something of broad and full and free life apart from all this superstitious medieval business which now-a-days they call religion. Science has advanced-for my friend Brown knows all the stars by name; my friend Smith is a hero in bacteriology; and Robinson can put social evolution into a formula. Surely the science of conduct has advanced also; surely I shall be able to get a formula of life? I will try.

Accordingly, our friend, the man-in-the-street, begins to read the Science of Ethics. He examines Plato and Aristotle, notwithstanding his scorn of medievalism. Here he comes across formulæ, clear and definite enough, no doubt, but of what value? Plato tells him that virtue is the imitation of God; the effort of man to resemble the original; that it is comprised of four elements-wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice. Then he comes to Aristotle. Here he finds the great, good, and final end; the perfect life; the highest happiness of which we are capable. No, the man-in-the-street is but little wiser. He can see the theoretical force of such formula; he can appreciate their beauty, but where, he asks, does the applicability come in? He must toil for his daily bread; he must fight to keep the gnawing wolf from the door. To what extent, therefore, does a perfect life lure him, or to what extent is a summum bonum a fascination? There is no room in his narrow sphere for Epicureanism, since days follow days with monotonous sameness; there is no room for Stoicism, since worries and cares fret him and give him but little rest.

Accordingly, the man-in-the-street banishes the ancients to the neglected realm where he has already put religions. He appeals to the moderns therefore. He tries Kant. The great German philosopher bids him perform his duty merely for duty's sake, but that does not help,

since our friend wants to know what his duty really is. Nor is he aided when he meets the great categorical imperative, and finds that he should universalize his action" Act in such a way as you would wish all men to be acting." It is grand, admits the man-in-the-street; it comes by far the nearest to a possible philosophy, but there are many circumstances in which he is placed which must be different at the moment from those surrounding other men. For example, he takes a homely instance. He needs a winter overcoat. If he denies himself of a winter coat he will catch cold, fall ill, perhaps lose his situation. Now he can obtain an overcoat on credit, and he has a fair prospect of being able to meet the account in due time. But if all men bought everything on credit it would be immeasurably bad for the world. Hence, in the simple instance of a winter's overcoat, he finds that Kant's great doctrine presents an insurmountable difficulty, and a dilemma. Probably he is measured for his coat the same day, and the imperative falls to the ground.

But Kant is not the only philosopher. There is Hegel. The man-in-the-street may at length suceeed in unravelling the secret, and in understanding Hegel. But the result is that he is faced by paradoxes which appal him. He is, for example, to lay down his life that he may find it again. That is curiously akin to something he has read somewhere else, and he is prejudiced against it at the outset. What can he lay down? There are the wife and the bairns, the little home, the daily toil to keep that home together. Did Georg Frederic Hegel ever face that simple problem, he wonders. His employer bids him make a certain representation about an article of sale. Without knowing what his conscience is he feels uncomfortable about it. Ah, he must follow Hegel. He must lay down: what? His wife's happiness, the home, the comfort of an

assured if lowly income? No, the man-in-the-street is driven by forces which he cannot restrain, and so he does not follow Hegel.

Even more modern philosophers are equally unavailing. Of what value is Mill's Utilitarianism to him? How can he act for the happiness of the greatest possible number, when wife and bairns represent everybody of value to him? In Herbert Spencer he finds a lot of words, "definite coherent heterogeneity," and the like, which puzzle him and do not assist him to a conclusion. Sidgwick tells him that the one clear deliverance of conscience is that utilitarianism is the true sanction of human conduct. But he is not much nearer to a course of action in a life which is burdened of detail. Nor does he comprehend, in his own heart, that capacity for a sublimated life of which Green speaks so beautifully. He would be glad if he could assure himself that this higher self-satisfaction, this attainment of a higher personal ideal were his. Alas, he recognizes, honest man as he is, that one of the main and incontrovertible features of his character is that he is wofully imperfect, that wrong-doing is ever with him, that he tends to selfishness and ease, the while he would fain strive for a far different aim.

Out of all his study of ethical methods he is not much farther. Martineau bids him choose the higher of competing springs of action. This, at least, has the advantage that it fits in with the plain man's knowledge of his own heart. There are competing springs; the competing springs are higher and lower, but this he knows: that some differ not merely in degree, but in kind. In a word, there is right and there is wrong. What constitutes the difference? It is not merely that there is a more right and a less wrong; it is that good and bad, well-doing and illdoing are divided by a great gulf. The plain man has not

arrived at this conclusion by logic, nor by study of ethics. He knows it somehow. An instinct has conveyed it to his mind, and more, to his soul.

We come here to the crux of the whole question. A rapid survey of methods of ethics shews us that, philosophically, right and wrong lose something, in their several treatments, of their differentiating characteristics. It is not merely that some action will bring a greater happiness to self or to others, and other action will bring a less; it it not that some action is motived by loftier, and other by less lofty purpose; it is not that common sense or intuition delivers the preferential nature of this or that course of life. It is that there is a clear and unmistakable line of demarcation between right and wrong; the man-in-thestreet knows this, even when he acts immorally. He does not try to justify his wrong-doing by logical methods; his normal attitude is that there is some ground to justify a departure from the ordinary standards of action, and that he will remain an exception, a special case, which tests the rule, but by which the rule does not fall.

In the examination of these notions, difficulties, of course, arise. There is the difficulty mentioned by Mr. Lecky. A Mahommedan has a clear and definite notion of right and wrong as regards the use of intoxicating liquor." He considers the use of alcohol to be a most heinous sin. In respect to purity he is less rigid, whereas the position is exactly reversed as regards Western civilization, where the moral sentiment in respect to purity is rigid, and in respect to the use of alcohol is vague and indeterminate. It is right therefore to ask, if the doctrine of moral sentiment is universally applicable, why so great a difference should be manifested. The explanation is not difficult to adduce. Evidently the true moral sentiment on the subject is that strict moderation is the deliverance of

conscience or intuition, but the circumstances of Eastern civilization throw emphasis upon the abuse of alcohol, whereas the circumstances of Western civilization throw emphasis upon purity. Climatic reasons act in the same direction, so that the Eastern conscience, to use the readiest word, is deadened in respect to purity, and the Western conscience is deadened in respect to the use of alcohol. The growth of the sentiment of temperance in regard to alcoholic liquors in Western civilization is a curious proof of the position I have taken up, in that it shows that intrinsically there is no real difference in the moral sentiment of the two civilizations; it is only in the application of the moral sentiment to the circumstances of the time that the difference arises. A learned English philosopher has shewn that even in the most barbarous times, and amongst the most barbarous nations, there are moral sentiments of right and wrong which coincide in their main essentials with the conceptions hitherto considered as peculiar to Christian civilization.

However it may have arisen, therefore, it seems to be indisputable that there is a keen moral sense in all men. Moreover, this moral sense, though it may evince slight aberrations in respect to its application at various times, yet evinces still more striking agreements and similarities. To say this is not to undermine a rational egoism, whether the egoist seeks his own happiness or his own self-development, nor does it undermine a legitimate utilitarianism for the good of the species, whether that good be for the perfection or for the mere happiness of the race. Intuitionism, therefore, in this sense, is not incompatible with the great ethical systems at which we arrive by rational processes.

For it is no part of my task to undervalue the utility of speculative morals. At least speculative morals have