I was before I read the book, not having lived meanwhile? If so it will be well to close our discussion at this point, once for all, with the conclusion that morality is moonshine; for if you must have a "test" for morality, I can think of none so real as this.

I will carry the illustration a step further. The college student of the present generation, full of practical wisdom beyond his years, is disposed to greet each subject of study proposed to him with the question, What's the use of it? What do I get out of it? The question is put more insistently, of course, to the studies of literature and philosophy; and addressed to philosophy (say at the close of a course in philosophy) it is likely to mean, Well, what is the conclusion? What is the right answer? I forgive the question in the student because he is unconsciously reflecting the spirit of the age. But I am tempted to suggest as the "right answer" (recalling a similar inquiry), An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a conclusion, and there shall no conclusion be given it.

Seriously, however, I might ask this: If your motive be practical wisdom, do you think it any part of practical wisdom to study the literature of philosophy? Come, let us reason together. One of the more practical problems of philosophy is the problem of an ideal order of society. This problem has perplexed and absorbed the best minds of every thinking generation since it was proposed by Plato in his "Republic". The literature of the subject is enormous and ever increasing. Assuming the possibility of a "right" answer, how high would you estimate the probability that this or that teacher of philosophy has found it? In the true language of practical wisdom, What could you bet on it? Would it not be wiser to put your money on a sure cure for cancer or tuberculosis? You have doubtless the right to expect from your teacher a frank statement of his attitude towards the problem, of his personal feeling and opinion, but what would be your secret opinion of the teacher who advertises his own as the finally "right" answer?

And meanwhile you ask what you have got out of it, out of the study of the problem. But this question, which is indeed a real question, you can answer for yourself. Has the study of social philosophy been a dull and meaningless affair, or has it given you food for the imagination -has it been a stimulus to reflection? If so, you have surely got something very important, if life be important. You are now, as a person, not just what you were before, and the world before you is not quite the same world. Nor could it again be made the same world by any process of reversal. You have got "progress", if you please-not indeed the progress which you can see in a building rising higher day by day, nor the progress that can be exhibited in a balance-sheet, but progress in experience and thus in life, which is the only moral progress.

I have introduced this question of academic standards because to my mind it suggests very neatly the true logic of standardized morality. It has no less a bearing upon the logic of science. To those who would uncover the scientific motif I will recommend the now popular "intelligence-tests," as representing at once the logical development of the system of academic grades and of the application of science to life. But my present purpose is moral. Those who conceive morality to consist in devotion to a standard are likely to cherish the impression that they have surpassed all others in setting up an ideal spiritually lofty and austere. To them I would point out that, on the contrary, they are importing into morality something closely resembling the pragmatic point of view of the man of business.

For if I apply the moral standard to my friends it is not because I am in any doubt about their worth or about what is due from me in the way of loyalty. I am thinking of how they will be estimated by others and of the attendant advantages or difficulties; of how my other friends will take them, of how far my reputation may suffer, and of the possible effects upon business or profes

sion. If a man loves a woman and wishes to make her his wife he may indeed desire to know whether his love is genuine, whether it rests upon a firm basis of understanding. But no reference to a standard will help him here. And if he comes to the point of asking whether she is the proper person for him to marry, it means in plain words that he is asking whether she is a socially marketable commodity. It is the same kind of question as that which might arise concerning the home that one owns, to which, say, I am much attached and which has therefore for me a moral value. It is worth fifteen thousand on the market, but a persistent bidder, superior to market-valuations, offers me thirty thousand. Am I morally justified in rejecting the offer? This is a real question; but it is answered if after due reflection I am content to let the offer go. To refer the question to a standard is to adopt the business man's point of view; then of course I am bound to accept the offer. The appraisal by standard means that what I have in mind is not so much what is good as what is current and marketable; not not so much what is true as what is statable; and not so much what will yield satisfaction as what can be easily managed.

§ 12

The utilitarian motif implied in the moral standard will again be evident if we view the orthodox morality in the light of the analogy of law. It is no mere epithet to call this point of view "legalistic". The traditional moral philosophy is crammed with legal metaphor, and most of 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 cash-proceeds 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,

The

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. 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