of Beauty, Freedom of action," are in themselves desirable apart from the pleasure accompanying them. He adds that it still seems to him that " we can only justify to ourselves the importance that we attach to any of these objects by considering its conduciveness, in one way or another, to the happiness of sentient beings." My own reflection does not seem sufficiently consistent to rely much on its deliverances, but on the whole it seems to be adverse to Dr. Sidgwick. Many plain men as well as philosophers would hold with Kant that the good will is a good apart from the pleasure it brings to us or to others.

But the plausibility of Mill's and of Dr. Sidgwick's view really comes from their definition of pleasure as preferable feeling. It is clear that the one really desirable consciousness is pleasure, if we have defined pleasure as that consciousness which is desirable. Pleasure, according to Dr. Sidgwick, means desirable consciousness, that is, the consciousness which it is reasonable to desire and seek. To say, then, that it is reasonable to seek pleasure, is to say that it is reasonable to desire the consciousness which it is reasonable to desire (Green, "Prolegomena to Ethics," p. 410). To sum up, Professor Sidgwick reduces good to goodness of consciousness; he gets rid of the element of objective relation in consciousness (cognition and will), and identifies goodness of consciousness with goodness of feeling; he interprets good feeling as preferable feeling, and says that by pleasure he means preferable feeling.

And remember that "pleasure" is ambiguous. When we call any of our sensations pleasurable, we imply a certain definite quality of feeling, which is something more than mere preferableness. But in speaking of the higher feelings, pleasurable means merely preferable, that is, what will be preferred by all really good and wise men.

§ 5. Excellence or Perfection.

If excellence is desirable then perfection, as the highest conceivable excellence, must be still more desirable. At least this is true when we look at the sum of faculties; though in the case of any one faculty, or group of faculties, it may be often the case that we should regard excellence beyond a certain point as undesirable, simply because a higher degree of excellence would involve the neglect or stunting of other faculties of equal or greater importance. This exception being noted, we shall assume that excellence as an aim practically involves perfection.

Physical, intellectual, and moral excellence are all, prima facie, desirable. Is desirability the only common link, or can we resolve one into the other? It has often been assumed that the corpus sanum is only good in so far as it is a necessary condition of the mens sana, and this latter again only in so far as it is a condition of the completest moral goodness. But modern writers do not always admit this, and there is perhaps a tendency to regard all three as absolutely

D

choiceworthy. The evolutionists, for instance, do not seem to have seriously considered the possibility of their being permanently and ultimately in rivalry. But most philosophers assume that "Virtues are the chief of human perfections," and other perfections are strictly subordinate to these.

Dr. Sidgwick argues from this that perfection cannot be the summum bonum. For it will imply the determination of what is virtuous by some standard outside perfection itself. Perfection means moral perfection, and moral perfection means action in accordance with a standard of good conduct, which must be something else than perfection itself, or we shall have a circulus in definiendo. To this some moralists, e.g., Green, would reply that such a circulus is inevitable, whatever standard we adopt.1 Others would say that moral perfection consists, not in doing good acts, but in the will to do them. It is the good-will itself which constitutes the moral excellence, and therefore there is no real need to assume an extrinsic standard of goodness at all. As long as we want to do what we believe to be right, believe to be right.

it does not matter what we do But this is too much at variance with common sense, which refuses to recognize moral perfection in Torquemadas and Robespierres, however single in aim and consistent in life.

Others, again, would say that as good is the objective fact answering to want, so the summum bonum

1" Prolegomena," pp. 204 seq.

will be what satisfies the highest want. But this

difficulty of determining We may say that those belong to us quâ man,

answer leaves us with the what is our highest want. wants are the highest which those which belong to our intellectual, artistic, and moral nature. But we do not seem to have any clear criterion to settle the relative claims between these three classes of wants. It does not appear that a moral need, e.g., desire for peace and for reconciliation with others, is always and necessarily higher than an intellectual or æsthetic one. Again, the evolutionary theory does not supply us with a means of defining "highest want" without in any way implying the idea of good which we are seeking to define by means of "highest want."

Another and more successful attempt to define perfection without assuming the idea of moral excellence is found in the theory which substitutes social welfare for excellence or happiness.

This, like Aristotle's evdaμovía, really embraces both ideas. The substitution of it for the somewhat more definite terms is due chiefly to biological analogies. With Mr. Leslie Stephen social welfare practically means social health. "The existence of the social tissue at any stage of development, and its power of maintaining itself, either as a part of the special order or as against other societies, depends essentially upon the fulfilment of certain conditions. Since the qualities by which societies differ do not depend upon the innate qualities of its constituent members, which re

main constant (or approximately constant) through long periods of social development, but upon these qualities as modified and developed by means of the social factors, it follows again that the society grows on condition of impressing a certain character upon its members. This takes place in the earlier stages. by the development of a social sentiment unfavourable to certain specific modes of conduct. As the society becomes more reasonable, more capable of understanding and applying general principles, the sentiment develops into an approval of a certain type of character, the existence of which fits the individual for membership of a thoroughly efficient and healthy social tissue. Briefly, then, we may say that morality is a statement of the conditions of social welfare; and morality, as distinguished from prudence, refers to those conditions which imply a direct action upon the social union. In other words, morality is the sum of the preservative instincts of a society, and presumably of those which imply a desire for the good of the society itself." 1

This really leaves the denotation of welfare unsettled. "Efficient tissue" is tissue efficient for some end. The instincts which make for the preservation of a society must make for the existence in the society of some special conditions or qualities, unless the mere existence of the society is conceived as sufficient. Otherwise the εu nv is resolved into the v;

1 Leslie Stephen, "Science of Ethics," pp. 215 seq.