which a man goes in his life corresponds to the repeated work of the engine in driving the wheel; and as this succession of movements maintains the equilibrium of the structure, so, as the successive parts of conduct are performed, the various sentiments, though perpetually shifting among themselves, always maintain their balance. Where the man or the organism differs from the machine, besides the fact of growth, is in the variety of the kinds of conduct performed, and the complexity of the rhythm. The act of the engine is one and the same-the turning of the wheel, which may be resolved into the two movements of the piston, its push and its withdrawal, and this period of action is repeated in a monotonous rhythm. With man the period is much greater: many different acts are to be performed, though the lowest kinds of organism have only a very short period. And secondly, he does not go through the round of his acts one after the other and then repeat them, but his acts are repeated in different proportions according to a complicated rhythm, as, e.g., he will eat thrice a day but walk once. But in the moral man, as in the engine, there is the same regularity of conduct, and the same adjusted order of actions in which the balance of the structure is preserved.

With these illustrations, it is not necessary to insist that the equilibrium of moral sentiments is not a state of rest, but a mobile equilibrium in which all the parts are shifting. And it will be understood that the equilibrium is a balance of the parts with one another, not simply an equilibrium of a man with his conditions. Every such equilibrium will indeed imply an adaptation to conditions, but such adaptation means that under the conditions the structure maintains its balance within itself. The mammoth, to take the negative case, requiring for its vast body more food than it can get, can maintain neither its physiological functions of nutrition and muscular activity in equilibrium, nor the parts of its body in their proper balance.

10. The good man may therefore be described either as an equilibrated order of conduct, or an equilibrium of moral sentiments, or of the parts of his nature. Nevertheless the order of conduct is a prior conception to the structural equilibrium. In the machine the combination of the parts is made in order to produce the motion of the engine, and conversely it is by this motion that the equilibrium of the parts is maintained. In the organism the bodily structure retains its proportion only in so far as it is in physiological action, and this physiological action subserves the conduct of the organism. The very meaning of natural selection is that only those structures are preserved which are able to perform certain functions. In like manner the equilibrium of the moral sentiments exists only through conduct, and it is determined by the requirements of conduct. How the equilibrium is effected does not concern us at present. It is of course effected simultaneously both for conduct and the moral structure. Hence given a certain disposition, the corresponding conduct follows with certainty given a certain conduct, it must have proceeded from the corresponding disposition. But every one of the sentiments which enters into this structure is defined by the corresponding part of conduct with which it is bound up. And if we take the structure at any one moment we shall find sentiments entering into it which can only be understood as a preparation for certain conduct which is not yet called for, but will be in the future, as when a man thinks it his duty to secure an income out of regard for the duties which he will have to perform towards his children.

II. To recapitulate-In judging an act to be good we imply its adjustment to an order in which every faculty is exercised compatibly with the rest. A completely good man would be a man whose every act is of this kind, and every man is good in so far as his acts conform to this adjustment. A bad act, on the other hand, is one which fails of adjustment, and a man is bad in proportion to the

failure. The conception of a man's character is represented under the name of an ideal-a plan of conduct or way of life upon which he acts. A bad man's way of life is his ideal as much as the good man's, and every one of his acts implies such an ideal. The plan of conduct is called an ideal because it is a complex of conscious acts, each of which is present in idea before it is carried into effect. The good man's life is the good or moral ideal. It is therefore not called an ideal to imply that it is unattainable. On the contrary, every man acts on his own ideal, and the good man realises the moral ideal. It is all the more necessary to insist upon what it is that gives an ideal its name, because the good ideal, as it has been described, is really something hypothetical: it is ideal in the sense that it is never fully attained. is hypothetical in two ways. It supposes, in the first place, that every member of the order is good; and, in the second place, it supposes that the order itself remains permanent throughout the series. This double ideality it is important to recognise; but it is no less important to observe that the ideal is a realised ideal.

It

12. The first characteristic of the ideal is obvious. Experience does not present us with a life every act of which is good. We are all more or less bad. But in every good act the ideal is realised. The good act is the act which has the shape it would wear in the ideal order: though it is adjusted to imaginary elements it realises the whole so far as its own particular share is concerned. Who would say that a project involving many steps, of which only the first few were taken and the rest abandoned, was not so far actually realised? The realisation of the ideal moral order is signified in the form of the judgment which declares the act to be good.

The second ground of ideality is more important and interesting. The picture drawn of the good individual supposes morality to be unprogressive. It contemplates a series, but supposes that the successive members of the

series are known, and that no new conditions will intervene. The mere standard changes, but in judging an act good we arrest its change for a moment. The responsibility for doing so rests with the moral judgment and not with me. The conception of the moral order is ideal, because it does not cover all the phenomena of morality. To use a metaphor, it is a section taken at one point across the course of morality. It is an ideal which is not completely realised because it is a limited ideal. The moral life we know is in motion, but the conception used by the moral judgment is not dynamical, but statical. Here, as before, the ideal is none the less a realised ideal, because no man has ever seen it in fact. An act which is good is ipso facto a member of such an order, though the other elements of the order exist only in the ideas of men. The act itself consists, we will say, in defending an exposed position, and is defined by what it is: it is a good act, an act of bravery, in respect of its satisfying the conditions of this ideal order, which is therefore realised in it. Were it not for this ideal, its bravery could never be recorded in the moral judgment.

13. Let us look more closely at this last assumption contained in the conception of an order of volitions. The data are the known wants and impulses of human nature. In founding upon them an ideal of conduct we make the assumption that these impulses will recur in a manner analogous to our past experience. In other words, we assume our activities to be known, and life to be a repeating series of them, as hunger and thirst recur at certain intervals. The assumption is justified by the moral judgment, which supposes that the circumstances of action are calculable. We do not hold a person morally responsible in respect of consequences which could not be foreseen, nor again in respect of motive for a mistake which he could not prevent in estimating the nature of what he is doing. In our moral judgments we do limit the area of circumstance, and to this practice.

the ideal order corresponds; for the calculation of consequences of action depends on the knowledge we have of human nature. The hypothetical picture which the moral judgment draws of the good character exhibits the human nature as a closed cycle of appetites, impulses, and the like, which go through their course and rhythmically return. The moral life is the revolution through this adjusted series of acts.

II.-IN SOCIETY.

14. (a.) Social equilibrium.-Having inquired what the goodness of an act means in the good individual, we have now to ask the same question in respect of society. In a previous chapter the evidence has been given upon which the social conception of moral life is based, and that evidence is sufficient to demonstrate the truth of the conception in the greater part of conduct. Taking advantage of this, I shall give first an analysis of the meaning of good, which is borne out by the obviously social portion of conduct, and afterwards show that it applies to all the rest of conduct, by proving that the apparent exceptions to sociality are not really such.

Society is composed of many individuals. The very existence of the moral predicates involves in the first instance a plurality of persons, understanding by a person a being, the subject of volition, whose acts form a continuous context, which we call a moral character. The grounds upon which we ascribe to others a personality like our own cannot be discussed here; but the fact that we pass moral judgment upon one another is itself one of the most important and striking evidences for the truth of our belief. Certain it is that the moral judgment "this is good" or "bad" supposes such a plurality of persons who are able to understand each other. mere impulse to drink is a matter which concerns only

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