expert, in order to discover the slightest deflection from what it holds to be good. It is because of its personal or individual character that it is able to put forward a claim to independence of the state or of any social order. The claim is well founded if it means only that the good man is so self-contained as to need no reference to an outward order, or in other words, that he is in the ethical sense free, and acts spontaneously from a principle which he has within him. In our modern way of thinking we speak of a man's act as coming wholly from himself, while among many ancient peoples he was regarded as receiving a commission from God. But in times of sentimentalism, the claim has been made in the sense that every man has a right to be judged by his own judgment, irrespective of others and of the state. Such a conscience, of fine words and selfish actions, is not that which is contemplated by the moral judgment, which assigns it supreme authority. Hegel pointed out long ago (and Milton had said the same thing before him 1) that no man had a right to a private conscience. the contrary, the conscience sits as a tribunal on a man's acts or intentions, just because it is the representative of the moral order.

On

It

14. This brings us to the second characteristic, which we found to belong to the moral sense in general. acts as a guide because it is trusted as the depositary of the moral law. Any one with a conscience would do this implies that just because of his conscience a man's actions will be agreeable to the recognised rules of morality, and we reckon on him accordingly. And in speaking of a perverted conscience' morality contemplates and condemns the isolation of a man's ideas about right conduct from the judgment of his fellows. Or the body of ideas which acts as the tribunal is the reflection in idea of the order of moral relations into which the individual enters. And it is necessary to add once more that 1 "A private conscience suits not with a public calling.”

the conscience is neither author nor simple effect of this moral law, but is itself determined in the act by which the latter is determined, being but its counterpart in idea.

15. Conscience thus shares with the moral sense as a sentiment of morality the two characters of being purely personal, and yet the representative of a universal order. Where it differs from the moral sense it does so because by its greater reflectiveness it lays hold of that negative aspect of duty which is called responsibility. From the sense of responsibility itself it differs by what may be called the inwardness of the tribunal which judges: in conscience it is to myself I am responsible. Simple responsibility is therefore more objective or external than conscience. When the tribunal is regarded still more objectively as an ideal which is completed in God, the notion of conscience or responsibility makes room for a religious conception, on which is founded the idea of a day of judgment.

16. The cultivation of a refined conscience is obviously the basis of all morality: but just because of its greater reflectiveness as compared with the simpler moral sense conscience is attended by certain dangers. Attaching itself as it does to the negative side of duty rather than to the positive, it tends to associate with duty the idea of painfulness rather than of pleasure, and to contaminate devotion to goodness by fear. Again the habit of selfexamination, though of vital importance, cannot be encouraged beyond a certain limit without the risk of developing a morbid subjectivity of feeling. And, moreover, though constant introspection may be in certain. individuals necessary to maintain the moral vitality, it usually means something unfortunate in the individual life, some want of repose in his feelings or his circumstances, though by no means a lower degree of goodness. Those have been usually unhappy ages in history when the self-questioning spirit has been very powerful. Under the Roman Empire, for instance, when all authority was

concentrated in a single arbitrary will, the private individual, finding no outlet for his energies in the purifying exercise of free and responsible civic life, was driven back upon himself. The Stoic philosophy gained so many adherents, largely because it appealed to the unaided standard of the pure reason. But their reason, unsustained by the bracing air of practical activity, could often suggest to some of the noblest characters and highest intellects of that time no other expedient than to end their lives by more or less dignified acts of suicide.1 The murderer in King Richard III. who said of conscience that "it is turned out of towns and cities for a dangerous thing, and every man that means to live well endeavours to trust to himself, and live without it," had of course his own very good reasons for his opinion. But understood in a different sense from his, his language is true, that it is at any rate happier for a man, if his moral ideas operate without the shock of collision, and deliberate self-examination is as little called into requisition as possible.

1 Epicureanism does not illustrate the argument: but it was but the complementary effect of the same cause. Self-reflection, and the habit of settling one's destiny with reference to one's own standard of reason, is only one way out of an order of things which weakens true independence of character. The other expedient is good-humoured, or indifferent acquiescence. It is equally unsatisfying; and suicide was recommended by Epicureanism as well as by Stoicism. In Rome itself however (for various reasons: see Lecky, European Morals, vol. i., ch. ii.) Epicureanism never obtained so strong a hold as the rival philosophy.

BOOK II.

(Continued).

PART II.-THE MORAL END.

CHAPTER IV.

THE END AS GOOD CONDUCT.

I. -CONCEPTION OF THE END.

I. THE good or the moral end is a different conception from that which forms the predicate of moral judgments of approval. In the distinction of good and bad, good is equivalent to right, and bad to wrong: but we mean something different when we speak of a man's good, of the good, or the ultimate good. Good in this latter sense is in general that which satisfies desire. According to our view of morality, however, the ultimate good is identical with good or right conduct when the latter is regarded as containing the satisfaction of desires. This is so far from being an evident proposition that it seems. to conflict with palpable facts. Morality itself requires a constant sacrifice, so that good conduct need not fulfil an individual's desires: it is only to the good man that morality will be a good. And in the next place it is certain that what is right need not always be to a man's interest. The difference of right and good therefore seems ultimate. On the other hand we say, in disregard of a man's private inclinations, that his good is his real good only when it is consistent with morality. The very

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object of morality is to determine under what conditions a man's good is the good, viz., when he acts rightly.

But though the good thus remains a different conception from the right, it seems to follow from our description of the latter that it contains the good. The reason is that the criterion of goodness therein stated is not external but internal. Conduct we found to be good not because it led to some further result, such as pleasure, or because it was determined by some inexplicable idea of good, but in virtue of the equilibrium it established between the various parts of conduct itself. Good conduct, settled as such by an internal test, should contain within itself the whole justification of morality without requiring us to seek outside. But this result we can only verify in detail by an examination of the various elements contained in good conduct, which shall show how good conduct stands to other conceptions of the end as an inclusive whole to its several parts.

2. Let us verify, first of all, that the system of good conduct satisfies both of two different conditions implied in the common conception of the end of morality, the first that it is the object or purpose of morality, the aim of desire; the second that it is the standard, criterion, or result by reference to which conduct is measured. These two notions are not always kept distinct, but it is under one or other or both of these aspects that the end is always described in ethical theories. The first notion, that of the object of action, is evident in the use of common language where an end means a motive or object sought; and in ethical theories the good is put forward as the actual object of desire. In ordinary hedonism pleasure is not only held to be the efficient cause of action, but the object in view, and morality appears as the means towards attaining that object. In such theories, a particular feeling or class of feelings, viz., pleasure is the end. A different position is taken when the end is declared to be not pleasure, but some mental condition, a state of attainment or