zation, and possibly of enforcing it upon them. "The white man's burden" is perhaps the most naïve expression of orthodox morality and for that reason the most instructive. What it presupposes is a classification of all races and peoples as morally superior or inferior according to one conception of morality and one scheme of civilization, namely, our own.

Such of course are only the commonplaces of the traditional moralist. It is worth noting, by the way, that "the moralist" of the older tradition, as distinct from the more modern teacher of scientific ethics,/was inclined to be mildly sceptical about the final rightness of any accepted standard. Yet I wonder if we have fully grasped the questions raised by his naturalistic survey. If the Chinese are to advance in civilization does it mean that they are to adopt western ideas? Has the Japanese adoption of western ideas been truly and purely an advance in civilization? It may be that we have much to teach the Chinese but would a Chinaman be better or worse if he became an Englishman or an American? And coming nearer home, if our American negro-labourer, or waiter, became a gentleman, and the cultural equal of the white gentleman whom he serves, would this mean that in becoming a gentleman (assuming that the ideal of the gentleman is a moral ideal) he also became white? If so it seems that we ought to commend him for "aping the whites".

Besides the race-moralities there are class-moralities, and these class-moralities, unobservant of the classelement, will then purport each to stand for morality as such. Our European moral code is supposed to be mainly Christian, but our moral philosophy-the traditional ethics of the schools-is clearly an inheritance from the Greeks, Plato's "Republic" and Aristotle's "Ethics" constituting its most classical documents. Now the Greek ethics, of whatever school, was an aristocratic ethics. The Greek conception of the good man and the good life was derived from the point of view of a leisure class, the point of view of the working population remaining inarticulate. Plato,

the best Greek representative, by the way, of the principle of rightness, treats his artisans as if they were hardly worth consulting. Aristotle tells us unhesitatingly that one cannot realize the moral ideal without an independent income and he also upholds slavery as a natural institution. To modern ideas this limitation of virtue to a favoured class is both repellent and absurd. Yet we are not ready to abandon the Greek conception of the best and most virtuous life. To us as to Aristotle it seems that the life of a gentleman, with its implications of leisure and culture, is the best life; only we should like to interpret it liberally, without the invidious class-distinction, and without reference to a qualification based upon property. It is along this line that T. H. Green conceives the social ideal to be a society in which all men are gentlemen, in which, however, the mark of a gentleman is not a matter of externals. But this is only to raise the question, Can the idea of a gentleman be made independent of external conditions? When we admit that the one-room tenement of the poorest classes makes decency of living almost impossible (including specifically moral decency) it seems that we have admitted Aristotle's view. And if we carry the notion of decency further to the point where it issues in the conception of culture and refinement (and if this be not a moral conception, what is it?), we shall find it difficult to disentangle our idea of the good life from an order of things which involves class-distinctions and servants. For my own part, although I dislike the institution of servants, and find no one more amusing than him who bases his claims to gentility upon knowing"the proper tone" in which to address a servant, yet I find it difficult to see just how that man or woman of spiritual refinement who most appeals to me could be bred without some measure of this background of service and leisure. And leisure not based upon service seems at least remote.

The class-element in this conception of the good life is pointed out by Georges Sorel, the French syndicalist, in his book on "Les Illusions du Progrès". Sorel makes it

indeed a ground for complaint that all ideas of progress, those of social reformers among others, have implied that the proletariat was to take on the culture and the manners of the leisure classes. To the claim that this leisureclass culture stands for superior intelligence he replies by showing that in France, at any rate, philosophy and literature have been designed for the diversion of an idle and restless court society and have therefore carefully avoided coming to terms with existing social conditions.1 Of such intelligence the eighteenth-century abbé, clever, witty, and sceptical, is the representative type. But with this in mind it may then occur to us to ask whether the moral philosophy of the schools is not the product of a leisure-loving class of academicians whose leisure requires the support of wealth and power. This indeed is inevitably true even though we attach the best significance to "leisure"-and to my mind leisure is indispensable to any true life. And then we may go further and point out that not only our moral philosophy but the greater part of our science and scholarship is the work of men whose profession is teaching and whose conception of the intelligible is therefore likely to be influenced by what may be practically taught and in particular by what is available for examination. My belief is that this will prove to be a fruitful consideration for the student of logic. Its bearing upon the logic of orthodox ethics I will point out in the next chapter. Sorel, however, will have none of this leisure class culture. It is the task of his syndicalism to destroy not only the leisure class but the class-ideal; and the proletariat is then to set up its own conception of the good life. What the proletarian good life will be like, we are not told. It seems that, even more resolutely than other class ideals, it is to be enforced upon the unwilling; only it will not pretend to be other than a class-ideal.

1 According to Jodl, Geschichte der Ethik, Vol. I, Chapter XII, it is this motive that marks the difference between Helvetius and Bentham, whose ethical theories are virtually identical. Bentham, however, was a social reformer, Helvetius a social satirist.

Those who believe that virtue is eternally one should reflect further that, quite apart from the social and economic distinctions of class, moral ideals vary with the special conditions of life, and especially with occupation. The qualities of character demanded of a locomotive engineer or of the captain of a ship we hardly expect of the poet and scholar. These qualities are not in the poet's line. The parsimony, or meanness, which Aristotle rightly excludes from his magnanimous man may rank as a virtue in the poor clerk or labourer with a family to support. Yet each is disposed to set up his own standard of virtue as a universal moral ideal. The man in easy circumstances tends to be disgusted by the meticulous economy of his less fortunate neighbour and to call it sordid. On the other hand the man to whom the great problem of life is the problem of economic respectability—the problem of paying his own way and owing no man anything-is disposed to look upon all the more liberal forms of life as somewhat frivolous, incompatible with genuine moral seriousness; just as for the man who works with his hands it requires some imagination to conceive that those whose work is chiefly mental render any real service to society.

Consider, again, the virtue of courage. This we are likely to prescribe as an indispensable virtue at least for the male sex-without reflecting that it is mainly of military origin. Even "moral courage" betrays militant implications when we reflect that its effective exercise calls for a certain aggressiveness, a certain delight in conflict, and a corresponding indifference to giving offence. In the last generation or two this originally chivalrous tradition has been reinforced by the biological view of life, with its doctrine of the struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest, with the result that athleticism has become the dominant type of virtue, and praise is bestowed upon the "red-blooded man"; while a corresponding stigma rests upon the man of gentler tastes, or the "effeminate" man, now demonstrated to be a moral defective. For my own part, I find it somewhat difficult to conceive how a red

blooded man can be capable of appreciating the finer and more humane sides of life; while I find a willing admiration of "moral" courage embarrassed by the fact that moral courage is so much easier for him who can see only one side of the case. And I seem to have known one or two effeminate men who could justly be described as the salt of the earth. But the fact that the courageous virtues are described as "virile" (and we remember that etymologically "virtue" itself signifies "manliness") suggests that virtue may differ according to sex-unless we are to assume, as some sound moralists do, that men stand for a higher moral type than women.

§8

A little reflection upon current morality will show that in morality as elsewhere there are also differences of personal taste. Our own national taste is indicated by the fact that the phrase "an immoral man" means, unless expressly qualified, that the man is sexually immoral-so that it becomes intelligible to say, "This man is a liar and a thief, but he is not immoral". In view of this prevailing taste no political party cares to risk a candidate whose "private life" is open to attack though they will risk one who is known to have made a fortune out of public funds. In a candidate for public office it might seem that purity of motive in public life is more important than sexual purity; and as a matter of fact there are those, including myself, who would emphasize the former. Yet if the candidate for office must first of all be congenial to the public I do not know that either is more "right" than the other.

The older moralists embodied their "systems" of morality in tables of the cardinal, or fundamental virtues. Each of us tends to emphasize some one virtue as the cardinal virtue, which is fundamental to all of the others. One man prefers courage: for him everything is pardonable but cowardice. Another, like myself, prefers honesty -honour, truthfulness, and sincerity. In his view the one