IV. CHARACTER.

13. Since then the sentiments rightly defined are equivalent to conduct, it follows that the mere possession of them must not be supposed to constitute the difference between intrinsic or internal and merely customary morality, as if customs were not as much a matter of sentiment as what is called the morality of the heart. All morality has its moral sentiments, and wherever it exists is equally a rule of conduct on one side and character on the other. The customs of savages are as much internal with them as our morality is with us. Their characters are moulded on the plan of obedience to their customs; and though the attitude towards life of a good Zulu may be different from that of a high-minded Englishman, his morality is none the less intrinsic, but only lower. The distinction is one of fact, of development. Savages lack originality and elasticity, and their lives are uniform. When great moral teachers have called men away from mere custom to the inward spirit of action, they have had the same kind of distinction in their mind. They have not pretended to create something different in kind from what existed before, but they have tried to awake characters sunk in sluggishness or stagnation to a freer and more spontaneous life. When they have put the spirit of the law above the letter, they have, in fact, endeavoured to introduce a new law which is more plastic, more sensitive to differences of circumstance and condition.

14. What then is included under the conception of character, which has been used provisionally more than once in the preceding discussion? As from a practical point of view the acquisition of moral character is the one thing necessary, so from the speculative point of view to understand may be called the whole business of ethics. We cannot as yet say what makes the difference between good and bad character, but we can say what character itself is.

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Conduct as a concrete whole has an inward element of sentiment and an outward element of action, and these are different on the one hand from mere given feelings, on the other from mere action, even such as we know in impulsive acts. Conduct is this unity of feeling and action in which mere feeling is modified by the idea of action, and mere action becomes a mental, or if we like, a spiritual thing. Character is simply that of which individual pieces of conduct are the manifestation: it is the force of which conduct is the expression, or the substance of which conduct is the attributes. Think of a man's conduct in relation to the mental conditions from which it proceeds, and you think of his character: think of his character as it produces results beyond these sentiments themselves, and you have conduct.

15. Conduct and character are thus the same thing facing different ways. If we want to know what a man's character is, we ask what he has done. Short of being equivalent to conduct, character sinks to the rank of what is merely disposition or temperament, which often goes by the same name. Here we have once more the distinction of what a man possesses from the use which he makes of it. At the risk of repetition I will illustrate it again. A man of irascible disposition is sometimes described as of irascible character. But his disposition comes up for moral judgment only according to the volitions in which it issues: as being irascible he may be a less pleasant person to live with, but he may be as good as another in whom nature has kindled no spark of anger. His moral character, on the other hand, is shown in the acts in which he brings the whole of himself to bear upon this particular inclination. Another instance will

make the difference between these two notions of character clearer. A man of high aspirations without corresponding effort to realise them we describe as a man of amiable but weak character. It is because what he does springs from gentle and refined feelings that we look upon him as amiable: it is because some of his best impulses are never carried

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out into conduct, never become acts of will, that we stigmatise him as morally weak. It is true that we may not be able to discover a man's character in its fulness from the acts he has performed, as when a young life is cut short which was believed to contain greater promise. But it is only on the ground of its past conduct that we can estimate its future capabilities: its promise is concluded from. the peculiar features of those acts (acts, be it remembered, in which the whole man is concerned) which we have had the opportunity of observing.

Character, then, is not the same thing as disposition, but it is built upon it. In the moral character, therefore, all a man's tendencies gather themselves up, in the form of volition, for a single utterance; character is their product. But at the same time it is resoluble into all the lower elements. It depends on ideas, feelings, disposition, even upon physical constitution. We are familiar with the truth that the lower stages of existence are used up to form the material of the higher, which in their turn are resoluble into the lower again. Physical matter is the basis of organic life, organic life of mental. "The chemic lump arrives at the plant and grows; arrives at the quadruped and walks; arrives at the man and thinks" (Emerson). In the character the case is the same. Volition is explained by all the conditions on which it depends, and it sums them up in a single act, just as a multitude of ideas and their words may be contained within the compass of a single idea and word which is yet different from its components.

V.-IS ANY CONDUCT NEUTRAL?

16. One more question remains to be answered. It has been shown that volition or conduct is always that which is morally judged. Can we say conversely that not only is all morality conduct, but that all conduct is moral, that is, either good or bad, right or wrong? To answer in the affirmative would be contrary to some current opinions, for

a large portion of our conduct is commonly regarded as either neutral or indifferent, or merely prudential. At the same time the line between indifferent and moral conduct is admittedly hard to draw, while morality often seems implicitly to be taking up new portions of conduct formerly indifferent. The subject is naturally attached to the discussion of motives, because mere outwardly good or conformable acts of will are treated as having no moral value, though at the same time it is often left ambiguous, whether we are therefore to regard them as immoral, or simply as so imperfectly formed as to be neither bad nor good, but simply neutral in respect of the agent's character. If so, this would contradict the theorem that every volition is good or bad. But though it is very difficult to get from the moral judgment a direct answer, both on account of the variety of cases, and of the complex nature of each, yet it is, I think, true to say that it condemns them and regards. them as bad. Sometimes the verdict is obvious: If a man endows a useful popular institution in order to secure a seat in Parliament, his act is bad and corrupt, however great the service he renders. But to take another instance of what is commonly (though wrongly) called optional, or meritorious conduct. If he gives the money in order to make a display, we still say, though he has done a good act, it is not the act of a good man. Passing to obligatory Acts which merely

acts the case becomes more perplexing. conform to strict duties may be either negative or positive. In the first case I abstain from wrong from a bad motive. But it would seem paradoxical to say I did wrong because from fear of the gallows I did not kill another, and yet we cannot say the act was good. Or take acts of positive legality. In speaking of these we must be careful to get behind the phrase. Conformity to law or custom, in which the act is done because it is law or custom, and for no other reason a description which applies to a great part of ordinary respectable lives-is certainly declared to be good conduct. The acts spoken of here are mere legal acts which

are done from a low motive. I pay my debts rigidly, but I do it from fear of the bailiff. Is my act good or bad? On the one hand I obey the law; on the other hand my object is not to obey the law, but to secure my peace and quiet by doing legal duties. But here again we certainly

deny the act to be good.

17. Now in all these cases the act is never neutral, but where denied to be good it is declared to be bad, and absolutely bad. The difficulty of recognising this is that we are apt to reason thus: If the act is bad, ought I then to have omitted it? If it is wrong to abstain from murder, ought I to have done the act? Or ought I not to pay my debts? But the alternative is wrongly stated. When I say it is wrong not to kill a man from fear of the gallows, I do not say that you ought to have killed him, but I say that you ought to have repressed the desire to kill him for its own sake or again, you ought to pay your debts because you owed them; or be munificent, because that is the right use to make of your wealth. The act done was really not what it seems to be, but something else, securing the safety of your neck, or the free possession of your purse. Morality says you did something different from your duty and your act was bad, or it says your act was outwardly good, but you have a low ideal. It does indeed give credit for what is a good or useful quality in your act, eg., for your self-control, and consequently its condemnation 's of all degrees of severity, and considering the effect of these elements of good character in the sum total of life, it may dislike to call you a bad man, though it refuses to call you a good one. It remembers that a man's character as a whole may be better than any one of his acts. But unless you aim at the ideal of conduct honestly, it maintains (making allowance, if necessary, for the circumstances) that you did wrong.

It may be asked, seeing that a man's motives never can be known, how then can you judge him? But this concerns the practical application of moral judgments. We