things in order to indicate properties that existed before these epithets could have a meaning. It may be added that in discussing the method of ethics in connection with the elements of moral action, we shall avoid the danger (always present to the treatment of scientific method) of vagueness and abstraction, because we shall be defining the science by the character of its own facts.

16. Ethics proper begins with analysing the conceptions of good and bad, right and wrong, which are the nerve of moral judgments, and the various conceptions connected with these. This will occupy the first part of Book II., and the investigation will take the form of an inquiry into the vital question of the relation between the individual and society. The second part deals with the supreme end of conduct, which stands in close relation with the preceding problem. Under this second division will be included such conceptions as that of the common good, self-sacrifice, perfection, happiness. Finally, there will remain to be discussed the principles upon which a systematic treatment of the contents of morality may be based. All these conceptions I group together under the head of moral order, because the inquiry will show that the idea of good or right implies nothing more than an adjustment of parts in an orderly whole, which in the individual represents an equilibrium of different powers, in the society an equilibrium of different persons.

In Book III. I group under the title of growth and progress the conceptions which comprehend the maintenance and development of morality. It is not necessary to repeat that by the growth of morality I do not mean the connection of morality with lower forms of conduct in the animals. On the contrary, assuming a given state of moral observances, my concern is to show how the human forces operate which produce it. The data which fall under this head are not extrinsic to morality, but are vitally bound up with the very existence of morality. Thus progress, the most important of the dynamical con

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ceptions, will be found to be involved in all morality. But these conceptions, though they are used in our judgments about morality, do not stand on the same footing as the statical, just because they represent morality in motion. rather than in repose. Some of them are the conceptions of the previous book reappearing under a new aspect. Thus instead of explaining what good and bad mean, we have to describe the facts which mark the distinction of good from bad. Instead of duty we have in this sphere the notions of punishment and responsibility, which describe not what morality is, but how it is maintained. Now just as the statical conceptions attach to a central principle, so these others will be found to be involved in a single dynamical law. It will be found that moral ideals move by a process which, allowing for differences, repeats the law by which natural species develop, and of this process the dynamical conceptions represent different elements.

BOOK I

PRELIMINARY-CONDUCT AND CHARACTER.

CHAPTER I.

THE SUBJECT OF MORAL JUDGMENTS.

I. THE WILL.

1. MORAL epithets, whether of approval or disapproval, are commonly regarded as applying to voluntary actions or willed conduct. But this simple statement raises difficulties as soon as it is submitted to reflection. It depends on the definition of voluntary action how far we can accept it as covering the area of moral ideas: or again it may be held that other things are morally judged besides volition or lastly, that volition itself is not the direct subject of the judgment, but something else, such as acts or motives. In the following two chapters I shall therefore endeavour to describe the various elements in willed conduct in their relation to one another: prosecuting the analysis only with reference to the ethical question, and with the twofold purpose of fixing the region within which moral predicates apply, and at the same time explaining the nature of the subject to which they apply.

2. I will begin by marking off the position of the will from the other mental phenomena to which it is most closely related. The will is practical or is a kind of action, and it may be distinguished therefore from the acts called impulsive or instinctive. On the other hand,

it is intimately connected with desire, which it succeeds in the order of complexity. With impulsive actions every one is familiar. They are, however, not the lowest of human actions. Lowest of all stand mere automatic actions, such as those of respiration, and next above these reflex actions, of which the expansion and contraction of the iris afford instances. Reflexes are unlike automatic actions in being dependent on some external stimulus, but they are like them in being unaccompanied by consciousness. They are best illustrated in the animals by motions which go on. when the organs of consciousness are removed. Instinctive or impulsive actions differ from these in being accompanied by consciousness. They appear to be simple discharges of feeling in the form of movement, but they vary in complexity according to the nature of the stimulus. which excites this feeling in the first instance. Sometimes indeed a vague internal feeling, such as the feeling of hunger, is sufficient to cause action, but it is indeterminate, as in the groping of a hungry dog for food. The action becomes determinate only when a particular piece of food is perceived. The impulse of the infant to suck, and the impulse of sex, exist first only as vague internal promptings, which when excited by an appropriate object issue in action directed to the enjoyment of that object. In some cases, as in jumping for joy, the connection of the act with the object which causes the feeling is obscure : in others, as in clenching the fist with anger, the connection is more definite. The instincts become more and more complex as ideas derived from past experience combine with the perception of the object. Still, in all such cases the process seems to be a direct excitement of the impulse by the object and the subsequent discharge in action. whole question of the part played by ideas in instinctive action is a very difficult one. It is possible even that the idea of the end to be attained may be present; but there is nothing to show that such an idea is more than the remembrance of a past enjoyment, and in any case the

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idea of the end is not present as an idea, that is to say, in distinction from the perception of the object.

Now it is this which distinguishes voluntary from instinctive action. A voluntary action is not a mere discharge of a feeling which is excited by the perception of an object, but it implies that the idea of the end to be attained is present not merely in consciousness, but to consciousness. Compare, for instance, a man's will to eat food with the instinctive effort made to seize it either by a man himself, or let us say by a hungry dog. In the latter case, the mere sight of the food sets up through the impulse the action directed towards enjoying it in the former, the enjoyment of the food is held before the mind in distinction alike from the perception of the food itself and the internal feeling of hunger. In certain cases it may be difficult to determine whether the act is really voluntary or only instinctive. But when a man wills he does not merely perform an act which issues in a certain end, but has before him the idea of the end, or is conscious of his object, or in homely language knows what he is doing, though he need not reflect upon what he is doing.

3. The presence of an idea in explicit form or in distinction from feeling, which is involved in volition, does not, however, serve to define the will. It is true not only of intellectual processes but also of desire. From desire, on the other hand, will differs in that whereas in desire the object present as an idea remains an idea or representation, in will it is converted into the actual reality of presentation. This distinction may be explained thus.

In desire we have always an idea, as, for instance, of warmth or of eating food: the process of desire is the effort to convert this idea from a mere representation to a reality. This idea is present as an idea. The agent, besides having the idea, is in a certain present condition (say of cold or hunger), and while his present condition is painful the idea before his mind is pleasant. Desire consists in a feeling of tension which may be described as