prove of such a marriage in the middle-aged. On the other hand we look for more evidence of spirituality in a clergyman than in a layman. We do not despise the householder who quietly yields his goods to an armed burglar we are more likely to praise him for his good sense but we have only contempt for the similar cowardice of a policeman. And even though we assert it to be the solemn duty of every citizen to interest himself in public affairs we admit some excuse for those who are temperamentally retiring. Finally, it seems that we all make concessions to men of genius, hardly expecting from them that fidelity as husband and father, or that promptitude in the payment of bills, which we exact of lesser men. It seems that we judge them as we judge the great men of history, more by the claims that they make for themselves than by any that we would impose upon them. The universal moral standard applies only to the common run of

men.

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Nor will it help the argument for a moral standard to attribute this variable personal element in our moral estimations to the unscientific character of popular judgments on the assumption that academic ethical theory will reveal a unity of criterion and of method. There is indeed a certain unity of character in academic ethics, but a rather dismal unity constituted by the fact that the literature of ethics consists so largely of the discussion of some half dozen stock questions: such as, whether virtue is one or many, whether the good is perfection or happiness, whether the idea of obligation is analysable, whether benevolence can be derived from self-love, whether con

duct is to be judged by motive or by intention. I will not say that these questions are meaningless, but to my mind their chiefly important meaning is what they mean for the moralist who is dealing with them, and the chiefly creative result is what his discussion reveals of his personality, point of view, and attitude towards life. This revelation is the moralist's truly important contribution to the subjectmatter of morality. In these terms the history of ethics, now far from enlivening, would be a fascinating chronicle and a series of the nicest literary and critical problems. It would best be presented, not as so many "systems", nor yet as so many moralists, but rather as so many ideal pictures, painted by the many varieties of human imagination, each entitled, "The Good Man".

And after contemplating them carefully I fancy that we should pronounce them all good men. I have pointed out that all of the good men of Greek ethics were aristocrats but they were not all of one type. Plato's good man is unworldly, or other-worldly; he is the poet's ideal, the man of transcendent purity and refinement, partly hero and partly saint. Aristotle's good man is the man of the world, yet the man of the world who is also a gentleman; the "magnanimous", or "high-minded" man, always liberal and generous, and therefore a man of property, but too high-souled to make it a matter of calculation. The good men of the Stoics and Epicureans were neither worldly nor other-worldly. Neither Stoic nor Epicurean found much to stimulate his imagination in this world or the next. Hence for both the good man was the sage, who by achieving an independence of desire had attained tranquillity of mind. But while the Stoic would embody in his sage the idea of dignity and greatness, the Epi

curean sought to make him genial and humane. And thus the Epicurean sage bent gracefully to the adverse winds of life, finding tranquillity of mind in letting them take him where they would. The Stoic held rigidly to his course, the course laid by reason, and found his tranquillity of mind in a scornful contempt for what he suffered.

The modern Stoic is Immanuel Kant. At first glance one wonders whether this rigid formalist of moral laws and imperatives was interested in anything human whatever. Note, however, this alternative reading of his "categorical imperative": "act as if the maxim of thy action were to become through thy will a universal law of nature." Now in these days the notion of personifying a law of nature seems hardly stimulating. But Kant lived in the century thrilled by the mathematical physics of Newton; the century in which one could sing with fervor Addison's hymn beginning with, "The spacious firmament on high". All of the perplexing difficulties of Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason" may be said to lie in the attempt to vindicate Newton while questioning the metaphysical finality of natural science. And for Kant the eternal and magnificent regularity of the astronomical system (of "the starry heavens above me") was a new revelation to the human imagination of the infinite greatness of God. But the potentiality of this divine greatness was then also to be found in the constitution of human nature, in that faculty of reason, that power of controlling desire by the conception of law, by which men are marked off from the lower animals. And the specific contrast to this divine attribute was to be found in desire, variable and uncertain, which is common to men and animals. Accordingly, when Kant makes morality to consist in the

suppression of desire on behalf of a single-minded regard for universal law, he will give us, not a bare formula devoid of human meaning, but an inspired vision of a transcendently noble ideal of human life. Kant's good man is the man who in dignity and greatness is most akin to God.

Very sordid by comparison seems the good man of the utilitarians—as represented, say, by Bentham and the elder Mill. Yet in spite of the seeming purpose of the utilitarian to dissolve morality into utility, his good man stands for an ideal genuinely moral. John Stuart Mill would describe the utilitarian view as an Epicurean view of life because for both the end of life was "pleasure". But no two attitudes toward life could be much less alike. The Epicurean was weary and dissillusioned, and wondered whether life was worth living. The utilitarian moralist may have the same doubts, but his good man never asks the question: life is here, the only question is then how to realize its cash-value. And no abstract discussion of the conception of "pleasure" will give us the utilitarian's meaning, for that meaning was of all ethical meanings the most concrete. Utilitarianism is morality as viewed from the point of view of modern commerce and modern industry-from the point of view of a commerce and industry which has become organized, and of a social class, or class of activities, which has been marked off and segregated, all as the result of the steam-engine. Utilitarianism stands, then, for a point of view hardly definable in terms of Greek, or perhaps of mediaeval culture, and for a class not previously articulate. The utilitarian logic is the logic of modern economics. It seeks to evaluate life as goods are evaluated in the market, and

its standard "pleasure" is only the monetary standard (with all of its accompanying perplexities) in other terms.

The utilitarian good man is then, whether worker or employer, the man whose moral ideal is economic respectability and independence—the man who pays his way and owes no man anything. For him the important virtues are common honesty (i. e., a special sensitiveness to the demands of honesty where money is handled), industry, thrift, and sobriety. How these virtues may stand for moral heroism and for spiritual achievement will best be understood by those (not usually, by the way, persons who have leisure for moral philosophy) for whom the possibility of holding an insecure "job" is the lifelong alternative to destitution. These virtues are hardly to be found in Aristotle's leisure-class ethics or in idealistic ethics generally. And it is as against this leisure-class ideal that we must understand the utilitarian's special (and of course exclusive) claim to stand for true morality. The utilitarian good man recognizes his economic responsibility. Against this the claim of the cultivated classes would be that out of their leisure they have created most of what makes life worth living. Economically, however, they have been a supported class; the Greek culture in particular rested upon a basis of slave-labor. Indirectly indeed it is conceivable that even in economic terms they have far more than paid their way. But this is a question in which idealistic moralists appear to be not greatly interested. The sense of economic responsibility is the utilitarian contribution to the conception of morality.

These are but a few of the good men seen in the visions of moral philosophers. It will be admitted, I think, that they are all good men though not all equally pleasing to