distinguish between a man who is good and such a man as we might wish to be if we had the choice. We might wish to be as perfect in wisdom as Solomon, but we may be good with a lower degree of wisdom. There are differences between persons consisting in natural gifts or possessions. But it is not the possession of qualities which makes goodness, but the use to which they are put. There are certain things which we must accept as facts, and make the best of; and we do not consider a man less good because he cannot do as much as a more gifted person. One man may have much money and another little, but they may be equally generous, though perhaps not equally enviable. One man may have a store of sympathy, and another may be hard; but the latter can by proper exertion be as good as the former, though we may think him a less perfect man. Take any man and you find that he has certain advantages and disadvantages, certain things happen to him and others do not; and you find also that he makes a certain use of these facts. Now good and bad are properly applied to the use a man makes of himself, but they are used to cover also his qualities, his advantages and disadvantages. For instance, the same degree or kind of courage is not required from a man of nervous temperament and feeble body as from a robust and healthy man the former may be exempted from a military service which is otherwise universal, and yet not forfeit respect. He simply is a less complete individual, but his imperfection depends on something which is merely given, and has to be accepted. Yet we should be reluctant to give him the moral approval conveyed by the epithet "brave”—in the eyes of some he might appear a coward. Every one is conscious how difficult it is to keep apart the pity we feel for an unfortunate person from the moral feeling of contempt. Conversely we often call a man brave who has nothing but physical courage, and who shows pluck even in a bad cause. The parties in a political question have done their duty when they have honestly formed their

1

conviction as to what policy will be most beneficial. Their difference depends on the different bent of their minds which they cannot control. But though both may be doing rightly, they almost always stigmatise each other with the strongest epithets of moral condemnation.

8. Take first the cases where we apply the epithets good and bad not to will, but to other mental phenomena; to feelings, emotions, or desires. We often say that it is right to feel a certain feeling, and in some cases a feeling may mark the extent of our obligation. When we see a person in distress, and from our own poverty or occupation are unable to relieve him, we approve the feeling of pity or sympathy. Again, the simple feeling of gratitude for a service is a duty which does not necessarily imply our doing any service in return. A wish again, like the wish of Nero, that all the Romans had but one head, may be wicked. One of the direct effects of Christianity has been to attach a moral value to mere desires, even if they find no outlet in action; and-a still more striking instance-even to thoughts.

Now construed strictly all these cases illustrate the distinction drawn. Feelings and desires and thoughts occur to a person, and they are given as natural facts, and are in themselves purely neutral. The only exception is where their presence is due to our own fault, and they are therefore praised or blamed because they are due to previous virtuous or vicious action. Otherwise their goodness or badness is simply their tendency to further or retard morality, the occurrence of them giving an advantage or disadvantage in view of this object. But in reality when they are approved or condemned in the strict moral sense it is as being the objects of the will. A thought can be neither moral nor immoral, but only the act of retaining it in consciousness when its character has been attended to. It is

1 "All sorts of thoughts cross one's mind: it depends upon whether one gives them harbour and encouragement,' said Molly. 'My dear' [said Mrs. Gibson], 'if you must have the last word, don't let it be a truism.'"-Mrs. Gaskell's Wives and Daughters.

idle to praise a feeling which cannot be commanded: what is praised is its indulgence or its cultivation. The feeling of sympathy may be present as the outflow from a sympathetic temperament, and while it may win affection, it will not deserve praise: or again, it may be nothing more than that extension of the parental feeling which seems to be possessed by animals as well as men. There is the well-known story quoted by Darwin of the heroic baboon. A German writer saw in the Zoological Garden at Leipzig a gorilla which had herself maltreated a young newcomer with revolting cruelty take pity on it at last, and defend it against the other occupants of the cage;2 yet, though there are here the materials for morality, no one would think of calling this animal moral. Take again the case of desire for drink, or for more drink, for which a man is responsible only in so far as he is responsible for the acts which have led to the excessive desire. We blame him for the desire only when he persists in it or encourages it, and he does this by making the desire itself the object of his will. This may appear merely a roundabout way of saying that the desire becomes a will; but in fact it continues a desire without any resolution to take drink. The analogy of feelings and thoughts is enough to show that there really is volition involved in the retention of desire; and if this were not enough we need only turn to the negative instances from which, in ethics as elsewhere truth, according to the saying of Bacon, may often be most easily elicited. In the prohibition of a desire what is commanded is the deliberate rejection of the intemperate desire, and this is an act of will, which doubtless rejects the desire by substituting the idea of another and different object. To take a further illustration, even a perception may be condemned, but the object of censure is not the act of seeing, but that of looking. The sight may be accidental, but to prolong it is deliberate, and may be wrong.

1 Darwin, Descent of Man, p. 101, ed. ii.

2 G. H. Schneider, Der thierische Wille, p. 356.

Thus all the lower psychical activities may enter into the object of volition, and it is as such that they are morally judged. Primitive times confuse these two points. of view, and hold a person equally responsible for an accident which occurs to him, and for an act of which the agent is aware. Actæon is punished for having seen Diana, Edipus holds himself guilty of an act which indeed he committed, but not knowing its real nature. Conversely guilt is supposed to be explained satisfactorily by alleging the mental condition of the agent, as when Agamemnon apologises for carrying off Briseis by saying he was distracted.1 But instances of the same primitive obscurity of ideas may be found every day amongst ourselves,

III-MORALITY AND CONSCIOUSNESS.

9. The difficulties of the subject of consciousness are partly met by the same view. In affirming that all moral action (action which is morally judged) is conscious of its object, I affirm nothing more than that the agent apprehends the nature of his object. It is not implied that he reflects about it and thinks of the character of the object as a reason for willing it, still less that he thinks. of it in relation to the rest of his life, or as right or wrong. It is a mere reassertion of the ordinary notion that to be responsible you must have knowledge. I will take the cases of difficulty in turn.

(1.) There are acts done under the influence of violent feeling and without any knowledge of what is done. Under circumstances of great danger, as when a pistol is presented at me, I may swerve aside. Such an act would be purely impulsive; yet it is alleged that a man's character is shown by such an act, and in general it is under great trials that a man's character is most visible. Yet these are just the cases when the consciousness required for volition seems to be absent.

1 I borrow the illustration from Ecce Homo.

Now we must of course distinguish between cases when a man is not really aware of his action and other similar cases. It is true that a man's moral value is shown under new and unexpected circumstances, but it is a mistake to suppose that the act is always half unconscious. For the most part it follows upon a rapid survey of the conditions, and we admire the highest of such actions because of the strength and originality of character shown in this quick resolution. "Everything," says Goethe, "the noble man may perform who understands and seizes quickly."1 Such acts seem unconscious because they reveal powers which the agent himself and the spectator had not suspected before; his act comes to him as a kind of surprise. But they are really acts of volition, and of volition at its highest power.

On the other hand, where the act is really instinctive, and it was impossible for the person to know what he was doing, we do not condemn. We should condemn only if he was answerable for his weakness, or if the conditions both of the event and of his own nature were not such as to prevent his knowing, in which case his act is taken as evidence that he deliberately did wrong. Otherwise we say his act was only natural, and though a stronger man might not have swerved, we do not blame the weaker, but if anything are only sorry for him. His act does indeed show his character, but not in the same sense as before: it shows that his natural powers are limited, or that he is lacking in bodily strength or in nervous fibre it exhibits. that part of him which is natural or given.

10. (2.) Acts in which we know the right and do the wrong offer great difficulties to the psychologist, but they need not detain us here. They are in general deliberate ; though when we are said to do wrong deliberately while

knowing the right, it is not implied that we do the wrong

because it is wrong.

1 "Alles kann der Edle leisten

Der versteht und rasch ergreift."—Faust.