the hypothesis the wrongness of murder is known by a moral intuition which the human mind was originally constituted to yield." (Data of Ethics, p. 39.) The wrongness of murder (when it is wrong) is known by the presence of the lower determining motives, of which, as compared with others, the human mind is constituted to judge. And, of them, this moral insight judges uniformly. So in the case of the Turcoman, and his pride in robbing, there can be no thought of the claim of the rights of others. If there is any moral feeling connected with it at all, it will most likely be a question between skilful manipulation and quickness of action and the courage that will risk the threatened punishment of the law, and on the other hand a sluggish inactivity or clumsiness and fear of the rod or the gallows, in which case the choice of the robber would be judged by us also to be right. But once convince him that this is a base use to put his faculties to, make him feel by the example of nobler men and the power of sympathy that he has no right to practise his skill and feed his love of glory at the expense of others, and he will at once see that such self-restraint is better, he will follow the nobler motives, or at any rate feel that he ought to do so, and will confess the wrong of his old life of plunder. And the same principle will apply to the lying of the Egyptian and any other such apparent contradiction of moral judgment.

The fact is that, though the action seems to be the same, the thing to be judged by the different people in each of these cases is something altogether distinct, and so it is no wonder if the results are different. We have to find out by experience what particular actions are right and what are wrong. Under different circumstances, the same act constantly appears in an opposite character from this point of view. It is with the motives that the moral insight has to deal; and its immediate recognition of what is noble as distinguished from the bad is, as has been already said, a special endowment of our nature.

If this is borne in mind, the gradual development of the moral life of man will be no matter for surprise. It is only

by degrees that the various motives have been brought into play, primitive men being confined to the most primitive appetites, passions, and affections, other affections and sentiments being brought into play at a later stage, when there is higher culture. And so men have learned to see further and further into life, discarding their first rude judgments, seeing how mere animal appetites must be subdued, how even the natural love of offspring and nearest friends may sometimes have to yield to higher claims, till at last principles of universal justice and benevolence and reverence for all that is holy take the supreme place in the guidance of life.

The substance of particular acts performed may vary with changed circumstances. New experiences will need new reasonings to regulate our conduct in the right way, but the principles on which our life must be founded will not alter. We may learn to see further, as we now see further than the Turcoman and the Canaanite of old; but, still, truth will be better than falsehood, generosity than meanness and selfishness, self-restraint than cruelty and blind passion, painful self-sacrifice than complacent time-serving and refined sensualism; for these contrasts rest on the eternal law of God, they never have been and they never will be different.

The feeling we have of the moral worth of various motives and the lines of conduct to which they prompt is something quite distinct from any other feeling, and cannot be reduced to terms of preference for pleasurable feeling. It is not a question of quantity of pleasure, but of kind. The pleasure derived from moral faithfulness is unique in kind, and often there seems to be no pleasure at all connected with such faithfulness; and we cannot stop to ask whether there really will be any, and yet we know it ought to be chosen. For instance, we say that generosity is better than selfishness; and we do not mean that a man really gets more happiness by being generous, since it gains him friends and he has thus a wider range of enjoyment and receives kindness in return. This is all perfectly true; and it is true also that, if every one were generous and there were no self

ishness in the world; every one would be a great deal happier than he is. But, nevertheless, this is not our meaning, when we say that generosity is morally better than selfishness. We mean that the man who is generous is in himself a better man than the other: he is guided by a nobler principle. And if there were two men who knew that in an hour they must both die and that no other future awaited them, so that the generous man could look for no reward in the gratitude of friends and the selfish man need fear no painful results of his self-indulgence, still we should say that the generous man was better than the selfish, simply because he chose to order his life by a principle of action which is morally higher. We could not say it brought more happiness; for the selfish man might be revelling in luxury of every kind, and the generous man might be quietly doing some act of kindness and self-denial with no very strong emotion and perhaps a sense of weariness at heart, and yet we should not hesitate to say that his conduct was morally the better of the two. It is because we feel that there is a distinct moral quality in each kind of conduct, and that one is worthier than the other. It is simply an inversion of the true order to say that, because one kind of conduct brings most happiness, therefore it is morally best. When there is any question of morality at all, it is just the other way: we feel that one course of action is morally better than another; and, therefore, it brings more happiness. The moral quality determines the happiness, and not vice versa. The best happiness comes from a sense of duty well done, from faithful allegiance to noble principle even in the midst of pain.

That this is so is clear also from the fact that, if you argue with a hedonist that, according to his theory, a man who gets a huge bulk of sensual enjoyment is morally better than a man who from scanty opportunity gets only a little unselfish pleasure, he immediately replies that of course unselfish pleasure is of an immeasurably finer quality than the sensual, and therefore a little of it goes a long way; thus granting that there are different kinds of pleasure which we

distinguish, and that the purest kind is that which accompanies the highest moral excellence. And he does not see that this is to give up his whole contention and to allow that, in thus judging of the relative worth of different kinds of pleasure, man is exercising that moral faculty, which he supposes to be non-existent.

Perhaps the point at which every theory most certainly fails, that does not recognize a special moral endowment of our nature, is reached in the interpretation of the feeling of obligation. We feel bound to do what we see to be best. We know we ought always to follow the highest motive to action. For instance, we know that it is better to be truthful than deceitful: we know that we ought to give up our own selfish ease for the sake of doing what will benefit our fellow-men. Two courses are open to us: we know that one is morally better than the other, and that we ought to choose it. Such feeling of obligation, if Mr. Spencer's theory were correct, would amount simply to this: that, since either we or our ancestors have found by experience that the conduct which is called better is more conducive to complete life and happiness than the other, it is to our advantage to choose it. We should not be justified in saying, "We ought to choose it"; for there is no place in the theory for that word ought. Why ought we to choose what is most conducive to complete life and happiness? Why ought we to care for life at all? Doubtless, we find it pleasant, and so do care for it; but that does not make it our duty to do Neither out of the experience of resultant pleasure can we derive obligation to care for others. Why ought a man to help his neighbors and try to make them happy too? Suppose he prefers his own sensual ease, and no motives of prudent forethought for the providing of other pleasures in the future and the warding off of painful consequences appeal to him. He says he has more pleasure so; and therefore, according to your standard, he is morally better. You must not say that other people have less pleasure through his conduct; and, therefore, it is morally bad. If pleasure is the only standard, and there is no moral judgment presup

so.

posed and no obligation to think of others, it is his own pleasure alone that he need care about, and of that he is the only judge, so he remains morally blameless! All that can be reached by the happiness theory is the conviction that in the long run it really answers better to give up some of our own desires, to forego some immediate gratification, to sacrifice our pleasure to those of others,- that is, to pretend to be unselfish, because experience shows that in this way, all things taken together, we get most pleasure. But, out of this incentive to prudence and self-restraint for the sake of the larger gain, we cannot get the recognition of the claim of the moral law, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," and the feeling of obligation that we ought to care for others.

Mr. Spencer's account of obligation (Data of Ethics, pp. 124-129) is perfectly natural from the premises on which his reasoning is based; but the feeling of which he traces the history is hardly recognizable as the genuine obligation felt by a moral nature. It is said to be compounded of the idea of authoritativeness and the sense of coerciveness; and this idea of authoritativeness is derived from the effort which is needed for the relinquishment of immediate pleasures for the sake of those more remote and general, because they are seen to result in most happiness at last, the sense of coerciveness being derived from experience of political, religious, and social restraints,- that is, the punishment of whatever kind inflicted by other people on those who set themselves in opposition to the welfare of the majority. Obligation is therefore a feeling of constraint, owing to the fact that the agent is not yet quite convinced or has not yet become accustomed to the thought that certain actions will be ultimately for his happiness, though the general opinion is that they will; and I suppose he is inclined to trust their superior wisdom and wider experience, and added to this an unwillingness to incur the unpleasant effects of opposition to the general opinion. So, of course, as soon as he is fully educated and his life is completely adapted to its very complex environment, so that he does