its vocabulary is that of the law. The two most typical of its modern exponents are Kant and Bishop Butler. Schopenhauer refers in biting terms to Kant's "judicial imagery"; in Butler-though one of the shrewdest and most enlightened of those who have ever discoursed upon "human nature"-it seems that most of the moral life is spent in a court of justice pleading a case before "the bar of conscience".

Now if the ideal of law is justice, the administration of law is none the less of necessity mainly utility. For in the last analysis moral justice is intimately personal. In the distribution of an estate, for example, a liquidation of the assets and a proportionate distribution of the cashproceeds may be as remote from justice as Solomon's proposal to divide the child. The best to be said of it is that it treats all alike; but since all may be very different this is little. The ideally just distribution, especially where the property is various in kind, would be dictated by a careful regard for the personal tastes and the personal situations of the several parties. This, however, would be less a problem for a court, even for a court in equity, than perhaps for a friend of the family of long standing. But only the mutual understanding of the parties themselves could finally solve the problem. Yet if they are unable to reach an understanding, the rule of liquidation and proportionate distribution will be effective in closing the case.

Moral justice presupposes a personal acquaintance with the parties concerned. The justice of law is blindfolded; and in modern civilization justice is necessarily blindfolded by the fact that the parties to a suit can only in rare cases be known to the court. Hence such maxims of utility as that ignorance of the law is no defence. This

rule would be outrageous in the administration of a family, not wholly justifiable in the administration of a school. If a child pleads that he didn't know, or even that he had forgotten, it would in most cases be simple cruelty not to inquire into the fact, even at cost of having to deal with the delicate and uncertain distinction between an excusable forgetting and no earnest desire to remember. But only the parent, who knows the child well, can form a satisfactory judgment. The judge, facing an entire stranger, would need more than the penetration of Solomon. His only way out is to accept no excuse whatever.

And this is the only safe course. Safety is indeed one of the most obvious motives both of law and of orthodox morality. Laws are made deliberately with this in mind, and nine just men are bound lest one unjust escape. Why should not mutual consent be sufficient for divorce? You will find many persons who see no reason in justice and decency why this should not be. But they will oppose making it a law; first perhaps, because it might open the door to legalized prostitution under the guise of marriage (which means that it would then be uncertain whom we could invite to meet whom at a dinner-party); but further because it would raise very complicated questions about the support of former wives, or of half-parented children, which our institutions are unprepared to handle. The motive of safety is no less apparent in legal decisions. Almost invariably indeed they betray a curious intermingling of two very different considerations: on the one hand justice as regards the parties in question, on the other the question of how far this justice might result in illegitimate applications on the part of others. Safety, again, is the motive of orthodox morality; one of whose maxims seems

to be that, "This would be all right for you and me but it would never do for the masses." "Sound" and "dangerous" are its two most important terms. In that large and perplexing field of the morality of sex, fear of doubtful cases seems to be the ruling principle. Did George Eliot do wrong in living with Lewes as his wife? From her letters one's impression would be that few legitimate marriages have been so successful or so truly moral. Orthodox morality fears to render any judgment but "wrong", because in probably nine cases out of ten the result would have been an ignoble scandal.

This is not to say that I might not sympathize with a certain regard for safety. Personally I have little taste for adventure except in the fields of the spirit; although I cherish a secret admiration for those who do venture to translate thought into act and sympathy for those who fall. But I do not offer this as a criterion of "sound morality”, but rather to suggest that this phrase embodies a contradiction in terms. What each may venture—which means, how much morality each may expect to get into his life is a question for each to answer. All that I suggest here is that safety be not confused with morality.

All of these utilitarian considerations resolve themselves, it seems to me, into the simple pragmatic question of what to do. And I would point out that, in spite of the "law's delay", it is the first and most imperative duty of the court, not to dispense justice, but to render decisions-decisions that shall be as just as possible, but in any case decisions. And thus its function is to solve problems if it can but at all events to dispose of them. Decisions and methods of making decisions form again the most conspicuous element in the efficiency of the modern administrator or

business man; who faces each day a heavy morning mail, and whose only safe rule is to dispose of it if possible all on the same day, because tomorrow will bring another. These inquiries are disposed of as far as possible in formletters, or standardized replies, the purpose of which is to enlighten the correspondent if possible, but in any case to silence him. The so-called moral standard is expected to perform the same function. When a man says that we must have a moral standard, all that he means is, I take it, that we must have some method of disposing day by day of the necessary business of life.

I will not despise the business side of life. It will be sufficient to point out that the business side stands for necessity rather than choice. It marks the region of activity that we cannot hope to make moral-or living. And therefore if you are looking for the special character of the moral life you must seek it in the contrast to business method. Business method aims at action and results, with the greatest economy of thought. The moral life is not so much action as thoughtful action, and the moral fruit of action is not "results" but experience of life. But the introduction of thought into action changes the whole character of the problem. Moral problems are continuing problems, in- ́ viting contemplation. The moral results of action are not so much conclusions as new developments of older questions. The moral problem, in short, is the problem of life. Problems of business call for definite answers, to be given at once; the problem of life cannot be thus disposed of.

§ 13

The association of morality with authority, and of the moral attitude with the didactic, represents what is called

"positive" morality. "Positive morality" seems to mean that the moral world is a world of definite extent (and not hopelessly big), which is being gradually surveyed by successive generations of moralists, whose results, final as far as they go, are being steadily incorporated into certain ever more established principles. In other words, positive morality presupposes that ethics is a science; that the moral world is a world of fact; and that the moral life, however complex it appear to be, presents a specifically practical problem, capable in the end of a scientific solution. Traditional morality represents, then, the "accumulated experience of mankind", which, as the experience of a world of unchanging law, can be objectively stated and therefore taught with authority to the next generation.

Now things that can be definitely stated can indeed be taught. One may be taught the rules and forms of grammar, elementary geometry, the fundamental principles of physics and chemistry, and how to operate a typewriter, a printing-press, or a motor-car. One may even be taught certain broadly recognized rules of literary or musical composition. And if morality could thus be taught, by those who know, we should have no alternative but to recognize their authority. In his "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity", Sir James Fitzjames Stephen (a fine representative of "positive morality") proposes a simple theory of government to the effect that those who know should tell the others what to do and make them do it. Those who know are certainly entitled to do so.

But those who "know" I suspect always of knowing nothing about morality. Upon them the significance of the Socratic "Know thyself" is probably wasted. Morality I have defined as the self-conscious living of life. In this