dictory to morality in those cases already mentioned, where the fullest cultivation of a scientific gift would conflict with other claims; and those cases are only extreme instances of the universal law that every power is to be regulated in its exercise by all the rest. Duty does indeed demand the fullest development, but there is no point in the scale which is fixed as the limit. The fullest development is exercise up to that point which is determined by morality, and that point need not always be the absolutely highest possible. On the thermometer of morality the point of perfection varies with each case. It is therefore not perfection which determines morality, but it is that criterion by which goodness and badness are distinguished which determines what is perfection.

The same result follows if we construe the standard of perfection as equivalent to following the law of one's nature. Without further definition, this precept would encourage the weak man in his weakness, and the bad man in his vice. This law of nature which we set up as a standard is in reality not a given standard of measurement, but is itself discovered in experience. I shall afterwards describe the process by which it is discovered: but the result of the process is what we know as morality, with its distinction of good and evil. In general the law of an organism's nature is that arrangement of its powers. which enables it to work without friction: now in human affairs this arrangement is the order of good conduct. Accordingly the law of human nature, whether in general or in a particular individual, is itself determined by the criterion of right and wrong.

It may be added that the conception of self-realisation, which is closely akin to that of perfection, is open. to the same criticism, that it is a subordinate principle of conduct. Every exercise of power realises the self: we want to do certain things, we can do them and we do them. But what self it is which is to be realised is not given in the conception itself, but is decided once more.

by that criterion of right and wrong which makes morality the supreme principle of life.

2. But the end demands from every one the highest efficiency. In subordinating perfection to rightness, it may seem that we fail to satisfy this requirement. If rightness or goodness means an equilibrium of powers, this equilibrium may be attained if all a man's powers are equally sluggish. Is not the idea of perfection necessary to raise the level? A little reflection shows that this doubt depends on a misconception of the criterion of rightness. The equilibrium it requires is not between the powers of the individual by himself, according to his own fancy of his powers, but between those powers as they are called into play by the whole society in which he lives. It is a miniature of the social equilibrium. Now the cultivation of his faculties beyond the point at which in his indolence a man may estimate them is demanded by the moral order itself, which has discovered such cultivation by each to be the sine qua non of social equilibrium among all.

The objection is baseless, but it serves to introduce a new consideration. To aim at perfection is in a certain sense a real principle of conduct. The dying advice of a Sussex farmer to his son, "Mind and always keep better company than yourself," sums up all practical wisdom. But it is a rule of practical wisdom, it is not a principle of philosophy which describes the character of the end. It is a rule of self-education which indicates how you are to prepare yourself for fulfilling the end. If you imitate a low ideal, you remain upon a low level; in following the pattern of the best you are learning the range of your own faculties at the same time that you are moulding them on the lines of morality. "We shall do well," said Law, the author of the Serious Call, to John Wesley, "to aim at the highest degrees of perfection if we may thereby attain to mediocrity." Most people are 1 Southey's Life of Wesley, vol. i. p. 57 (2nd edition).

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unaware how much they can do, and some even refuse to try, because they make up their minds that they have not the power. The example of the highest lives, in actual intercourse or in the pages of books, inspires the craving to which the powers are then within limits found to respond. In this principle of education, however, we are using the second meaning of perfection, that of the higher or more gifted nature as contrasted with the lower or less gifted. Perfect yourself' means in this connection, take care that you do not act as a person less highly developed than you really are.

3. What, then, is the exact relation of perfection to goodness? Both in its absolute and its comparative meanings it is a conception which belongs not to morality as such, but to the materials out of which morality is constituted. Take 'perfect' as equivalent to best,' then, as we have seen, perfection is equally involved in every good action. The good is always the best. Morality discards the degrees of comparison which are found in the grammar. What is right is perfect. And the per

fection of the action consists in its being what it is, and not something different. To bake a loaf, and to bake it well, are one and the same thing: if I have not baked it well, I have not baked it at all-I have half baked it, and made something different from bread. Perfection in this sense adds nothing to the contents of an act, but is like the auditor's mark which signifies that an entry is what it pretends to be. By perfection we mean therefore that an act is done according to its own law, or natural way of operation. What is implied in this phrase may be explained by a few illustrations.

All the

human powers work according to their laws, and may be said to have their own ends. There are the physical laws of the body, whose end is health, and the emotional laws by which, for instance, pity stretches out the hand to relieve, or anger clenches the fist. In the same way there are the laws of thinking and imagination, which

have their special ends in knowledge and art. And whether a faculty is at its highest or not it still operates according to its own nature. Now it is this natural operation of a power which we mean by its being perfect. But such perfection is not morality, but the materials of which morality is made. There is nothing moral in health, or pity, or thinking, or production of beauty. These are all given facts: the operation of these powers, so far as they themselves are concerned, is entirely outside the sphere of morality. Morality does not make health, nor does it teach how to think or to produce. But it uses all these powers, acting according to their own laws. Perfection is therefore the material of morality, but it does not contain any element of the criterion of goodness. The case is the reverse. To what extent the powers are to be exercised is determined by the criterion of right; what is the actual nature of the acts so done is determined by the law of perfection, according to which, each under ts own circumstances, the powers employed operate. Perfection therefore is not an ethical conception, but a pathological.

4. This is more obviously the case when we recognise, in the other sense of perfection, degrees of perfection and imperfection. Such differences are differences not in the ethical, but in the pathological order. They make the act performed different, but do not alter its value. They are differences of gifts, in the widest sense, of natural endowment, of fortune, of position, of opportunity, in virtue of which one man ranks higher than another, though not better than another. By what standard the differences of development are measured we need not inquire: partly it is rarity of gifts, partly their later development, partly their implying others which do not in their turn imply the former, and are ranked as lower, as, for instance, the higher gifts of intellect depend on the lower gifts of health, but these may be found without intellect. The distinctions of perfec

tion are therefore distinctions of fact, which alter the particular aspect of morality, but do not make any difference to it in respect of morality in its especial characteristic of equilibrium. Take away from respectable men in various stations, from the highest to the lowest, all that they owe to mere gifts, and their moral value will not be found to differ much on the whole, though their contributions to the work of society may be at different levels.

An apparent difficulty is offered by the presence of formed dispositions of mind, which undoubtedly enter into the pathological basis of good conduct, but are themselves acquired, and acquired by previous exercise of will. How, then, can we say that differences of perfection are differences of gift? But under differences of gifts are included the differences of feelings and emotions, with which our natures are very variously endowed. Now, though it is true that habits depend on will, yet the differences in perfection of dispositions depend on the emotional endowment. Such a difference is, for instance, that which exists between the nature which moves spontaneously and without friction, and that which always goes through some struggle.

can never

Whether, then, the disposition shall be in one form. rather than another, plainly results from the particular emotional endowment, taken in connection, of course, with the position in which a man has been placed, and the opportunities presented to him. Some men can get to move spontaneously; others by constant cultivation of feelings which are naturally manageable learn to reduce them to a more or less spontaneous form; others are born with sunny natures, which need no cultivation, but are moral from the beginning. Hence if we are comparing persons who are all good, their differences of perfection all resolve into differences of gifts. It is true that this only distinguishes between good persons, but that is all we seek to do. Between good men and bad men the differences depend not only on gifts, but on volition;