenting the same point. It is less 
 distinguished in expression. Goethe's way 
 is to work up from matter that may seem 
 trivial to his most splendid utterances.^ 
 I quote it mainly for the sake of the open- 
 ing couplet, which confirms the suggestion 
 that the poet genuinely thought himself to 
 be on the track of an important indication : 
 
 Sag' es niemand, nur den Weisen, 
 Weil die Menge gleich verhohnet ; 
 Das Lebendige will ich preisen, 
 Das nach Flammentod sich sehnet.^ 
 
 Tell it not save to the wise, 
 Shun the many's mocking breath, 
 What has life then most I prize 
 When it woos the fiery death. 
 
 1 The well-known lines about forswearing all halfness 
 follow upon very trivial examples. 
 
 2 "Selige Sehnsucht," Works (ed. 1857), iv. 23. His 
 symbol is the moth and the candle ; of course he suggests 
 an interpretation.
 
 vn WORTH KNOWING ? 165 
 
 Before attempting to develop this parti- 
 cular thought, it may be worth while to 
 observe some simpler instances in which 
 pregnant truths do good service to morality. 
 I suppose the old theory is substantially 
 sound, according to which moral training 
 consists of two parts — habituation to cer- 
 tain modes of living, and communication of 
 explicit ideas which crystallise for distinct 
 thought what has been implicitly appre- 
 hended in conduct. The Decalogue, pro- 
 verbs, and the sayings of wise and good 
 men, the Athenian citizen's oath, " My 
 duty to my neighbour " ^ in the Anglican 
 catechism, the whole end of man in the 
 Scotch catechism,^ with many more such 
 utterances, share, I presume, the double 
 nature implied in this serviceableness. 
 They stamp into the mind and ratify a 
 fragmentary perception of fitness and value 
 which has attended certain aspects and 
 
 1 There is a prejudice against this fine statement, based 
 on a popular misquotation by which the words " that state 
 of life to the which it shall please God to call me " are re- 
 placed by the words " to which it has pleased God to call me." 
 
 * " To glorify God and enjoy him for ever."
 
 166 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 types of conduct ; and they bring satisfac- 
 tion as a sort of elementary theory, under 
 which certain facts of hfe are gathered 
 together and seen in a way which seems to 
 explain them ; to present them, that is, in 
 a manner suitable and appropriate to an 
 orderly conception of living. It is an old 
 remark that there is a quasi-intellectual 
 satisfaction of this kind about the " moral " 
 of any child's moral tale. It is a very 
 simple theory, which serves as the clue — 
 the explanation — to the riddle or parable 
 given in the incidents narrated. There is 
 " Drop the nuts," said to the boy who 
 could not pull his hand out of the bottle 
 because he had grasped too many. There 
 are the moralised stories of the Bible. We 
 hardly know how much we owe to these. 
 I have met a clever lad of the rising genera- 
 tion who did not know the story of how 
 Nathan said to David, " Thou art the 
 man." Without this story and that of 
 Naboth's vineyard the morality of the 
 world would surely be much poorer than 
 it is. I could hardly feel that my clever
 
 vn WORTH KNOWING ? 167 
 
 young friend was properly educated ; and 
 my feeling was the same about a distin- 
 guished savant who had never read the 
 Pilgrim's Progress. 
 
 It would be a fascinating study to trace 
 the influence of family mottoes and watch- 
 words, which would not be confined to 
 those fortunate houses which bear stirring 
 phrases under their heraldic crests. ^ Count- 
 less famihes, " gentle and simple," and other 
 corporate bodies also, colleges, regiments, 
 crafts and classes, would be found to have 
 valued traditions crystalHsed in simple 
 sentences. Then there are the words of 
 the poets and teachers which come home 
 differently to different individuals accord- 
 ing to their private experience. Many of 
 us to-day are grateful for the lines : 
 
 Life is mostly froth and bubble, 
 Two things stand like stone ; 
 
 Kindness in another's trouble, 
 Courage in one's own.^ 
 
 „_ — — ' 7^ 
 
 1 I must confess to having sometimes envied a house 
 which bears the motto " Essayez," with crest a hand grasping 
 at a star. 
 
 a I do not know tlie author. I got the quotation from a 
 novel by Mr. Galsworthy.
 
 168 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 Each of such expressions throws a strong 
 though partial hght upon hfe's experience ; 
 and because, as we saw, all excellences are 
 connected, and promote each other, the 
 general effect upon minds which they catch 
 hold of is probably good. That they do 
 catch hold of minds is, I think, quite un- 
 questionable, and we saw above the reason 
 for it. Of course, what comes home to one 
 mind is a platitude to another who has a 
 different experience ; which is a reason 
 why books of aphorisms are as a whole less 
 valuable than the authors or compilers 
 thought them likely to be. What they 
 found they needed, and so was a revelation 
 to them personally, will not meet every 
 man's need, and where it does not it will 
 attract no attention. Some of us have 
 found it a special lesson of moral experi- 
 ence that a supreme danger and tempta- 
 tion is to allow hesitancy between two or 
 more duties to obstruct the performance 
 of all, and therefore the rule of thumb 
 " Mind you get at least something done " 
 to be very necessary to remember. But
 
 vn WORTH KNOWING? 169 
 
 for others, who are not assailed by that 
 particular temptation, the " crystal " in 
 question may carry no special value nor 
 fascination. 
 
 And, in general, this is the case with all 
 these " secrets of life " which sages and 
 poets have embodied in utterances more 
 or less fascinating or commanding. Each 
 of them is just a rule of thumb, referring 
 to something in experience of greater 
 depth and value or of less, which merits 
 observation and attention, and attracts as 
 revealing a connection and partial com- 
 pleteness in some response which men's 
 actions have made to their situations. 
 None of them can tell you its own propor- 
 tion of truth compared with others', nor 
 when it is right to attend to it, and when 
 it would be better to think of things other- 
 wise. This is that defect of general prin- 
 ciples as a guide to moral conduct, on 
 which we insisted in the previous chapter. 
 Still, for the reasons given, the spell they 
 cast on us has its value. Our need will 
 often suggest them at the right moment,
 
 170 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 and they bring the general conscience to 
 sustain the individual. 
 
 The principle to which I referred at 
 starting, and to which I now return, is 
 familiar among such sayings as we have 
 been speaking of. But it covers the whole 
 of life, whereas " Thou shalt not steal," 
 "Thou shalt do no murder," and even, 
 though capable of very wide application, 
 " Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself," 
 apply rather to special provinces of conduct. 
 And being so wide, it is liable to be mis- 
 applied and materialised, so that " He that 
 loseth his life for my sake shall find it " may 
 be taken to mean that if you give your life 
 in a good cause you are sure of living 
 happily for ever in another world. 
 
 But, as I urged above, the principle in 
 its full meaning is, as Goethe evidently 
 felt, something of a revelation. It is one 
 on which students have bestowed a great 
 deal of thought and care ; and I believe, 
 perhaps naively, that the world would be 
 a happier and better place if it were more 
 generally appreciated in its full meaning.
 
 vn WORTH KNOWING ? 171 
 
 It gives you, I should suggest, a positive 
 yet critical account of what you have to 
 look for in life, and what you may be glad 
 to achieve. Current faith and expecta- 
 tion, if positive, are apt to be uncritical ; 
 if negative, to make a pretence of being 
 critical, but in truth to be uncritical still. 
 
 I should venture to suggest that there 
 are three uncritical attitudes among more 
 or less reflective people who aspire to be 
 critical — to pass judgment on life. Life 
 itself, if firmly taken hold of, does much 
 to bring the judgment straight ; and the 
 greater part of the world is, I suppose, 
 fairly sane in its thought, which confines 
 itself to practical needs. But when 
 thought passes beyond practice and com- 
 mon-sense, and into the reflective ways of 
 common-sense theory, it does not follow 
 that it determines the thinker's conduct. 
 Such thought is often little more than a 
 safety-valve ; and much of literature might 
 come under this category. 
 
 Still there are the attitudes I speak 
 of. They affect literature, and they un-
 
 172 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 doubtedly exist as influences in life. I 
 will call them complacency, expectancy, 
 despair. 
 \ Complacency is the attitude for which 
 all is well even in the world or worlds of 
 time. I say the worlds, for in some forms 
 it overlaps the attitude of expectancy, and 
 ekes out its belief in the satisfactoriness of 
 the world we inhabit by some reliance on 
 an arrangement by which any defect will 
 be made good in another sphere of being. 
 It may be of very different qualities, and in 
 its grossest form of total unawakenedness 
 to surrounding evil and injustice, is hardly 
 to be found, at all events in open utterance 
 to-day. An innocent or deep-rooted faith, 
 on the other hand, which refuses to see 
 the evil, because it has a conviction that 
 somehow all is well, though it may share 
 certain characters with complacency, is 
 rather a very imperfect form of the con- 
 viction which is our theme. Nevertheless, 
 complacency exists, if hardly even pre- 
 tending to be critically supported, as yet a 
 sinister influence in life. '
 
 WORTH KNOWING ? 173 
 
 By expectancy I mean a mood of 
 uncritical criticism which sees evil and 
 imperfection in the series of events as they 
 have occurred and are occurring, but which 
 puts its confidence in an earthly or heavenly 
 paradise, by which, in future time or after 
 an unending progress (note the contra- 
 diction), all evil shall be ended, and all past 
 evil wiped out by compensation. 
 N^ Despair is the least uncritical of these 
 would-be critical reflections. It has a 
 standard of good or perfection, as indeed 
 the two former also have, and as every 
 attitude must have that so much as makes 
 a proposition about the satisfactoriness of 
 the world. But it obstinately denies that 
 its standard is or can be attained in the 
 world or worlds of time, and sees no reason 
 to be convinced of anything deeper than 
 this, or sees reason to be convinced that 
 there is nothing such. 
 
 People who are habitually in any one of 
 these three attitudes — and they are very 
 common, and most of us are more or less 
 infected with them — are, as we said, like
 
 u 
 
 174 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 people who have lost their way. They 
 have no insight which enables them to 
 grasp the character of their surroundings, 
 and the current of events is continually 
 disconcerting their expectations. In the 
 case of despair, indeed, there should be no 
 expectations to overthrow. But it is 
 an attitude which cannot be consistently 
 maintained, and though, if thorough and 
 discriminating, the most reasonable and 
 critical attitude of the three, it also is 
 groping after a law which it cannot find, 
 and is constantly hopeless where it should 
 be confident, and, inconsistently, confident 
 where it would be right to be hopeless. 
 Faith in arresting war by mere non-resist- 
 ance is an example. 
 
 What position does our principle " die 
 to live " suggest with reference to each of 
 these attitudes ? The reasons have been 
 given in the previous chapter, and now a 
 summary statement will be more helpful 
 than a repetition of the argument at 
 length. 
 
 Complacency, we shall hold, is a justi-
 
 vn WORTH KNOWING ? 175 
 
 fied attitude in so far as it believes that 
 there is a perfection in things. It is un- 
 critical and false so far as it accepts any 
 status quo, and especially the ease and 
 comfort of any limited section of living 
 beings, as the perfection which it divines. 
 
 Expectancy is well warranted in its con- 
 viction, which it shares with complacency, 
 that there is somewhere a perfection, and 
 in its own further belief that there is a 
 process in things and that this process on 
 the whole embodies a relative realisation 
 of good against evil. It is false and un- 
 critical when it is positive that the per- 
 fection which it di\dnes to be real is to be 
 found in a result of progress within histori- 
 cal time, whether in this world or another, 
 and that any such result could be looked 
 upon as in principle neutralising and 
 abolishing the evil recognised in the past 
 and present of the progressive world. 
 
 Despair is a sound and just attitude 
 of soul in so far as it is a recognition that 
 perfection and satisfaction cannot be 
 attained in actual time or by the path of
 
 176 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 unending progress ; and also that progress 
 in the material conditions of life is by 
 itself as great a danger to happiness and 
 satisfaction as extreme rudeness and 
 meagreness in man's surroundings, or prob- 
 ably much greater. It becomes false and 
 uncritical when it fails to discriminate the 
 historical and material progress, to which 
 it rightly denies the achievement of satis- 
 faction, from that perfection of the whole 
 which is realised by faith, and which does 
 give tokens of itself in the relatively suc- 
 cessful character of the good-will, and in 
 the increasing direction of man's energies 
 upon supreme values. For this direction 
 towards supreme values, the goods which 
 are not diminished by sharing, is actually 
 promoted by the recognition which despair 
 itself implies, of the relative nulHty and 
 instability of material or competitive 
 objects ; and further, by means of that 
 direction, the competitive objects them- 
 selves, wealth, that is, and all material 
 resources, being dropped into their rightful 
 position of instruments for good life and
 
 vn WORTH KNOWING ? 177 
 
 the higher values, must add to, instead 
 of diminishing, the security of such human 
 happiness as is permanently just and 
 valuable. 
 
 All evil springs — ^it is a good old say- 
 ing — from enjoying what we ought to 
 use (wealth and material comforts) and 
 using what we ought to enjoy (intelligence, 
 love, beauty, religion) ; in other words, 
 from reversing the true relation of means 
 and ends. Despair, in critical and en- 
 lightened minds, is a recognition of the final 
 absurdity of this reversed reading of things, 
 and it, the unhappy consciousness, is 
 therefore, or ought to be, a penultimate 
 step on the path to the true interpretation 
 of life, by which things fall into their 
 natural places, and the lower values become 
 instruments of those that are supreme, and 
 therefore, as we have seen throughout, 
 take on something of their colour and 
 character. Pure industrialism and com- 
 mercialism are soul - destroying things. 
 But industrial and commercial enterprise 
 and co-operation at their best may be 
 
 N
 
 178 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 among the great bonds of humanity, and 
 the highest stimuli of inteUigence. 
 
 Our principle, then, to put it together 
 in a few words, positively, means this. 
 Man must recognise that he is always 
 dying ; that is, always losing parts of 
 himself and his belongings. Also, he is 
 always growing, that is, attaining and 
 achieving something which he had not 
 and was not. This comes from his nature, 
 and is inevitable. But if he understands 
 it, and sets his heart not on the things 
 which are unstable and perishing, but on 
 the something perfect and solid which he 
 divines as persisting through the loss, and 
 even as pointed out to him by the loss, 
 through a sort of spiritual induction by 
 negative instances, — if he adopts this atti- 
 tude by instinct and religious impulse, 
 with the wise but unreflective majority, or 
 by reflection and insight, with, as we fear, 
 a not very large minority, then he feels or 
 sees a meaning in life, and is not discon- 
 certed or uneasy in its vicissitudes, but 
 holds a faith which is reinforced on all
 
 WORTH KNOWING ? 179 
 
 sides by life and experience, and rises 
 triumphant over even world-wide calamity. 
 The three attitudes we spoke of are thus 
 what may justly be called stupid, like the 
 mind of a rustic in a great city ; full of 
 bewilderment, destitute of insight and 
 appreciation. The first two are stupid, 
 because particulars may always fail you, 
 and, if you cannot see beyond them, leave 
 you not knowing which way to turn ; the 
 last is so, because the true perfection, with 
 its partial corroboration by the generally 
 successful character of the good will, can 
 never fail you, and to distrust it means 
 unawakenedness to facts. If we see these 
 relations clearly, the nature of self-realisa- 
 tion and self-sacrifice become simple and 
 obvious. It is self-realisation when you 
 strive to put in act the perfection with 
 which you experience yourself to be con- 
 tinuous through faith and aspiration. 
 Always in the act there is loss, simply 
 because for us one thing excludes another. 
 Whether the loss amounts to self-sacrifice 
 is, as we saw above, a matter of name and
 
 180 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS ch.vh 
 
 of degree. But the secret of our principle 
 is to hold together the fourfold thought ; 
 t^ you must not expect good without relative 
 loss ; you must not expect to see perfection 
 in the finite world ; but nevertheless you 
 have a hold on real perfection ; and also 
 its character manifests itself, in spite of 
 and even by means of your loss and hazard, 
 through the successful response in general 
 of the good will to circumstance in the 
 world. All this I believe to be clearly 
 and simply true ; and to be a reading of 
 the strongest and wholesomest types of 
 life. It avoids the three stupid attitudes ; 
 and I hope and am pretty confident that 
 it is something worth knowing, and an 
 indirect assistance which the student is 
 able to contribute to the guidance of 
 conduct.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 ON THE GROWING REPUGNANCE TO 
 PUNISHMENT 
 
 There are to-day many symptoms of a 
 revolt against the idea and practice of 
 punishment. I think that the discussion 
 exhibits a want of clearness on essential 
 points ; and I will try to indicate some 
 distinctions which affect the question. 
 
 It appears to me that there are at least 
 five influences which are active in the 
 revolt against punishment. I enumerate 
 them : 
 
 1. A change in educational and dis- 
 ciplinary ideas, covering the whole problem 
 of the obedience of the young. 
 
 2. Experience of evils accessory to penal 
 proceedings, as in attendance at police 
 
 181
 
 182 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 courts, and in the treatment of prisoners, 
 especially in the effect on unhardened 
 offenders. 
 
 3. An attractive theory that moral 
 badness is disease, implying the bad per- 
 son's moral innocence, and suggesting 
 curative treatment without penal associa- 
 tions. 
 
 4. The doctrine that punishment is mere 
 adding evil to evil so long as it looks to the 
 past, and that it is only explicable and 
 justifiable as a mere means to preventive 
 deterrence, and to reformation of the 
 " guilty " person, as future results. As 
 punishment, therefore, or as retribution, 
 it is held to be meaningless, and to be a 
 survival from primitive retaliation. 
 
 5. The relatively recent idea that social 
 improvement can come only by selection, 
 which, like (3), encourages the belief in 
 irresponsibility, and further tends to merge 
 punishment in extinctive measures. 
 
 On the first and second heads a few 
 words will suffice, in which I shall concede 
 nearly all that is contended for under those
 
 vm PUNISHMENT 183 
 
 heads, but shall not admit that it affects 
 the main problem of punishment. 
 
 1. The correction of children and dis- 
 cipline exercised over persons in statu 
 pupillari do not belong to the subject of 
 punishment proper. They presuppose im- 
 perfect wills, which have not entered upon 
 complete responsibility ; and the object, 
 especially in the case of children, is to 
 secure the obedience of the imperfect will 
 to that of a superior, in order that right 
 habits of living may be formed from the 
 first. The mode and degree in which 
 correction is applied for this purpose is a 
 matter of educational expediency ; and it 
 seems quite probable that with improved 
 educational methods — the development of 
 interests, and an appeal to the sense of 
 honour through self-government, — the need 
 for it may be reduced almost to a vanishing 
 point. The objection to stupid and irritat- 
 ing methods in education may be thoroughly 
 admitted without touching the question 
 of punishment in dealing with fully re- 
 sponsible adults. I maintain, however,
 
 184 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 the old objection against arguing with 
 children on points of conduct.^ Reasonable 
 explanation of commands is a different 
 thing. 
 
 2. The same applies to all that has been 
 brought to light as to the evils resulting 
 from the attendance of children or first 
 offenders in the precincts of police courts, 
 and as to all the stupid and cruel accessories 
 of the treatment of prisoners, by which it 
 is alleged that their health and reason 
 are frequently undermined. The present 
 argument defends no abuses of this type. 
 It is perhaps not easy to avoid making 
 prison desirable, while eschewing everything 
 that approaches to cruelty and dangerous 
 rigour. The difficulty is increased by what 
 must certainly be admitted as a fact, the 
 increasing sensitiveness of the age, and the 
 occasional introduction into the prison 
 population of persons to whom there is 
 
 ^ I have heard a lecturer quote with approval the saying 
 of a mother that she had been arguing with her child for a 
 couple of hours to get her to do some particular act ; and 
 they were both quite worn out. This seems to me wholly 
 wrong in principle.
 
 vm PUNISHMENT 185 
 
 cruelty in details of treatment which the 
 average inmates would not feel in the same 
 way. All this I concede. It should be 
 a definite aim to banish callousness and 
 stupidity both from laws and from their 
 administrators. But this again does not 
 touch in principle the question of punish- 
 ment. It may be added that, as we see from 
 the account of Penn's imprisonment, dis- 
 gusting laxity^ may accompany horrible 
 brutahty . It must be possible per contra for 
 stringent discipline to accompany proper at- 
 tentiveness to the needs of mind and body. 
 We may further clear out of the way the 
 influence which I mentioned in the fifth 
 place. The limits of eugenic selection 
 under present conditions of knowledge are 
 tolerably plain ; and with this insight the 
 idea that they overlap the normal province 
 of punishment falls to the ground. The 
 congenitally feeble-minded and those pre- 
 disposed to consumption are the principal 
 types of stocks against which selection 
 
 1 The daily admission of prostitutes to the prison by 
 connivance of the turnkeys.
 
 186 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 might safely operate ; and if alcoholism 
 is really such a type, at this one point 
 disease and criminality may in some degree 
 overlap ; but till we know more of the 
 way in which inherited qualities may vary 
 under varying stimuli, it is hardly safe to 
 treat any mental character outside con- 
 genital feeble-mindedness as a ground for 
 extinction of a stock. The ordinary 
 criminal class appears to fall quite outside 
 the province of such unfitness ; and the 
 suggestion that heredity brings irresponsi- 
 bility in normal adults is therefore un- 
 supported by the facts on which eugenic 
 theory relies. And if it were supported 
 by them, it is important to note, the only 
 result would be to substitute liability to 
 extinction or segregation for liability to 
 punishment. If you are not capable of 
 moral guilt because you come of a pre- 
 destinedly vicious stock and are irre- 
 sponsible, you cannot plead the claims of 
 moral innocence. You are then open to 
 be dealt with as the public welfare may 
 require, without respect to guilt or inno-
 
 vm PUNISHMENT 187 
 
 cence, which in your case, by the hypo- 
 thesis, cannot exist. For you are not a 
 moral being. 
 
 There remains to be considered the 
 influence of the ideas which I placed third 
 and fourth respectively in the enumeration. 
 
 Of these the former (3), that moral 
 badness is a disease, and demands curative 
 treatment on the analogy of a disease, 
 denies the necessity of punishment alto- 
 gether, or only admits it in a non-natural 
 sense, viz. as a mere means to the reforma- 
 tion of the patient or offender — a means 
 in which the ordinary accessories of punish- 
 ment such as pain and moral censure may 
 or may not be advisable. If the medical 
 analogy is pressed home the character- 
 istics of punishment entirely disappear, 
 and the patient is considered innocent by 
 the fallacy just exposed. The latter (4) 
 is kindred to the other in treating punish- 
 ment as a means, but differs by regarding 
 it as a normal and inevitable means both 
 to deterrence from conduct hostile to the 
 welfare of society, and also to the moral
 
 188 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 reformation of the offender. Both of 
 these doctrines consider punishment to 
 be, if necessary at all, a means to purposes 
 outside and beyond itself. And the only 
 alternative to looking at it in that light 
 they take to be the derivation of it from 
 a primitive sentiment of vengeance, which 
 in civilised society is obsolete. 
 
 I will now try to approach what I 
 conceive to be the strict and real meaning 
 of punishment. The distinction between 
 this and the two doctrines I have just 
 mentioned will appear, I hope, in the 
 course of the description. 
 
 Punishment is prima facie retrospective ; 
 it deals with the past. This is its essence, 
 and the main source of the objections to 
 it. There is a somewhat heartless argu- 
 ment, which brought one hard - earned 
 wisdom in one's school days, " What's 
 the good of apologising after you've done 
 it ? " But if a big boy had been a mere 
 philosopher one might have met his argu- 
 ment by asking, " What's the good of 
 hitting one after one's done it ? " That
 
 vm PUNISHMENT 189 
 
 is the foundation of the theoretical objec- 
 tions to punishment. Unless you can 
 show counterbalancing advantages outside 
 and beyond itself, so the argument runs, 
 y it is simply adding a new evil to an old 
 one — pain to pain. 
 
 What is meant by suggesting that some- 
 thing which can be thus described — I do 
 not accept the description — is inevitable 
 or desirable ? 
 
 Let us consider the nature of a '* pre- 
 cedent." Everything you do is a pre- 
 cedent. It tends to establish a rule. And 
 there is a common expression, " It must 
 not be made a precedent." A person in 
 authority sometimes says this, and gener- 
 ally he is a weak person. " It may pass 
 this once, but it must not be made a 
 precedent." But every one knows that 
 it is and will be a precedent, and that the 
 protest admits it. It " makes " itself. 
 
 What must you do to prevent its be- 
 coming a precedent ? There is only one 
 way. You must annul the fact or act. 
 How can you annul a fact or an act ?
 
 190 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 There are many methods. You can pull 
 down a building, break open a locked gate, 
 cancel a deed, make a liar tell the truth 
 and apologise. A resolution of the House 
 of Commons can be expunged. The best 
 and surest annulment of an offence is to 
 pardon. But to pardon rightly demands 
 a response, and where there is no security 
 of the response, to pardon may fail to 
 annul. It is therefore rightly held a matter 
 of discretion for a supreme authority. 
 
 This principle of annulment, applied 
 to offences against the body or soul of a 
 commonwealth, is the ground and nature 
 of punishment. A bad act has come into 
 being. It has so far established a vicious 
 rule, a precedent hostile to the body or 
 soul of the community. If the rule is not 
 to stand, is not, that is, to become, with 
 greater or less degrees of consciousness, a 
 persistent factor and make-weight in the 
 communal mind ; that is, in every individual 
 mind so far as it is influenced by social 
 contagion, or, more properly, so far as it 
 shares the general mind ; if the evil rule
 
 PUNISHMENT 191 
 
 is not in this sense to stand and persist, then 
 the act or fact must be cancelled, annulled^ 
 undone. This, I take it, and not the 
 infliction of pain, is the essence of punish- 
 ment. It is the formal verdict or censure 
 of the social authority, marked by some 
 overt act such as the dullest capacity 
 cannot misread. 
 
 Now you cannot formally and publicly 
 undo or set a brand on the voluntary 
 action of a moral agent without checking, 
 cutting back, and repressing his self and 
 his personality. If you merely, for in- 
 stance, were to require a man to be present 
 at the formal removal of his fence which 
 illegally obstructed a right of way, it 
 would to a proud and sensitive person 
 be a very serious pain. And so the true 
 essence of punishment becomes more 
 prominent as its barbarous accessories 
 fall away with the increase of moral sensi- 
 tiveness. The punishment of grave or 
 horrid offences for an educated man or 
 woman lies in the public trial, the verdict 
 of his peers, and the weighty censure of
 
 192 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap 
 
 the experienced judge, although no doubt 
 something more tangible and persistent is 
 needed to make the brand effective. The 
 attempt to prejudice the doctrine of retri- 
 butive punishment — of punishment which 
 is to undo the past — by treating it as a 
 superstitious derivative from the primitive 
 impulse of revenge, is an ill-timed intro- 
 duction of anthropology to prevent us 
 from looking straight at the modern ethical 
 facts. So far from springing out of an 
 irrational vindictive impulse, the nature 
 of retributive punishment is but just 
 traceable, if at all, so long as that impulse 
 co-operates in it. This is an all-important 
 point ; for it shows that punishment for 
 punishment's sake does not become less 
 natural and necessary with the increase 
 of rationality and decrease of cruelty and 
 revenge, but then first, on the contrary, 
 comes to its own, and reveals its funda- 
 mental significance. Civilisation grows up 
 to it, not away from it. You do not really 
 know what punishment means till you 
 have realised the case of the fraudulent
 
 vm PUNISHMENT 193 
 
 company-promoter, the cruel parent, the 
 unfaithful wife (it makes no practical 
 difference that she is not before the criminal 
 law), who have listened to what they did 
 in secret, rehearsed in a public court before 
 all Israel and the sun, and commented 
 on by the weighty voice of the appointed 
 social authority. Some overt act is also 
 necessary, some visible and sensible dimi- 
 nution of personality — imprisonment per- 
 haps, or deprivation of the children (which 
 is practically a penalty, though primarily 
 in the children's interest) — to make sure 
 that the dullest capacity, including that 
 of the guilty person if dimmed and har- 
 dened by sin, shall not fail to apprehend 
 the intensity of the annulling act. 
 
 This is the demand of justice pure and 
 simple. The violation of right within the 
 moral community has called forth a shudder 
 of repudiation which is at the same time a 
 reflex stroke and shock directed against 
 the guilty person. What good does it 
 do, we are asked, if it does not produce 
 better states of consciousness in the mind 
 
 o
 
 194 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 of the past offender or of future possible 
 offenders ? The question betrays a deep- 
 seated individuahsm, a reduction of per- 
 sonaHties to atomic states of consciousness, 
 worse even than the reduction of social 
 wholes to personalities. I answer, it main- 
 tains the moral standard of the general 
 mind and will, which otherwise would be 
 lowered and infected by taking into itself 
 and preserving an action which implies a 
 rule adverse to the moral will. Such an 
 action, if not cancelled, must and always 
 does weaken and deteriorate that will in the 
 general mind. We know this fact in its 
 everyday expression, " If that sort of thing 
 is not stamped upon, it will seriously lower 
 the social standard." We saw it, for 
 instance, in the matter of secret com- 
 missions. A bad practice was becoming 
 a precedent and setting a rule. It became 
 necessary, not to threaten for the future — 
 the essence of punishment is not a threat — 
 but to set a stamp of annulment on every 
 case as it occurred. It was " made punish- 
 able." The counter-reaction in the social
 
 vm PUNISHMENT 195 
 
 will which such action evoked was to 
 receive the seal of social authority and 
 become definite, regular, and sanctioned. 
 
 Now perhaps we are ready to appreciate 
 the simple philosophical term which con- 
 centrates in itself all that we have been 
 saying. Punishment is the " negation " 
 of a bad will by the reaction of the social 
 will for good. This is its nature and 
 character, and this sums up its value. The 
 method of putting it in force is variable, 
 according to the means of annulment 
 which are at command or which are desir- 
 able in different surroundings and different 
 phases of civilisation. Deterrence and re- 
 formation are expansions, outgrowths of 
 its central character the negation of the 
 evil will, and so long as the central char- 
 acter is secured, modifications of method 
 are allowable in the interests of deterrence 
 and reformation. But if these are allowed 
 to become ends in their own right, and not 
 mere outgrowths and expansions of the 
 procedure which is provoked by the realised 
 bad will, then there is no limit to the
 
 196 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 sentimentalism which they may pass into 
 on the one side, nor to their cruelty and 
 oppressiveness on the other. I will return 
 to this point below. 
 
 The concentrated expression which has 
 been used by philosophy best represents, 
 I repeat, the full import and effect of 
 punishment. Sociology here conveys a 
 true impression when it tells us that a 
 crime is an act which offends the strong 
 and definite collective sentiments of society. 
 The impression is frittered away, and the 
 true significance is lost, when we refuse 
 to contemplate this general character as 
 present and implied in the primitive re- 
 action. We are then driven to search for 
 justification in detached results ; which are 
 indeed included in the full and direct mean- 
 ing, but taken each by each, can be repre- 
 sented as ends or consequences for the sake 
 of which the procedure, not otherwise justifi- 
 able, is undertaken. It seems to me obvious, 
 as I have said elsewhere, that it is almost 
 an accident, and makes little difference, 
 whether you describe the punitive reaction
 
 PUNISHMENT 197 
 
 as intended to show a man that he was 
 bad in doing what he did, or to cure him 
 of his badness, or to make him feel that he 
 had better not do it again. Surely these are 
 different sides or aspects, by any of which 
 the intention to negate or strike down his 
 bad will may so far be rightly described. 
 And it is an imperfect conception which 
 does not in principle include them all in 
 the general nature of punishment, although, 
 as I have said, the procedure may be 
 modified, so long as its characteristic aim 
 is not superseded, with the view of more 
 completely carrying out all the aspects 
 that belong to it, and so making the 
 negation more absolute. 
 
 The connection with the lex talionis, 
 then, lies not in the lex talionis expressing 
 in full a sentiment of which the doctrine 
 of punishment for punishment's sake, or of 
 retribution, is an enfeebled and irrational 
 relic. It is that the customs which re- 
 sulted in the lex talionis embodied a rude 
 fore-feeling of the truth that wrong de- 
 mands negation, which has become, and
 
 198 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS cHAr. 
 
 is becoming, more and more obvious as 
 the disguise of anger and revenge is being 
 stripped off the necessary social reaction 
 by the advance of civiUsation. The only 
 connection between penal retribution in 
 the modern world and the law of retaliation 
 is that in both cases the initial act is a 
 shock to some form of social consciousness 
 (for the blood feud is a family business) 
 which reacts by way of annulment. That 
 the early form of negation, by an act of 
 revenge, was not an end of the matter, but 
 started, e.g. in the blood feud, an unending- 
 series of counter-negations, is a fact which 
 flowed inevitably from the just form of the 
 negation not having been found — the form 
 in which the social good will could assert 
 itself as a supreme and final decision, 
 without the challenge involved in private 
 retaliation. 
 ^ We see, then, that the question of the 
 future of punishment turns on the nature 
 of retribution, that is, a reaction of the 
 general moral will, stimulated by an action 
 of a personal bad will.
 
 vm PUNISHMENT 199 
 
 The revolt against punishment which 
 has been produced by the various influences 
 I indicated at starting has been strongly 
 promoted by confusions in popular theory 
 connected with the supposed derivation 
 of retributive punishment from irrational 
 revenge. 
 
 I give two instances. A story is told 
 of an Oriental servant who, having com- 
 mitted some criminal offence — larceny, I 
 think — and suffered imprisonment, returns 
 after his discharge to his European em- 
 ployer in perfect confidence that his place 
 is open to him; and feels ill-used when 
 the employer refuses to engage him. This 
 behaviour on the employer's part is set 
 down to a vindictive theory of punishment, 
 whereas, it is argued, if the employer had 
 thought of punishment in its true light, 
 as a means of prevention and reform, he 
 would have received the man back again 
 as a matter of course. 
 
 Could anything be more hopelessly 
 topsy-turvy ? If punishment were pure 
 revenge, and the revenge had been sated
 
 200 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 and was full, obviously, so far, the man 
 would have been clear, and the fact he had 
 been punished for would no longer have 
 been a stain upon his character. It is if 
 and because punishment recognises an 
 evil will, and has a reformatory aspect, 
 that any one who is asked to trust an 
 ex-delinquent is likely to require evidence 
 that the work of reform has been completed. 
 If you say the requirement tends to be a 
 cruel one, I agree. The reformatory theory, 
 in its purity, is arbitrary and cruel. 
 Revenge may be exhausted by a term in 
 prison ; it is the work of reformation to 
 the duration of which no sane man can 
 profess to set a limit. We shall see the 
 sinister significance of this when we speak 
 of reformation as a substantive procedure. 
 Obviously a stone was here flung against 
 the idea of punishment without the smallest 
 reflection on the question to what char- 
 acteristic of it the objectionable feature 
 was due. 
 
 So in a popular Utopia. Crime is to 
 be disease, and its treatment curative and
 
 PUNISHMENT 201 
 
 medical. But the moment we look at 
 the details, we see by obvious innuendo 
 that the curative treatment of crime is a 
 prolonged and secret application of pain. 
 It is not in the least analogous to medical 
 treatment, which is in every way open, 
 kindly, and preventive of pain and depres- 
 sion. It is the more brutal accessory side 
 of punishment, abstracted from the social 
 verdict which constitutes its essence, and 
 continues, in this respect only resembling 
 medical superintendence, as long as a pro- 
 fessional official considers that the cure is 
 incomplete. Could anything be conceived 
 more brutalising, arbitrary, and oppres- 
 sive ? This is what you get by separating 
 a single aspect of a complete social reaction, 
 and setting it to work as an independent 
 purpose without the reservations which 
 the whole reaction imposes. You want 
 to annul the bad will, and in doing so, to 
 help the offender against it so far as 
 within reasonable limits you can. But 
 to bind a man under the jurisdiction of 
 some official expert in morals — say a gaol
 
 202 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 chaplain — till the latter should be satis- 
 fied of his reformation, would be a tyranny 
 to which I find it hard to conceive a 
 parallel. 
 
 And so with the feature of deterrence. 
 If you once let this loose, so to speak, 
 from the character of the moral reaction 
 in which punishment consists, and treat 
 it as an independent purpose which the 
 penalty has to subserve, you are heading 
 straight for the savage cruelties of obsolete 
 penal codes which were due simply to this 
 — to relying on severity of punishment for 
 deterrent effect. You are not using the 
 social force merely to give an unmistak- 
 able character to the social censure ; you 
 are using it recklessly to produce a further 
 result, which if you fail at first to secure, 
 you will be tempted into deeper and deeper 
 cruelty. In this case two complementary 
 blunders are at work : the idea of punish- 
 ment as primarily the infliction of pain ; 
 and the idea of deterrence as a primary 
 and principal end to which punishment is 
 a mere means. If, on the contrary, you
 
 vm PUNISHMENT 203 
 
 start from the reinstatement of the 
 weakened social will, then there comes 
 into view the comprehensive adjustment 
 of social regulations which is instrumental 
 to the expression of that will. The ex- 
 aggeration of deterrent and reformatory 
 treatment is thus prevented by the intro- 
 duction of a reasonable spirit into the 
 rights and rules which are to be protected 
 from violation, and by simple protective 
 measures,^ which remove temptation. The 
 true place of deterrence and reformation 
 in punishment is simply to determine the 
 method and degree of details which no 
 estimate of moral guilt can supply. There 
 is no estimate which can determine degrees 
 of moral guilt in actual individual cases. 
 Such a thing is wholly inconceivable. It 
 would demand an insight into motive 
 and temptation which it is impossible 
 to possess for others, and all but impos- 
 sible for oneself. All t^at the law can 
 
 1 It has been said that one street lamp is worth two 
 policemen, or words to that effect. Adequate policing itself 
 is a substitute for deterrent severity.
 
 204 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 demand in the way of moral estimation is 
 a general presumption that the agent it is 
 dealing with is responsible, and a sort of 
 average imputation of the intensity of 
 evil will which certain types of action 
 would imply in normal persons. When 
 this is assumed, the adjustment of the 
 detail of punishment may be allowed to 
 depend on effectiveness in deterrence, and 
 in reformatory influence upon the offender. 
 I take it that no wise and sympathetic 
 observer would pronounce that a murderer 
 is necessarily " worse " from a moral 
 standpoint than, say, a keeper of a dis- 
 orderly house. But he would judge, I 
 imagine, that a murderer must be, or must 
 have been at the moment of his act, " pretty 
 bad," i.e. either deeply malicious or fright- 
 fully deficient in self - control, and that, 
 being a resj^onsible creature, he must 
 suffer with the very dangerous class in 
 which he has put himself, though we do 
 not venture to say that on the whole he 
 is more profoundly worthless than such 
 another offender as we spoke of. Thus
 
 vm PUNISHMENT 205 
 
 you cannot apply deterrent penalties simply 
 according to an estimate of badness of 
 will, for no such estimate can, strictly 
 speaking, be made. Nor can you apply 
 it according to your view of danger to 
 the body and soul of the community. 
 Many subtle misdoings and misbeings are 
 worse for the community than any punish- 
 able offence. Deterrence can only be 
 applied, consonantly with justice and 
 security against oppression, as a subordin- 
 ate aspect of punishment, where there is 
 a definite violation of the law which is 
 the expressed social will by a will which 
 may fairly be judged as in contradiction 
 with it. 
 
 As a limiting case, we may take that 
 of an engine-driver or signalman, who by 
 an inadvertence which we should naturally 
 call trifling causes a serious disaster. Here 
 a heavy penalty might be inflicted, because 
 of the danger to the public involved ; and 
 it may be argued further that the inad- 
 vertence in such a case constitutes a 
 serious moral offence. But it is difficult
 
 206 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 to maintain this view. There is no grave 
 shock to the social will. The act of in- 
 attention is often a single incident in the 
 whole career of a conscientious man, and 
 the public attitude on the whole is one of 
 sympathy for him. I think that in such 
 a case we feel that the deterrent prevention 
 is on the point of breaking loose from the 
 control of the true character of punish- 
 ment, and that to rely on its intensity 
 is to enter on the path of irrational 
 severity. 
 
 On the other hand, all of us know of 
 public characters whom we think degrad- 
 ing influences in the national life, but 
 who are not law-breakers in any definite 
 sense. A publicist or novelist whose tone 
 is thoroughly Chauvinistic to-day probably 
 does hundreds of times the mischief to 
 society and the world that a petty thief 
 or drunken rowdy can do. But a man 
 cannot be suppressed because he is cor- 
 rupting the national will at its source. 
 You cannot apply punishment to make 
 people think and feel rightly. Deterrence
 
 vm PUNISHMENT 207 
 
 suggests that line, but it ends in the 
 Inquisition. This shows the Umits within 
 which the reaction by punishment has to 
 do with moral judgment. The offence 
 must not merely have moral culpability, 
 but it must be a definite violation of ex- 
 plicit and social law. Tliis is the double 
 character which keeps all the aspects of 
 punishment together. It is a negation 
 of an evil will which has been realised in 
 action ; and is emphasised by a formal 
 social deliberation and sentence, and some 
 overt act which stamps the annulment on 
 the person or belongings of the offender. 
 Deterrence and reformation are subordin- 
 ate aspects implied within it ; not conse- 
 quences beyond it to which it is a mere 
 instrument, and by which, therefore, it 
 could be determined without limit. 
 
 I do not think that the revolt against 
 punishment proper would have set in but 
 for the connection of it with the accessory 
 evils of callousness and stupidity in educa- 
 tional discipline and in the accessory 
 circumstances of penal administration.
 
 208 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 The public are rightly sensitive to the 
 demoralisation of children and offenders 
 young in crime by bad association and 
 stupid treatment, and to the injury of 
 prisoners by other evil incidents of prison 
 life. And they do not bring into the 
 question their own just inclination to 
 strike down triumphant wrong- doing or 
 set a brand upon cruelty, although these 
 instincts are normal and strong. There 
 is a value, it has been well remarked, in 
 moral assertion by analogy as well as in 
 what is direct; when you can point out 
 that some forms of company-promoting 
 are akin to what men go to prison for as 
 stealing ; or that bribery must be a real 
 offence, since " respectable " men are sent 
 to prison for it. With all these char- 
 acters of punishment, I believe that the 
 public sympathises and will not cease to 
 sympathise. 
 
 I note a difficulty in the case of the 
 incidents of imprisonment. The gaol 
 officials whom we pronounce callous and 
 stupid (like some Poor Law officials in
 
 viii PUNISHMENT 209 
 
 whose case a kindred question arises ^) 
 might with some plausibiHty retort upon 
 us, the public, " Well now, do you know 
 your own mind ? What is the punish- 
 ment of imprisonment or penal ^ei'vitude ? 
 You do not send prisoners here for mere 
 restriction of their movements, and to be 
 otherwise entertained at their ease, and 
 occupied in interesting labour, which any 
 one in ordinary life would enjoy ? Or is 
 this what you mean ? Only tell us what 
 the punishment consists in, and we will 
 carry out your ideas. But do not sentence 
 people to confinement without saying how 
 it is to be penal, and then leave us to con- 
 trive the treatment which is to make it 
 penal without being cruel or dangerous. 
 It is not an easy problem, and we do not 
 believe you have thought it out." Of 
 course, I know that different types of 
 imprisonment are in some degree deter- 
 mined by the sentence ; but the attitude 
 
 ^ E.g. the official who was proud of a cold shower-bath 
 to which they subjected the tramps, and which caused them 
 to avoid the casual ward in question. I take it, it might 
 easily kill a man. 
 
 P
 
 210 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 and behaviour to prisoners throughout is 
 a matter on which, from the facts which 
 occasionally come to light, I should suppose 
 there can be no definite and reasoned 
 policy. It seems to me that as a general 
 principle the regime should be at once 
 strict in matters of comfort and construc- 
 tive in matters of occupation. 
 
 It is to be noted that this discussion 
 like others has been confused by the 
 assumption that love cannot speak the 
 language of retribution. The very point 
 which should have proved the contrary, 
 that is, the Christian principle that love 
 can express itself in punishment, is utilised 
 against the idea that punishment can be 
 retributive. " Retributive," by the fallacy 
 exposed above, is here confused with 
 " vindictive." But the very work of love 
 in punishment is to stamp and brand the 
 evil, by exhibiting it in its true light. The 
 penalties in Dante's hell and purgatory, it 
 has well been said, consist in exhibiting what 
 the acts so punished have tended to make 
 of the world. Love may even take the
 
 vm PUNISHMENT 211 
 
 form of indignation ; it burns, as we said, 
 with the kind of flame which the special 
 contact requires. But this is not to say 
 that anger or resentment are factors in 
 punishment. It is to say that punishment 
 springs from the evil will which evokes it, 
 and is the response of love or goodness to 
 such a will. It is easy, of course, to make 
 a joke by asking if all this high doctrine is 
 to be applied in the multitude of cases in 
 which petty penalties are inflicted for petty 
 breaches of order and of rights. But what 
 is seen in all these cases, however dimly, is 
 that there is a social order which is able to 
 assert itself, and, in any decent community, 
 that on the whole it equally maintains 
 certain general rights. That in doing so 
 it may defend a state of things which con- 
 tains much injustice and needless inequality 
 is very true, and may be a further condi- 
 tion which tends totally to discredit the 
 idea of punishment. The remedy for this 
 is to improve the social system ; not to 
 fetter the reactions of the social will for 
 good. But on the whole it is the clearer
 
 212 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS ch. vm 
 
 consciousness to which we must look for 
 the true import of an institution ; and 
 tested by this consciousness we see that 
 civiHsation, as we said, is growing up to 
 the import of punishment for punishment's 
 sake, and not away from it.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 " WE ARE NOT HARD ENOUGH ON 
 STUPIDITY " 
 
 C'est vrai, et je le repete, 
 
 On n'est pas bon quand on est bete. 
 
 I CANNOT recall where I found the remark 
 that we are not hard enough on stupidity ; 
 but it appears to me to express a feehng 
 which is universal to-day. 
 
 It would be out of place in a work of 
 this kind to criticise one particular nation 
 or another. But it is within the mark to 
 say that the greater part of the world is 
 resenting the stupidity of war, and many 
 other special forms and cases of stupidity 
 which lead up to it or are embodied in 
 it. Our social administration is full of 
 things that are stupid, as we saw partly in 
 
 213
 
 214 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 speaking of punishment. And the mildest 
 of critics must say the same of our social 
 stratification and the uninformed public 
 opinion which results from it. Every one, 
 I believe, feels this to be so. 
 
 This is a remarkable recognition, be- 
 cause the recent fashion in reflective 
 thought has been hostile to what is stigma- 
 tised as intellectualism. " The retirement 
 of the intellect " is a phrase which has been 
 used to express the line which the modern 
 mind is taking. And yet intelligence seems 
 to be at least one opposite of stupidity. 
 Perhaps intelligence is not the same as 
 intellect. I will return to this point im- 
 mediately. 
 
 1. What is the meaning of stupidity in 
 the sense in which more particularly we have 
 been roused to resent and condemn it ? 
 What, for example, is its true opposite ? 
 
 Intelligence certainly seems to be op- 
 posite to it. When we condemn behaviour 
 or routine as unintelligent, that is much 
 the same censure as to call it stupid. But 
 in this affinity the term intelligence does
 
 STUPIDITY 215 
 
 not seem to mean the intellect — the general 
 intellectual capacity ; it indicates rather 
 the quality of being " intelHgent," which 
 is taken as a special quality of some 
 persons, and not as the mere power of 
 reason, which is supposed to distinguish 
 man from brutes. This quality of being 
 " intelligent " is much what we shall find 
 to be in general the opposite of censurable 
 stupidity. It means being aUve, respon- 
 sive, awake to interests and wants which 
 may be new to you. 
 
 " Clever " is prima facie an opposite of 
 stupid. But it does not seem to point 
 quite to the meaning we want. A boy is 
 stupid, in the sense of not being clever, if 
 he is slow at languages or at arithmetic. 
 But one ought not to blame him for this ; 
 it is a matter for regret and sympathy, 
 not for censure. And you may have 
 cause to say of such a boy, " I shouldn't 
 call him a stupid lad on the whole," i.e. 
 in the common affairs of life. So with a 
 peasant ; he may be slow to talk or cal- 
 culate, but may express himself with
 
 216 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 wonderful adaptiveness if you give him a 
 plough or a ribbon saw to handle, or the 
 treatment of a crop to decide. 
 
 Still, want of intellectual cleverness has 
 a point in common with the stupidity we 
 condemn. 1 It is lack of quickness, of 
 being " gleg at the uptak'." This may be 
 due to mere mental tardiness, to slow 
 reaction-time ; but it is much more 
 commonly due to self-absorption, inatten- 
 tion, inappreciativeness of what is im- 
 portant to others. Here we are fairly on 
 the track of censurable stupidity. It is 
 irresponsive, as we said above of the un- 
 intelligent ; insensitive, unappreciative, un- 
 adaptive. It is inability to see. " There 
 are thousands who can talk, for one who 
 can think ; and there are hundreds who 
 can think, for one who can see.'^' ^ We say 
 it of a machine, especially of what is 
 metaphorically called mechanical in social 
 
 1 I think I am right in saying that "clever" in the 
 far west of the U.S.A. means, or once did mean, " kind," 
 " thoughtful " ; " Will you be clever with these tenderfeet ? " 
 an old man in Colorado said to Ids child, referring to me. 
 
 » Ruskin. Quoted from memory.
 
 STUPIDITY 217 
 
 management. We say it of any routine, 
 even of nature in its indifference to human 
 ends. 
 
 A comparison with ignorance may help 
 us. They are clearly not the same thing. 
 Ignorance may be the cause of stupidity, 
 or its effect ; but ignorance refers, surely, 
 to any kind of facts and truths indis- 
 criminately. If there is any truth or fact 
 I do not know, then so far I am ignorant. 
 Ignorance is a general term and means lack 
 of knowledge ; not of any knowledge 'par 
 excellence. Stupidity is a more pointed 
 term ; it means rather a mental quality 
 than a state or fact ; and more particu- 
 larly, it means blindness not to facts or 
 truths but to valiies, or to facts or truths or 
 consequences in as far as they carry values. 
 
 Thus, as we saw, we may attribute 
 stupidity to a routine or system in respect 
 of interests to which it is indifferent, and 
 yet such a system may be highly rational 
 or intellectual in its own internal coherence. 
 But it fails in responsiveness or adaptive- 
 ness.
 
 218 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 2. We might sum up all this account of 
 censurable stupidity by saying that it has 
 a " moral " element. 
 
 If we say this, we ought to use the word 
 moral in the very wide sense in which it 
 implies respect for all worth or value.^ 
 Then censurable stupidity would mean 
 unresponsiveness to values. 
 
 And so it would be perhaps a truer 
 rendering of what was once meant by saying 
 that Knowledge is virtue and Ignorance is 
 vice. The knowledge and ignorance in 
 question were, I suspect, meant to include 
 awakenedness to all values and its reverse, 
 but were apt to be construed as meaning 
 acquaintance, or unacquaintance, with any 
 facts or truths, including those relatively 
 indifferent or unimportant. Probably the 
 thesis which favoured knowledge suffered 
 in this case for a merit. It meant, no 
 doubt, to insist just exactly on the point 
 that " moral " goodness as commonly 
 construed limited values too narrowly ; and 
 that there was a great deal more in the 
 
 1 See Chap. III.
 
 IX STUPIDITY 219 
 
 world, besides common moral rules, which 
 it was bad for our lives if we were ignorant 
 of. Though it also meant that to lose our 
 grasp of these latter, as certainly under 
 obsession we do lose it, was to lose our 
 insight into life as well as our character.^ 
 It is a foolish tradition that Greek moral 
 theory despised the workman's life. In 
 fact, the idea of apprenticeship to the art 
 of living, and the mastery of it, which was 
 the essence of Greek moral reflection, was 
 modelled by Socrates on the great crafts 
 and professions. The knowledge which 
 was excellence was like the craftsman's 
 or doctor's skill, an overmastering habit, 
 and implied his singleness of heart in aim- 
 ing at the values he had learned to prize. 
 However, knowledge was an ambiguous 
 term, and lent itself to misconstruction. 
 Instead of meaning responsiveness to the 
 values of life, it could mean, as we saw, 
 an intellectual accumulation indifferent 
 to them. Such knowledge is indeed little 
 better than ignorance ; but the possibility 
 
 1 See p. 222 below, and Chap. III.
 
 220 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS oh4p. 
 
 of the misconception is enough to demand 
 a more precise expression for that which, 
 in knowledge, has moral value. And this, 
 perhaps, is being unconsciously worked 
 out to-day in " the retirement of the 
 intellect," together with the condemnation 
 of stupidity. 
 
 Thus there may be doubt about the 
 meaning of ignorance, and so of knowledge, 
 when you say that ignorance is vice and 
 knowledge is virtue. But when you say, 
 " We are not hard enough on stupidity," it 
 is pretty clear what you mean. Stupidity is 
 used for blindness to values ; and its oppo- 
 site is sensitiveness, appreciativeness, sym- 
 pathy — in the wide sense, understanding. 
 
 There is a closely cognate word " clumsi- 
 ness." It was in Ecce Homo, if I remember 
 right, that in trying to bring home the full 
 liumanity of Christ, the author said we 
 must be prepared to think of him as a 
 carpenter, and perhaps a clumsy carpenter. 
 In discussing this passage, a friend, himself 
 well skilled in woodwork, protested against 
 the word " clumsy." He said that it im-
 
 STUPIDITY 221 
 
 plied a moral defect, and could not be 
 applicable to a man who was perfectly 
 good. He meant, I Suppose, that clumsi- 
 ness involved an inattentiveness or un- 
 responsiveness to minute obligations of 
 one's work. Things would be done wrong, 
 which were perhaps not the main things, 
 but which yet a normal man, fully atten- 
 tive and appreciative, would be careful 
 to do right and would succeed. I should 
 suppose that there is the same plurality 
 of causes in clumsiness that are found in 
 stupidity. Either might come from a 
 defect in the mental machinery, or from 
 a want of interest or scrupulousness. My 
 friend's suggestion illustrates at all events 
 the censurable aspect of stupidity. 
 
 Before leaving the issue raised by the 
 old thesis " Knowledge is virtue," I should 
 like to insist on a further substantive 
 truth which was implied in that thesis, 
 and which shows an affinity between 
 stupidity in the " moral " sense, and 
 genuine intellectual " ignorance " in the 
 strictest sense. Take " moral " stupidity
 
 222 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 in the very narrowest import, not widened 
 into blindness to all values, but as blind- 
 ness, say, to such values as are involved 
 in the second half of the Decalogue. Even 
 so, if we follow the Greek teachers, it is 
 an enormous intellectual disability, in the 
 plain and natural meaning of intellect. 
 The man who lacks control of his passions 
 " does not study the most important 
 things." So Xenophon bluntly repro- 
 duces what he thinks he heard from 
 Socrates. And Plato, towards the end 
 of his life, though far from abandoning 
 the old doctrine that " Knowledge is 
 virtue," nevertheless restated it once at 
 least in a way which betrayed, as I think, 
 an emphatic secret and certainty which 
 for him it contained. At all events he 
 seems to tell us,^ at once with the fire of 
 youth and the faith of age, that whether 
 knowledge is virtue or not, virtue at any 
 rate is knowledge, and to desert the path 
 of life according to principle is the ultimate 
 stupidity. It does not matter, he says, 
 
 * Laws, 689a-e.
 
 IX STUPIDITY 223 
 
 how " scientific " you may be, or how 
 expert and rapid in reasoning ; if you live 
 well, by the simple laws of honour and 
 justice,^ you are wise, though you may 
 know neither " how to spell nor to swim " ; 
 and if you live otherwise, all the science 
 and reasoning in the world will not save 
 you from having admitted into your mind 
 a supreme discord, which is the ultimate 
 and superlative stupidity. Your intellect 
 proper,^ he seems to be telling us, may in 
 such a case be a fine-looking growth, but 
 is rotten at the root. 
 
 The point seems worth pursuing. There 
 is a widespread conviction, due, I think, 
 in a great measure to an exaggerated 
 doctrine of free will, conscience, and re- 
 sponsibility, in connection with orthodox 
 Christianity, that the knowledge of life 
 embodied in everyday morality is a negli- 
 gible quantity, that every one has thus 
 
 ^ Of course a question stares the modern in the face, what 
 these simple laws are. I will try to explain below what is 
 meant by " morality " as distinct from convention. 
 
 ^ This sentence is entirely my own gloss upon his 
 argument.
 
 224 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 much by instinct, and that no strictly 
 intellectual defect but only one of the will 
 is implied in preoccupation with vicious 
 or trivial interests, whether in art and 
 literature, or in actual living. We know 
 the lines ; 
 
 Whom do you count the worst man upon earth ? 
 Be sure, he knows, in his conscience, more 
 Of what right is, than arrives at birth 
 In the best man's acts that we bow before. 
 
 I do not believe a word of it. I believe 
 that the intelligence of " the worst man 
 upon earth " is confused throughout and 
 shattered by pervading discrepancies and 
 conflicts with itself, and is wholly incapable 
 of conceiving or of portraying an orderly 
 life in wholesome relations with man and 
 nature. 
 
 The same point may be illustrated from 
 the province of literary art. In re-reading 
 a novel bv a well-known writer,* I was 
 reminded that he has had the courage to 
 discuss in public a comparison not unlike 
 one which has often been in my own 
 
 ^ A Human Document, by Mr. Mallock.
 
 nc STUPIDITY 225 
 
 thoughts. In considering the relative 
 justice of certain portrayals of life, he 
 actually mentions in conjunction the names 
 of Zola's Nana and Miss Yonge's Daisy 
 Chain. And his judgment is that neither 
 is true to life, for each excludes one half 
 of it. While admitting this verdict in a 
 quantitative sense, I should be inclined 
 to urge that the quantitative sense is here, 
 as always in such matters, exceedingly 
 superficial. It is true that on either side 
 an immense region of fact passes unmen- 
 tioned ; but it is not true, in my opinion, 
 that the unmentioned bulk on both sides 
 is equally fundamental and equally signi- 
 ficant. It appears to me that the English 
 authoress has in the main expressed the 
 motives and experiences through which 
 great things are done in the world and 
 great communities are strong and valuable, 
 while in the other case we find an analysis 
 of morbid growths which are not typical 
 and which if removed from the world by 
 a miracle would not be missed. 
 
 Zola, however, appears to me to have 
 
 Q
 
 226 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 been the victim rather of a pseudo- scientific 
 theory than of a totally biassed view of 
 life. And it would not be just, I think, 
 to deny him the power of appreciating 
 and portraying a healthy life at its best.^ 
 But it does seem to me that Balzac, for 
 example, had studied himself into ob- 
 sessions of such a nature that when he 
 attempts to represent a good or saintly 
 life his genius becomes feverish and fan- 
 tastic. He had, I must think, analysed 
 himself out of a straightforward and 
 fundamental grasp of human motive and 
 endeavour. 
 
 And if, leaving these high references, 
 we were to compare writers of lesser magni- 
 tude each to each, I should certainly hold 
 that the authoress who has been mentioned 
 knew more of life and of the world than 
 Ouida, say, or than any of the common- 
 place cynical writers who more especially 
 pique themselves on knowledge of that 
 kind. 
 
 I am not speaking of the whole question 
 
 1 His Paris seems to me a sufficient proof of this. -
 
 STUPIDITY 227 
 
 of artistic excellence. I am not denying 
 the artist's right to choose his subject. I 
 am only considering in what type of mind 
 you find in fact the greatest mastery of the 
 main motives of life, and insight into its 
 real aims and ambitions. This, I say, is 
 greater and deeper in those who start from 
 the central facts of duty, serious purpose, 
 and unselfishness — take Meredith's Italian 
 novels as a type — than in those who spend 
 themselves in the unravelling of selfish 
 or sensuous aims, or in the representation 
 of normal human motive as vulgar or 
 maHcious. This is not a Hterary essay. 
 I do not wish to comment upon living 
 authors. But I think that the experienced 
 reader of prose fiction will have plenty of 
 material by which to test my thesis, that 
 no one understands much of the world 
 who does not recognise and attend to its 
 soHd moral basis with faith in its serious 
 work and purpose. Plato points out ^ how 
 the cunning and suspicious pessimist, who 
 thinks he knows the world and judges 
 
 1 Rep. 409 C,
 
 228 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 it by his own low standard, makes a poor 
 appearance when he comes to deal with 
 men of real worth and great experience, 
 because he never miderstands when he 
 ought to trust people ; so that such men 
 simply think him a stupid fool, though 
 his own sort think him a clever man of 
 the world. I am sure there is a great 
 deal of this stupidity both in life and 
 in literature to - day, and it contributes 
 much to the crowning stupidity of war. 
 Stupidity — even moral insensibility in 
 the narrowest sense of the word " moral " 
 — has a really grave intellectual disvalue, 
 which I take to have been implied in 
 the old thesis about knowledge and 
 virtue. 
 
 Can we show why this must be so ? I 
 do not think it is difficult. It depends on 
 two points — the connection of facts with 
 values and the connection of central with 
 outlying sets of both. I will try to put 
 it shortly and simply. 
 ^ First, though values are not mere facts, 
 yet they are characters, qualities, of systems
 
 IX STUPIDITY 229 
 
 of facts. A system of facts or truths or 
 objects has value, we saw, in as far as it 
 has unfailingness — as it meets and helps 
 a typical mind and body amply and 
 without lacuna. Knowledge of facts,^ 
 therefore, does not amount to knowledge 
 of values ; but knowledge or appreciation 
 of values involves knowledge of facts in a 
 certain way and bearing. When it was 
 said, " Father, forgive them, for they know 
 not what they do," it was not meant that 
 they did not know they were killing a man. 
 It meant, as we should say in our prosaic 
 phrase, that they were not alive to some 
 much greater issue, implied in the whole 
 situation, on which they were fatally 
 wrong ; some quality of the connected 
 facts which constituted a breach of an 
 obligation, a blasphemy against a good, 
 which belonged to them as men, but to 
 which they were blind.^ 
 
 1 For this purpose knowledge of truth goes mth know- 
 ledge of facts. 
 
 * I have spoken above of the relation of value to feeling, 
 and it is not necessary to interrupt ourselves to insist on it 
 at this stage. Feeling is just the vital difference which the 
 recognition of value makes in our whole state of being.
 
 230 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 Well, then, this is why " moral " 
 stupidity involves far-reaching intellectual 
 blindness. It is because the " moral " 
 system is the centre and foundation of 
 the mind's whole structure and habits, and 
 if we are blind to the order and harmony 
 of the former, it means that we are ignorant 
 in a great measure of the facts and truths 
 which belong to the latter. We are ignor- 
 ing what a mind and life must be, at the 
 minimum, in order to have value at all 
 as a life and mind. * 
 
 And this brings us to the second point. 
 " Moral " values in the narrower sense are 
 the condition of having any mind or life 
 worth speaking of at all ; and this, again, 
 is obviously the condition of having moral 
 values in the wider sense, that is, the whole 
 world of goods or experiences that possess 
 worth. Therefore " moral " blindness in 
 the narrower sense is always tending to 
 spread to the larger world of values or 
 moralities, which comprehends all that is 
 precious, and to destroy it at the root. 
 And of course it is a truism to say that
 
 IX STUPIDITY 231 
 
 blindness to this larger world itself is a 
 stupidity which directly consists in intel- 
 lectual ignorance along with aesthetic dul- 
 ness and insensitiveness to ideal morality. 
 This I take to be the full meaning of 
 censurable stupidity. 
 ^ Three questions occur to me at this 
 point which might seem to complicate our 
 conclusion. Can we give a tenable mean- 
 ing to morality in the narrow or restricted 
 sense, in which we said it was the root of 
 • life ? Is it not possible for morality so 
 understood to be the cause of very deplor- 
 able stupidity, rather than the mainspring 
 of its opposite ? And, lastly, may not 
 any one of the values belonging to the 
 wider world inspire the central moral will 
 itself, and expand, as it were, downwards 
 into it, like a strong young shoot re- 
 juvenating a root that is on the road to 
 decay ? 
 
 I will try to answer these questions in 
 a few words sufficiently to remove the 
 misconceptions which they suggest. 
 
 First, I do not mean by morality a
 
 232 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chat. 
 
 rigid conventional code. I mean the per- 
 sonal and social attitude of the will which 
 civilised communities recognise on the 
 whole as essential to true membership of 
 them. The pagan virtues, temperance, 
 courage, and justice, together with the 
 Christian virtues, faith, hope, and charity, 
 give a fair outline of the requirements to 
 this effect which life has so far specified. 
 I omit wisdom, as its connection with the 
 other qualities is the very subject of our 
 argument. By moral stupidity in the 
 narrowest sense, then, I mean an in- 
 sensibility to those claims, a response to 
 which constitutes the above-mentioned 
 qualities. I do not mean simply breaches 
 of conventional rules. 
 
 Secondly, I admit it to be possible 
 that a restriction of mind and will to the 
 moral province, even when conceived as 
 I have just described it, might favour 
 what would have to be called stupidity. 
 All narrowness involves stupidity, and 
 every one is narrow at some point. The 
 peculiarly moral attitude may become a
 
 « STUPIDITY 233 
 
 fanaticism, and turn, as we know, against 
 the higher intellectual and aesthetic in- 
 terests, and even against ideal shapes of 
 itself. But one may safely say that in as 
 far as it does so it is false to its own nature. 
 It is essentially a principle of unity, and 
 so far as instrumental, is instrumental to 
 a fuller unity. If it is hostile to the larger 
 world of values, in short, it is so through 
 the artificial and transient negation that 
 springs from impotence and unenlighten- 
 ment. It is not the active poison of a 
 discordant principle which infects every 
 growth of the self with a vicious bias. 
 In fact, I believe that it is a popular illusion 
 to consider that Puritanism was hostile to 
 the higher interests of life. There are 
 fanatics everywhere ; but a creed which 
 was Milton's can hardly have been anti- 
 intellectual in itself, and in the Society of 
 Friends, for example, a relatively high 
 level of intelligence and wisdom has always 
 prevailed. A recent enquiry has noted a 
 similar fact with reference to Huguenot 
 families in the United States of America.
 
 234 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 But Huguenot families have as a rule a 
 strict moral tradition. Morality may be 
 narrowed, like any other attitude, but in 
 principle and on the whole it is a radical 
 antagonist of stupidity.^ 
 
 And, lastly, as to the power of each of 
 the higher interests separately to maintain 
 itself, and even to redevelop by its own 
 inspiration the entire moral organism ; to 
 make itself the root and common morality 
 the fruit, in place of the reverse relation 
 as it has been outlined above. The 
 answer is in principle, I think, that if this 
 is to be so in any given case, it must be 
 made so by a private effort and special 
 interpretation. We read of and meet with 
 persons whose devotion to knowledge or to 
 beauty is so widely understood by them- 
 selves, and has therefore such far-reach- 
 ing ramifications, that it expands into 
 the characteristics — which undoubtedly 
 are akin to it — of courage, kindness, 
 self-control, and, in short, of morality. 
 
 ^ Compare the remarks above on the general form of 
 successfulness in the will to good.
 
 STUPIDITY 235 
 
 It is certain that all the great values are 
 cognate with each other, and any of them 
 can be reinforced and vitalised from any 
 other as a point of departure. They all 
 of them make selfish aims and selfish pre- 
 occupations look petty and trivial, and 
 they all of them may unite human minds 
 and hearts in a common feeling for a 
 universal good. But as it has been said 
 that if philosophy is to be your rehgion, 
 you must make it into something which 
 it is not of itself, so if you are to make 
 scientific or sesthetic enthusiasm into the 
 whole of morality, you must find in your- 
 self something more than the single interest 
 in question, quite strictly construed, would 
 offer. The thing is sometimes done, and 
 testifies, as I said, to the essential con- 
 nectedness of all values ; but it is not the 
 natural and simple course of affairs ; and 
 all specialism, apart from a sound funda- 
 mental morality, carries with it dangers 
 of narrowness, dangers which in the long 
 run affect itself as well as the other sides 
 of life.
 
 236 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 Such were his words. It is indeed 
 For ever well our singers should 
 Utter good words and know them good 
 Not through song only ; with close heed 
 Lest, having spent for the work's sake 
 Six days, the man be left to make.^ 
 
 Thus I hope we see what is meant by 
 saying that there is a moral element in 
 censurable stupidity. It is a blindness 
 to moral values either in the narrower 
 sense of morality or in that wider sense 
 for which all values are " moral." But 
 its intellectual side is also prominent and 
 inevitable. You cannot be blind to values 
 without a prevailing ignorance and dis- 
 tortion in your ideas concerning facts, 
 objects, and truths. 
 
 3. We have seen, I hope, what is meant 
 by the stupidity which it is desirable to be 
 hard upon. But we may say a brief word 
 in conclusion on the sense in which it is 
 desirable to be hard upon it. 
 2^ It is settled by our rendering of stupidity 
 that we do not wish to be unkind to 
 people whose minds are naturally slow. 
 
 1 Rossetti, " Dante at Verona."
 
 IX STUPIDITY 237 
 
 That would be cruel, and would do no 
 good. Moreover, such people are not by 
 any means necessarily stupid in our sense 
 of the word. Affection may make them 
 wonderfully alert. And, as we saw, a 
 difficulty in certain modes of expression 
 is a very different thing from total un- 
 adaptiveness. 
 
 We should look, it would seem, to 
 education for our remedy. If there is a 
 panacea for stupidity, surely it should be 
 here. It is the special and principal engine 
 for awaking interests and proportioning 
 them to values, so that the area of life may 
 have some tolerable chance of being duly 
 represented in our value-field. That this 
 is the task of education, or the principal 
 part of it, is or ought to be a commonplace. 
 But perhaps it remains worth observing. 
 Of course it bears on the problem so much 
 in our minds to-day, of finding the most 
 effective method of bringing home human- 
 ity to the human being. But the present 
 work is too humble to include a treatise 
 on education, and I will pass to more
 
 238 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 general considerations with two remarks. 
 Education is often blamed as the actual 
 creator of stupidity, and if it is in spirit 
 obscurantist, or utilitarian, or narrowly 
 specialist, that may very well be the case. 
 On the other hand, it seems to me a mistake, 
 in the hope of keeping dulness at bay 
 and maintaining alertness, to exclude all 
 labours and practices de longue haleine. 
 It is a poor alertness which is blunted by 
 arduous exertion. And you must learn 
 to obey before you can command, and to 
 follow before you can lead. 
 
 Passing from the special educational 
 function which is confined to the educa- 
 tion of the young, we approach the influ- 
 ences which affect public opinion, the 
 educator and organ for good and evil 
 of the general mind. And it was with 
 reference to this, I should imagine, that 
 the remark which is our thesis was made. 
 Public opinion is too tolerant of stupidity, 
 first in opinion itself, and then in public 
 affairs. The same factors are at work in 
 both.
 
 n STUPIDITY 239 
 
 And I should suggest that generally 
 and in the main the source of censurable 
 stupidity in public thought and in practices 
 important enough to be of public concern 
 lies in two forms of isolation ; in the caste 
 system of social stratification at home, 
 and in the want of sympathy with other 
 nations abroad. 
 
 Mrs. Transome in Felix Holt was simply 
 unable to consider Rufus Lyon, the dis- 
 senting minister. Her mind had no place 
 into which an understanding of him could 
 be fitted. We think we are beyond all 
 this to-day ; but a careful student of our 
 literature and journalism knows better, 
 and his verdict is confirmed in daily life. 
 We are not sensitive and awake to each 
 other's needs, wants, and feelings. The 
 minds of the classes are not in thorough 
 reciprocal contact ; and while this is so, 
 the fully developed class consciousness can 
 hardly mean anything but the war of 
 classes. The fact is undeniable ; and its 
 consequence is obvious. If you do not 
 know how a man feels things, where tlie
 
 240 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 shoe pinches, what are his dearest ambi- 
 tions, you cannot but be censurably stupid 
 in dealing with him. It works both ways 
 aUke ; from wage-earner to well-to-do, and 
 from well-to-do to wage-earner. Each is 
 stupid about the other ; and of the two, 
 the wage- earner has at least the advantage 
 of being alive and sensitive to the experi- 
 ence of the larger multitude. The well- 
 to-do ought to have the greater world of 
 interests ; but there are many things 
 against him, and his unawakenedness is 
 often extraordinary. 
 
 There is an old story which remains with 
 me from childhood's days ; it must come 
 from Miss Edgeworth or some such writer. 
 A well-to-do father has a party on his 
 boy's tenth birthday; the tradesmen and 
 artisans whom he employs are there. The 
 carpenter goes to touch his hat on being 
 introduced to the young gentleman, but 
 the father interrupts. " This is a man 
 who makes carts and gates for the farmers, 
 and helps in building houses ; can you do 
 anything as useful ? " The boy is silent.
 
 IX STUPIDITY 241 
 
 " Very well, then ; you take off your hat 
 to him ; when you can do anything as 
 useful, he may if he likes touch his hat to 
 you." That an active country lad would 
 have been an adoring satellite of the nearest 
 carpenter long before his tenth year is a 
 characteristic of English life which does 
 not altogether spoil the intention of the 
 Rousseauish story. 
 
 I am not here attempting to say how 
 in detail things can be done ; but to get 
 this spirit into education and into life by 
 real contact and not in picturesque make- 
 believe would do a great deal to remove 
 stupidity. I do not lay much stress on 
 externals. I believe that different people 
 will both from taste and from equipment 
 for function always live rather differently. 
 But beyond a certain point externals do 
 separate classes and prevent mutual under- 
 standing, and so cause censurable stupidity. 
 An acquaintance of mine who held the 
 doctrine that true help in distress involved 
 genuine friendship used to carry out his 
 thesis by not only visiting his poorer 
 
 R
 
 jL 
 
 242 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 friends, but, a much greater difficulty, by 
 encouraging them to visit him. But I 
 knew of other cases where the conditions 
 were a Httle different, and the doctrine 
 was harder to carry out ; and certain 
 failures made me feel how an uninter- 
 rupted and natural intercourse between 
 richer and poorer people would demand 
 as a condition much simpler living, and, 
 for example, a different type of servants, 
 among the well-to-do. All isolation makes 
 for censurable stupidity. " You will find 
 if you try that it is a practical impossi- 
 bility to drink your tea if there is some one 
 in the next room who has none to drink. 
 Next door makes all the difference." ^ 
 Public opinion needs a great deal of 
 practice in this direction if it is to learn 
 how rightly to be hard on stupidity in 
 itself and the affairs of which it is the 
 judge. 
 
 As to war, the crowning stupidity, I 
 will repeat as shortly and pointedly as 
 I can what I have urged elsewhere. We 
 
 1 H. Bosanquet, Aspects of the Social Problem, p. 98.
 
 STUPIDITY 243 
 
 disable ourselves against the peril of it 
 just by our full - mouthed denunciations 
 of it as a deviUsh wickedness and a sin 
 against God and man. That is all very 
 true ; but it is, so to speak, consequential. 
 And it misleads us. We are not all terrible 
 sinners ; but we are all causes of war ; 
 for blindness comes first, and sin follows 
 at its heels. In pointing to the terrible 
 sinners we are actually excusing ourselves, 
 who mean so well, and do so ill. Started 
 on conflicting courses, and seeing no way 
 out, all nations get hotter and hotter, more 
 and more perverse. What we want, as I 
 hold, is to see not how devilish the thing 
 is in the end, hut how simple and natural 
 it is in the beginning, and how just as 
 simply and naturally its avoidance might 
 come. It is the typical " misunderstand- 
 ing," and we know that a " misunder- 
 standing " is the euphemism for a quarrel, 
 and, it may be, for a very nasty one. A 
 hundred million people are resolved to 
 march south at a given hour on given 
 narrow roads ; and another hundred
 
 244 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 million to march north on the same roads 
 at the same time. Nobody need be 
 devilish on either side. They do not want 
 a collision ; they merely want to do exactly 
 what they have set their hearts on doing. 
 But a frightful collision must ensue. 
 Then, of course, when they are on the 
 roads, and can see no way round, they will 
 become devilish. 
 
 Of course there is always a way round, 
 if we look out for it in time. But stupidity 
 prevents us. Nations are not alert, not 
 sensitive, to the minds and needs of other 
 nations ; they do not realise where others 
 want to go and why ; nor how their own 
 direction can be modified in harmony with 
 the others', and yet none of their really 
 essential aims be sacrificed. They are not 
 at all clear, perhaps, what are their own 
 essential aims. Their social arrangements 
 do not permit a distinct vision of them. 
 Their leaders are blinded and biassed by 
 false interests. Still less are they respon- 
 sive to the needs of others. 
 
 It is all this stupidity which most
 
 li STUPIDITY 245 
 
 emphatically public opinion ought to be 
 hard upon. But, in being so, it might 
 find that first of all it had to be hard upon 
 itself. The only hope for it and for us is 
 that it is a self-criticising organ ; and to 
 be hard upon itself is a function which it 
 is seldom unwilHng to adopt.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTIONS 
 
 We should all of us say, if we were asked, 
 that a man ought to obey his conscience. 
 That seems to be what " ought " means. 
 How is he to do right if he does not obey 
 his conscience ? And yet we have found 
 ourselves of late raising the question, " Is 
 he always doing right if he obeys his 
 conscience ? " 
 
 It is easy to cut the knot by saying, 
 whenever we do not approve his action, 
 " that he is not really obeying his con- 
 science ; he cannot be." That may serve 
 for some cases, and we shall see some of 
 the difficulties that make it hard to say 
 what " really " here means. But it will 
 not do on the whole. We must always 
 remember the very long and splendid 
 
 246
 
 cH.x CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTIONS 247 
 
 history of conscientious objection. The 
 thing existed before the name ; surely 
 Socrates, for example, was a conscientious 
 objector, although the law was on his side, 
 when he refused to put to the Athenian 
 assembly the resolution for determining 
 the fate of the eight generals by a single 
 vote. He was in this dead against the 
 mass of his fellow-citizens. Conscientious 
 objection again seems a weak word to 
 describe the attitude of the martyrs of 
 rehgion ; but if it says too little, still it 
 says true. 
 
 The quaint thing about it is the mixture 
 of cases, including the most unreasonable 
 extravagances — the objection to disguise 
 the natural colour of wool by dyeing, 
 and all the more eccentric peculiarities 
 of early Friends and of fanatics of all 
 kinds ; it is unnecessary to cite evidence 
 or examples. 
 
 Now why has conscience come to be 
 associated in this primary way with objec- 
 tion, resistance, negation ? No one, I 
 suppose, wants to deny that on» may be
 
 248 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 conscientious in co-operation and agree- 
 ment as well as in abstention and negation. 
 But no one uses conscientious as a con- 
 stant epithet of the parent or citizen, the 
 workman or professional man. The cynic 
 may retort, " Why, no ! because it would 
 be false." But we refused to cut the 
 knot in this way on the other side, and we 
 refuse again on this. 
 
 The reason hes deeper, I believe. It 
 lies in a little bit of logic, which is interest- 
 ing ethically. If you want to see a con- 
 nection pure and bare, what it is and no 
 
 ^ more, you must try it without accessories. 
 We used to be taught about the " method 
 of difference " ; and something like it 
 certainly is effective in ethics. John 
 Bunyan did not call it by this name ; but 
 he knew that when religion goes in silver 
 slippers it is followed for other reasons 
 than its merits. And so said Plato, if you 
 want to know whether it is a good thing 
 to be good, you must take away the acces- 
 
 •ii sories of goodness, praise and reward, or 
 even turn them against it. Then you will
 
 X CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTIONS 249 
 
 be able to judge whether and why you 
 really prefer it. 
 
 That is why conscience is so promin- 
 ently connected with objection and resist- 
 ance. It is not that there is no conscience 
 anywhere else ; it is that there is nothing 
 but conscience there. At any rate, this 
 is the 'prima facie claim, made on the one 
 side, and on the whole, admitted on the 
 other. When a man goes against all 
 normal attractions, it is plausible to sup- 
 pose he is trying to do right. 
 
 And yet we are not quite satisfied ; his 
 conscience sometimes seems abnormal ; 
 much of " conscientious " conduct is so 
 odd or so unreasonable. 
 
 We may get some light if we ask what 
 conscience is. Why is its operation some- 
 times so splendid and sometimes so strange, 
 so trivial, or so arbitrary ? 
 
 There are many phrases used to describe 
 conscience : it is the voice of God in the 
 heart ; the still small voice, which implies, 
 I take it, the idea of the voice of God — 
 it is charming to read Professor Huxley
 
 250 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 in vigorous and victorious controversy 
 with it, addressing it as " my good voice " ^ 
 — or it is a reflective judgment of our- 
 selves, approving or disapproving of our 
 own conduct whether past or future. 
 Perhaps we may say it is a self -judgment, 
 in the light of what we cannot bear not to 
 be. The phrase sounds negative and cir- 
 cuitous, but I believe it represents the 
 way in which our positive ideal operates 
 in us. 
 
 Conscience, then, where it comes into 
 play, claims to determine choice, though 
 it is rather approval or disapproval than 
 choice itself, and does not make itself 
 evident in the case of all choices, but only 
 in those which seem to us to matter a 
 good deal. We may treat it practically 
 by considering its influence upon choice 
 in important cases. 
 
 The choice which it affects is the choice 
 of what is right, that is, as it was put above, 
 of the good which each of us can embody 
 in his own life.^ And we saw that this 
 
 1 Science and Ohrisiian Tradition, Preface. ^ Chap. vi.
 
 X CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTIONS 251 
 
 cannot be got through abstract argument, 
 through reasoning from general principles 
 to particular cases, because it is a reaction 
 of the whole man upon the whole situation. 
 It is the most that my whole personaUty 
 can ehcit from the whole possibilities before 
 me. 
 
 We must not be misled by the word 
 reflective, which has sometimes been 
 applied to conscience. That only means 
 that it is a consideration of our conduct, 
 past or future. It does not mean that it 
 is abstract, deductive, discursive. It can- 
 not be so, for the reason just stated. The 
 right, which it deals with, is essentially 
 a choice in the light of the whole. 
 
 This is confirmed by the fact that it 
 deals with practice, with conduct. The 
 world of practice brings all issues into 
 conflict. You choose, always, in the 
 middle of a huge horizon of alternatives, 
 all of which are affected by your choice 
 and therefore affect it. You have to 
 strike out a course, to adjust your conduct, 
 in view of the whole of what may happen,
 
 252 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 so far as you can gauge it. Ultimately, 
 this is so in theory too, but in a way 
 infinitely less urgent and more negligible. 
 You can consider an economic theorem 
 by itself and note the reasons and con- 
 sequences which it has in itself. But 
 when you act, everything interferes with 
 everything. 
 
 Hence we see at once a primary char- 
 acter of conscience. No one partial rule 
 can possibly be absolute. Literalism is a 
 terrible danger ; that is, when you say, e.g.^ 
 
 I don't want to go no further 
 Than my Testament for that. 
 
 Of course, it is only an exaggeration of 
 something that we all do, because each 
 of us has his own angle of vision. Different 
 things begin to matter to different people 
 at different points. Some people are 
 especially rigid about loose talk, some 
 about drink, some about public worship 
 (for or against), some about giving no 
 pain to animals, some about literal truth- 
 telling, and so on. But if you go so far 
 as to make any one of these " precisions "
 
 X CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTIONS 253 
 
 an absolute and unbending rule, doctrinair- 
 ism is at hand, and madness is in sight. 
 
 In the background of this error there 
 is probably a common prejudice, which, 
 logically stated, is the belief that there is 
 truth which is quite true, and error which 
 is quite false. Then, when you have 
 admitted a principle, say, pain is a bad 
 thing, you are chained by it hand and 
 foot. If pain is a bad thing, it is wrong 
 to inflict pain, and all the king's horses 
 and all the king's men cannot make it 
 right. So with the evil of lying or the 
 use of force, the excellence of gentleness, 
 and so forth. 
 
 Thus we may get a very unfortunate 
 combination. Conscience rightly insists on 
 its claim to judge our act on the whole. 
 It is dangerous, we all admit, to argue 
 with your conscience — to tamper with 
 conscience, we call it. But, then, the 
 very conscience which claims to be an 
 arbiter above reasoning, is itself, because 
 of a latent prejudice Uke that we spoke 
 of, caught in and preoccupied by what
 
 254 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 just is a short abstract argumentation. 
 The whole response of the personahty to 
 life is captured by a " cry," a watchword. 
 Its very right against reasoning helps to 
 make it defenceless, unable to criticise 
 the formula. And we say it is a case of 
 obsession. This is what we find in the 
 thousand familiar cases of literalism, to 
 which we referred above. 
 
 But there is danger on the other side 
 too. Conscience claims such completeness 
 of response to life, that a failure of balance 
 in any direction is dangerous. Suppose 
 you deny the prejudice we spoke of, and 
 insist that you can only have truth when 
 you take account of everything. Every- 
 thing, we then say, modifies everything. 
 Then, we may hear, nothing is quite true, 
 and nothing is quite false. So there are 
 no absolute rules, no unconditional duties. 
 Conscience can only be a general approval 
 of a general wish to do right. But in 
 practice you do as you please. There is 
 some ground for every line of action. Thus, 
 you are landed in moral scepticism.
 
 X CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTIONS 255 
 
 How can these dangers be met ? They 
 seem to belong to the nature of conscience, 
 to the very claim that gives it supremacy. 
 If so, obviously they cannot altogether be 
 met. They are the price we pay for our 
 moral personality. But it is something, 
 perhaps, to understand their source ; and 
 their source is in the combination of 
 unreflectiveness and totahty (i.e. passing 
 sentence on the whole). The first property 
 easily slides into uneducatedness, arbitrari- 
 ness, superstition, hteral acceptance of any 
 single command proffered with an air of 
 authority. The second easily passes into 
 distraction, indecision, the feeling that no 
 obligation is decisive. And the pretension 
 to supremacy, which apphes to both, adds 
 venom to either fallacy. 
 
 This makes it pretty clear where the 
 remedy lies, though not that it is an easy 
 thing to achieve. We cannot abandon 
 either the directness of the response, or 
 the claim to pass sentence on conduct in 
 the light of the whole of life. What is 
 necessary, then, is that conscience should
 
 256 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 be the direct response of a whole mind 
 trained to value life in its wholeness. It 
 is the old story, the Greek attitude to 
 education, which sets up as its end to like 
 and dislike rightly.^ Only, as we saw, in 
 face of the intricate and progressive situa- 
 tion, the choice must be more than selec- 
 tive ; it must be adaptive and indeed 
 creative. 
 
 We want a direct response which gives 
 effect to the point of view which is right 
 for the agent. There are always innumer- 
 able points of view. Only the instinct, 
 trained to appreciate values in their inter- 
 dependence, can seize the point of view 
 which connects at the moment our conduct 
 with the highest value possible for us. 
 The nature of the case forbids a rule. It is 
 like the creative thought in induction, by 
 which you arrive at the greatest amount 
 of truth which a given range of data admit. 
 Write " greatest value " for " greatest 
 amount of truth," and the conduct which 
 the trained personality, the enlightened 
 
 1 See p. 149 above.
 
 X CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTIONS 257 
 
 conscience, will approve, may be described 
 in the same way. 
 
 Is conscience religious ? Clearly yes, 
 I think, in the highest sense alike of con- 
 science and of religion. It is the apphca- 
 tion of the point of view which follows 
 from absolute devotion to supreme values. 
 On the other hand, if religion is a purely 
 Sunday religion, idolatrous, superstitious, 
 cut off from hfe as a whole, then the nature 
 of conscience, as we have seen it, may lend 
 itself to the most incredible horrors. Here 
 hterahsm may indulge itself as fanaticism, 
 and totahty as antinomianism ; and its 
 absolute supremacy may destroy all mitiga- 
 tion of either. 
 
 Perhaps two practical points suggest 
 themselves on the basis of our brief 
 discussion. 
 
 First, you cannot win a fight by force 
 against conscience, and, in the crisis, it is 
 of httle use to argue with it. Its nature 
 excludes abstract reasoning on the whole, 
 as tampering with conscience ; and as for 
 force, force cannot win against the whole 
 
 s
 
 258 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 response of a moral personality. The 
 enlightened conscience must be prepared 
 beforehand ; it cannot be made to order. 
 It comes of a social system, an education, 
 and a public opinion, in which a right 
 appreciation of the values of life is pre- 
 dominant. And you cannot have it 
 cheaper. 
 
 One may say that force and opposition 
 will at least clear away the self-deceivers 
 and leave you only the genuine cases of 
 conscience to deal with. But even that 
 is not very certain. The dangers of con- 
 science, its literalism and want of reason- 
 ing, may be enhanced by martyrdom and 
 provocation. 
 
 Secondly, if practical necessities make 
 it necessary to overrule or disregard a 
 conscientious objection — say the objection 
 to calling in a qualified doctor — the auth- 
 orities should show understanding of the 
 force they are dealing with. They should 
 rather override than punish it — I mean 
 by " override," try to secure in practice 
 the necessary results — and, so far as it
 
 1/ 
 
 X CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTIONS 259 
 
 presents any rational element they can 
 grasp, should be glad to recognise and to 
 utilise it. Christian science, if we say to 
 it, " Health comes not of faith, but of 
 healthy living and hygienic surroundings," 
 might well retort, " When I see you try 
 that plan for the people, I will believe that 
 it has something in it, and will join you." 
 The best that could be achieved in the 
 actual crisis would be, I should suppose, 
 that the bearing of the authorities should 
 convince the objectors, not indeed that 
 they are mistaken — that w^ould be difficult 
 — but that they, the authorities, are only 
 pursuing a point of view which to the best 
 of their judgment is necessary to the 
 community's life. They should show them- 
 selves to be quite aware that the objectors 
 are acting on a conviction accepted in the 
 same way, and that the only thing to do 
 is to minimise the inevitable collision, 
 and make it as far as possible take the 
 tone of a conflict between reasonable men 
 of the world who find themselves forced 
 into opposition on a practical issue. If
 
 260 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS chap. 
 
 you are sure there is a right of way by my 
 house, and I am sure there is not, we must 
 perhaps even use force, but we need not 
 quarrel. " In taking this hne they would be 
 interpreting over favourably a great many 
 unreasonable and unscrupulous people." 
 No doubt ; but they would also be depriv- 
 ing them of their excuse for ill-temper 
 and venomous propaganda. In all these 
 matters — in all matters of practice, one is 
 disposed to say, and, I incline to add, in 
 all matters of theory too — maintenance of 
 bona fides on both sides, with its corollary, 
 the reduction of differences to what is 
 inevitable and perhaps wholesome, is the 
 desirable and surely not impracticable 
 achievement. 
 
 " Inevitable and perhaps wholesome." 
 I may be called a Hegelian or a relativist 
 or an optimist, and perhaps worse names 
 than any of these ; but I am much inclined 
 to say that probably it is better as it is ; 
 better that we should have, as we do have, 
 always the system and the protest side 
 by side. " Darum sind unsere Gegner
 
 X CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTIONS 261 
 
 in der Welt," " that is what our opponents 
 are for," said Lotze ; namely, to remind 
 us of the neglected sides of truth. When 
 we have attained national and cosmo- 
 politan perfection, I will agree to hang all 
 conscientious objectors. But I fear that 
 the conclusion would disprove the premiss.
 
 INDEX 
 
 " Absolutely " real, meaning 
 
 of, 91 ' 
 Action without change, 5 n. 
 Altruism, self-contradiction 
 
 of, 23 
 Anopheles mosquito, 145 
 Arnold, M., quoted, 80 
 Aspects of Social Problem, H. 
 
 Bosanquet in, 242 
 Attitudes to life, the three 
 
 uncritical, 171-2 
 
 Benuchamp's Career, Mere - 
 dith, quoted, 15 
 
 Causal relations in conduct, 
 
 158 
 Choice in morality, creative, 
 
 151 
 not between black and 
 
 white counters, 110, 154 
 Clever, 215-16 
 Clumsy, 220 
 Compensation, its relation to 
 
 evil, 90 
 Complacency, 172 
 Conscience, needs knowledge, 
 
 223-4, 258 
 Creation " had a new smell," 
 
 75 
 Creative nature of moral act, 
 
 149, 154 
 Criminal class, not heredit- 
 arily unfit, 186 
 
 Daisy Chain, The, Miss Yonge, 
 
 225 
 Dante, punishments in, 210 
 Deductive, moral choice is 
 
 not, 149 
 Despair, 173 
 
 Ecce Homo, 220 
 
 Enjoying what we ought to 
 
 use, 177 
 Equality of man, 27, 30 
 Ethical culture, 98 
 Eugenic selection, 185 
 Expectancy, 173 
 Extinction, and punishment, 
 
 186 
 
 Felix Holt, 239 
 " Fizzenless " morality, 98 
 Friends, Society of, 97-8, 142, 
 233 
 
 Goethe, lines on the mason, 
 77 n. 
 quoted, 161, 164 
 Golden rule, the, 1-2 
 Good, certainty of, 159 
 Goods which are not dimin- 
 ished by sharing, 176 
 Good will, narrow idea of, 145 
 Green, T. H., on the educa- 
 tion of a gentleman, 
 70 n. 
 
 262
 
 INDEX 
 
 263 
 
 Happiness 0/ the community, 
 40 
 
 Human Document, A, Mallock, 
 224 
 
 Humanity, whom it includes, 
 31 
 
 Hypothetical cases in con- 
 duct, 157 
 
 Individualism, suggested by 
 
 supreme values, 67 
 Influences telling against 
 
 punishment, 181 
 Intellect, the retirement of, 
 
 214 
 Irrationality of the world, 
 
 139, 158 
 
 Justice and Individualism, 
 26, 35, 40 
 
 Knowledge and virtue, 218 
 
 Lex talionis not type of re- 
 tributive punishment, 
 197 
 Logia, the, quoted, 76 
 Love, severity of, 12, 122, 210 
 
 Man, when most human, 33 
 Morality, mere, a theory, 96 ff . 
 and stupidity, 232 
 
 Nana, Zola, 225 
 New Pacific, The, 21 
 
 " One to count for one," 
 reason for, 225 
 
 Painting in the Far East, 
 Laurence Binyon, 82 
 
 Palissy the potter, 8 
 
 Panama Canal, malaria at, 
 145 
 
 Paris, Zola, 226 
 
 Penn, William, Indian policy, 
 142 
 
 Penn, William, imprison- 
 ment, 184 
 Plato, 222, 227 
 Positivist doctrine, 98 
 Prisoners, Mary Cholmonde- 
 
 ley, 84 
 Prison officials, point cf view 
 
 of, 209 
 Punishment, as mere means, 
 187 
 its true meaning, 188 
 " negation " of bad will, 
 
 195 
 as merely reformatory, 
 
 cruel, 200 
 as merely deterrent, cruel, 
 202 
 Puritanism, 233 
 
 Reason, practical, 157 
 Rossetti quoted, 236 
 Runnable Stag, The, Davidson, 
 86 
 
 Self-realisation implies self- 
 enjoyment, fallacy, 148 
 
 Self-sacrifice not=" living for 
 others," 7 
 and self-affirmation, 9 
 and self-realisation, 148, 
 179 
 
 Situation, meeting the, 150 
 
 Social good, the, two points 
 of view, 34 ff. 
 
 Socrates, 222 
 
 Soldier's Memories, A, Young- 
 husband, 20 
 
 Street lamp and police, 203 n. 
 
 Stupidity, moral, an intel- 
 lectual disvalue, 228 
 censurable, isolation main 
 source of, 239 
 
 Success a duty, rationale of, 
 138 
 
 Successfulness of good will, 
 140 
 
 Supreme goods, construed as 
 instrumental, 32
 
 264 SUGGESTIONS IN ETHICS 
 
 Supreme goods, as imperative 
 ends, 40 
 
 Values, all connected, 62 
 blindness to, = stupidity, 
 
 217 
 connected with good will, 
 
 59 
 general character of, 55 
 impersonal, 7, 10, 12 ; yet 
 
 in persons, 60 
 undesignable, not indefin- 
 able, 49 
 Vindictive, confused with 
 retributive, 210 
 
 Virtue is knowledge, contrast 
 converse, 222 
 
 War, stupidity in causation 
 of, 242 ff. 
 and Society of Friends, 142 
 false assumption in dis- 
 cussion of, 121 ff. 
 Will for values, ruthless, 8 
 
 the good, 59, 145 
 World of reality world of 
 values, 65 
 
 Xenophon, 222 
 
 THE END 
 
 \ 
 
 Printed by R. & R. Ciark, Limited, Edinburgh.
 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below
 
 K53 
 
 3 1158 01066 4398 
 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 AA 000 972 329 7 
 
 ONWEP 
 
 \UFOKNL 
 
 LOS ...NGELES 
 LIBRARY