business: some purblind philosophers have mistaken the false feeling of obligation - begotten we have since seen how for a valid sense of duty

with what foolish consequences we have also seen; they are long since undeceived, and the sooner we are the better. For if mankind are ever to look upon Duty with pleasure instead of resignation or disgust, if they are ever really and truly to be captivated by it — please don't laugh, good reader, then something in their make-up or in the doctrine's, I surmise, must eventually suffer change. But our philosophers have so far failed to find the needful dose of denaturalization for converting our warm human feelings into cold fish-like gaze at Principle-for-its-own-sake, and meanwhile we are going on the same as usual and daily getting farther in the other way. Whence it may seem well, since human nature will not modify its throbbing breast to gills, its devising hands to fins, and thus sea-changed, swim off to meet the school of principles in their own element, that the principles should somehow get themselves equipped with suitable land-organs and appendages in order to associate with humankind.

Of course, it does not follow that we are at present villains or unprincipled, but that our principles are otherwise pushed into action: by sympathy or piety or, chiefly, by regard for public opinion,— in most cases by some symptom of that same old deep-indwelling fear. But of all

this by and by; for this chapter is consercated to principles in themselves and for their own precious sake.

What is left to say of them? No word of parting lamentation for their past and present neglect; of parting hope for their final recognition? Not by me, good friends: I find that there are things both worse to neglect and better to recognize. By me, then, only a word of wonder at the splendid reputation that principles, despite their generally joyless inutility, have so long enjoyed,

at the way in which our wise men have been so long and perfectly imposed on by them.

And now a chapter in simple explanation of the imposition and in compound condemnation. It will prove, I fear, stale stuff to some, but it is a necessary course in our present fare, and those who have already had their fill of it need only nibble briefly.

6. PUBLIC OPINION

It used not long ago to be a matter of much debate among the philosophically bent whence came this appeal of principle, voice of conscience, or moral sentiment, which was regarded as the chief conservator of human society. Now, thanks to Evolutionary lore, there is no longer any smell of mystery about the matter, and one may read in any of the fascinating sociologies aforesaid just whence and why and how the moral sentiment came to be whatever it now is. Or one

may take my word on their authority that it has grown naturally in the course of centuries from a public to a private sentiment. The feeling of the tribe on all acts making for its welfare or its illfare was the earliest kind of conscience, and for long the only kind. Another kind came out of this much later, when finally the tribal feeling, by dint of bribes to due observance and blows for disobedience, got fixed in most individuals as a feeling of their own. Wherein as private conscience it has persisted even to this day.

Meanwhile the moralists have not been mute, but copiously proclamatory of their various opinions on this presence of a conscience in mankind, which have pleasantly complicated matters for some length of time. They in fact first called the feeling" conscience," and not knowing how else to account for it, gave God full credit for its being in us, and seeking to encase the feeling in a formula, began defining it in various high astounding terms. Of these Chief Formulator Kant's are most remarkable: he, having pieced together the separate precepts into which the voice of conscience was popularly supposed to split itself for each particular occasion, found them to make up one voice, his famous Categorical Imperative or unconditional command of Duty: "Act always in such a way as you might will to be a universal law." Such was his collective version, which proved very popular with the philosophic and other thoughtful folk.

So much, then, for whence and why and how the voice got heard, and what it finally got understood to say. Nowadays its supernatural reputation has suffered with the thoughtful, but its natural power is probably not much impaired: we all hear it more or less and are more or less moved to obey. Something, then, seems now in need of mention as to how this voice of Duty has ever got its dictates done: to what in us has it triumphantly appealed for their performance? Let us look a moment at the real workings of morality.

Now the analyzing that we have already done in the case of principles has shown us one strange thing, that morality as matter of customariness or social conduct has not enough force in itself of either love or fear to accomplish what has been accomplished in its name. Its chief force has been. the vis inertia of habit (after that has developed out of custom), and whenever there has been need of breaking that bondage in favor of a better, or of checking outbreaks toward a worse, morality itself has usually needed outside strengthening. That strengthening also we have already hinted at: it has usually, as in the beginning, been the power of Public Opinion, backed with all its available clubs and bribes, or, more rarely, that of Heavenly Opinion, supported likewise by all its spiritual weapons and prizes.

This, then, is what morality in most cases really amounts to: not following an inner light, but following any sufficiently compulsive outer opinion

wherever it may point. It happens now to point such or such a way: had it always pointed opposite, how many of us would not now be following thither? And now we know well from our aforesaid Evolutionary lore that the opinion has been subject to historical variations and is still to geographical vagaries, and is after all its fuss far from an everlasting and exalted affair. One development we must give it fullest credit for: it has set its face against active cruelty of any sort, and turned it slightly toward active kindliness; but for the rest it is only a continuation of the racial and social instinct of self-preservation, and spends its greatest strength for purely selfish purposes.

Yet I have nothing to say against Public Opinion on the score of its selfishness. Even if the selfishness were ten times greater, it would still be natural enough and far more reasonable than the righteousness of principle-for-its-own-sake. I cannot therefore follow my fiercely individualistic friends in reviling it altogether. On the contrary, I can find it, despite its steady stupidities and occasional idiocies, generally salutary. For generally it speaks no theoretic rightness, but the experience of centuries, gathered at length into good gray wisdom. Its stupidities and idiocies. are largely the result of its modern attempt, urged by Hebraic theology and Germanic categorical morality, to speak from a standpoint of pure righteousness instead of from one of general pro