more definite than that of good. Indeed, when we speak of conduct as right we imply a more intellectual attitude towards moral problems; the conduct is or is not in accordance with a principle rationally apprehended. When we speak of conduct as good we imply a more emotional attitude, the feeling of approval is more prominent, the rigid alternative of inclusion within or exclusion from a particular category is no longer before us.

But this very precise usage of right is constantly laid aside. In practice we often assume degrees of right. From the grudging admission that "it is right enough," which indicates that a given act is just in accordance with what society demands, to the assertion that it is perfectly right, there is a long step. The word right implies a standard, but not always the same standard.

Another distinction may be drawn between right and good conduct. The former is always within our power, the latter is not. This distinction, however, depends on confusion between the formal and material aspects of rightness. Materially right conduct, conduct which is right without reference to us, is often no more in our power than good conduct. We may have to choose between two evils, for instance, between doing something unkind or unworthy on the one hand, and breaking a promise on the other hand. One of the two may be right for us, but neither course is right in the widest sense.

§ 2. The Standard of Right.

By right, as an adjective, we mean what is in accordance with the standard of conduct which for the time we accept. This may be legal, or social, or that which we regard as the ideal moral standard. Conduct may comply with the demands of law, or of social custom, without being, as we say, morally right.

The ideally correct conduct is assumed to have some sort of objective reality. It is independent of the wishes of the individual. It is valid for anyone else in exactly the same circumstances as myself. It is in accordance with the standard of excellence recognized by the ideally just and wise man, i.e., by a judgment determined in its conclusion by no merely egoistic or other partial considerations, but by full and complete knowledge of and complete regard for all interests involved.

Right conduct, then, is in the highest sense of the term reasonable conduct. But it is difficult to define reasonable satisfactorily without reference to some objective standard. Reasonable conduct is conduct which is not only dictated by reason, but by reason acting validly, i.e. rightly. The only way of escape

from this circle seems to be in the reference to the ppóvuos of Aristotle, which, however, moves the difficulty only a little further back.

Some moralists, for instance Kant, have asserted that there is no criterion of material rightness-that no act is morally right except such as is done for the

formal principle of rightness, viz., a desire to do right because it is right. This view pushed to its logical conclusion makes the positive content of morality unimportant. I may commit murder or suicide from a desire to do right as such; and my act will be not only praiseworthy but right. On the other hand I may relieve the miserable and comfort the afflicted, and my act be of no higher moral worth than the act of the burglar and the hired assassin. But these conclusions are revolting to common sense as well as moral feeling. We cannot help assuming a certain objectivity in our moral ideas, as well as in our æsthetic ideas. The music of the savages who beat tom-toms gives them as much pleasure as a symphony of Beethoven gives us, and much more than such a symphony would give them; but we do not allow that the two performances are equally beautiful, or even equally pleasurable. We are obliged to allow that pleasure is the main determining factor in our judgment of æsthetic effects. But we refuse to allow that the pleasure of the savage is of equal æsthetic validity with our own. In the same way, we allow that moral effort is of primary importance in the production of a really moral act; but we do not allow that every act which is done from a pure sense of duty is equally good and right. We cannot help assuming that there is some objective standard. A king of Dahomey, who, actuated by a conscious desire to act justly and properly, tortures to death the requisite number of victims on the grave of his predecessor, is no doubt, from the subjective

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and formal point of view, superior to a king who from mere laziness fails to do so. But we cannot bring ourselves to leave out of account the " content of the act; and to put this case on the same level as if the matter in which he excelled had been the erection of a hospital to assist the injured and suffering.

§ 3. Rights.

The word right is used substantively as well as adjectivally. A right is a legal, or quasi-legal, term, correlative to an obligation. A right to do this vested in me, is simply an obligation on the part of others not to interfere with me while I do it. This right, and the correlative obligation, are the creation of law, and imply the existence of law. If we extend the idea of law into the realm of ethics, and look at moral truths under the aspect of laws, we may metaphorically speak of a moral right and a moral obligation.1

The legal and the ethical sense have not been kept apart, and have reacted on each other. Writers have not sufficiently realized that such terms as "natural rights" have a purely metaphorical meaning. A right is a creation of law, and has no meaning apart from law. But by a natural extension of meaning it connotes a liberty which is the correlative of some obligation not actually imposed by law, but supposed to be imposed by God's law, i.e., the metaphysical God of ideal morality.

1

See Austin," Lect. on Jurisprudence," vol. i., p. 354; also p. 293, note. See Raleigh's See Raleigh's "Elementary Politics," pp. 68, seq.

The natural rights are those supposed to be conferred apart from and prior to any actual human law, i.e., those belonging to man as man. This of course carries us back to the theories of the Greek philosophers and Roman lawyers which still maintain a halfvitalized sort of existence in the minds of plain men.1

Such rights and obligations are said to be imperfect, because they cannot be enforced judicially. Strictly speaking they are not rights at all, in the sense in which legal rights are such. They are not "conferred by commands issuing from the sovereign." But the metaphorical use, understood as such, is a very convenient one, and may very properly be retained.

Yet we must be careful to remember that a natural right is something very different from a legal right. What the ideal law of nature orders cannot be determined precisely, because there is no such thing as a law of nature in this sense of the term. It means such a law as would exist in an ideal society, where everybody did his duty, and where actual law was not obliged to limp a long way after morality. A natural right to property or to freedom is an ethical or political 'fiction.

§ 4. Jus Naturale.

By Natural Law or Law of Nature in the ethical or quasi-legal sense we mean something quite different from a scientific law. A law of nature in the scientific