each individual taste. Every moral philosophy is moral if once you grasp the point of view. Yet to resolve them into a system of good men based upon a universal standard of classification, seems quite hopeless.

CHAPTER IV

THE LOGIC OF THE STANDARD

§ 10. The odiousness of comparisons. § 11. The moral standard and the business point of view. § 12. Social utility in law and orthodox morality. § 13. "Positive" morality.

ANY an orthodox moralist will admit that the

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facts with regard to moral judgments make the common standard at least difficult to verify. But he will then probably appeal to a logical necessity in the form of the following dilemma: either a common standard or no morality. In other words, we must have a standard if there is to be a moral life.

This states the question for the present chapter: why must you have a standard? What is the nature of the necessity? It is my purpose to show that the necessity in question is not so much a moral necessity as a business necessity.

§ 10

And I wonder why, to begin with, in a specifically moral relation, it is necessary to make any definitive judgment whatever. Suppose that I form a new acquaintance and that the acquaintance ripens into friendship: why is not the fact of the friendship enough for 'me? That fact means that my friend "grows upon acquaintance". I find in him more background, a more engaging personal character, a larger possibility of sympathy and understanding,

than I had expected; and though we understand one another, he does not cease to stimulate my imagination. I may not state to myself in any final fashion what it is that attracts, but something of all this must be trye if there is any real friendship, if the friendship is any moral fact whatever. In the face of this achieved fact, it seems to me that I should be the veriest prig to ask, Yes, but is he moral? That is, where does he stand in the common moral scale? Not that I will refrain from judging him or from analysing his character. Quite the contrary, the moral process is, I should say, analysis without end. My point is that the growing friendship is itself the process of analysis and that so far as it satisfies there is no further appeal. It would be a very different matter if I were swallowing a mass of revolting obscenity, or closing my eyes to a taste for sharp practice, for the sake of the introductions he could offer me or for his tips on the stockmarket.

It is a maxim of polite manners that comparisons are odious. This is one of the cases where the maxims of manners are so much more moral than the maxims of orthodox morality. At an afternoon tea Mrs. Jones, a professionally moral person, begins to question me about my friend Brown, of whom she disapproves. Aware of this I take the opportunity to explain to Mrs. Jones unobtrusively some of the nicer points about the personality of Brown which are not evident to the world at large. But Mrs. Jones is not satisfied, and presently she challenges me with (referring to another friend of mine of whom she approves), "But surely you will admit that Mr. Smith is a finer moral character." "My dear Mrs. Jones," is my crushing reply, "that is the kind of question I never

ask." "Is it not the question you ought to ask?" retorts Mrs. Jones severely, inwardly putting me down as a moral sceptic and a suspicious person; while I marvel at the stupidity of so many of the persons who adopt morality as their profession.

Such a question may be excusable in the small child who presses you to declare that he is a better boy than his brother; or possibly in the fifteen-year-old girl who rejects any friendship which will not admit that she is more loved and more admired than any other. Perhaps we may also pardon the youth of the undergraduate who is "working for marks". But our refusal to answer the child, and our haste to assure him that our love for him can never be a matter of comparison-our anxiety to eradicate the disposition that lies behind the question-make clear enough our conviction that all such questions are morally false.

§ 11

Yet we do make comparisons between persons and many such comparisons seem to be unavoidable. What, then, is their meaning and motive? In the answer to this question I shall venture to draw upon my experience as a college teacher; a kind of experience which tends, I suspect, to bring out rather clearly the outstanding features of any system of grading persons, its necessity from the administrative point of view, its irrelevance from the point of view of truth. The college teacher is called upon at the end of each term, first to classify his pupils as "passed" or "failed", and then among the "passed" to distinguish some four or five grades of excellence. In a very large class the task is not personally embarrassing, since one's relations to one's pupils are then of necessity more or less impersonal. But to a

small class, say of fifteen or twenty, with whom individually I have arrived at personal and friendly relations, and each of whom has perhaps come to stand in my mind for a personality, I feel almost tempted to apologize for a violation of the rules of courtesy. In theory these grades stand for intellectual attainment, in practice they are also moral estimates. But from either point of view they appear to be far from decisive and no one thinks of taking a student's grade as more than a very partial indication of his qualities of mind or character.

These indeed could not be expressed in terms of any system of grades. Whenever I read a set of examination papers what chiefly impresses me is that the merits, or demerits, so far as they are evident, are all different. One man distinguishes himself by reach of imagination; another, naturally slow-minded, delights me by the certainty of his final attainment; a third displays his unusual intelligence by squarely answering the questions that have been asked and not some others; while a fourth, whose blundering paper would have to rank low in any scientific scale, nevertheless gives evidence that for him the course of study has been a moral and intellectual awakening. And possibly the best material for a moral or intellectual valuation would consist in a group of papers in which each student had seriously set himself the task of explaining what the course had meant to him as a matter of personal experience. But such exhibits would hardly serve the purpose of the college administration.

For the purpose of these reports is not moral but utilitarian. What is wanted is not so much a true appreciation of the student's merits as an appreciation that will be intelligible to the public-in other words, a negotiable ap