intuition. Were it abiding, we should be as God.' In order to find in which part of man this highest excellence is to be found, Aristotle has recourse to a psychological division, not of his own making, but apparently well known at the time. He divides the internal principle (vxn) into the physical or vegetative part, the semi-rational or appetitive, and the purely rational. The first has no share in human excellence, in the second lies moral excellence or virtue, in the third lies intellectual excellence. Aristotle here founds the distinction between moral and intellectual, beyond which we have not yet got. Practical moral excellence has its seat in the second division of our nature, in the passions, which, though not purely rational, have communion with reason. And though Aristotle, in the end, gives to the purely intellectual excellence, which consists in philosophical contemplation, a higher place than he assigns to the exercise of the moral virtues, yet it is of these he chiefly treats, and with these we have now to do. Moral virtue, then, he

defines as consisting in a developed state of the moral pur-iturry pose, in a balance relative to ourselves, which is determined. by reason. This is Aristotle's famous doctrine, that virtue is avatar mean, an even balance, a harmony of man's powers. It is a mean as exhibited in particular actions, and also a mean or balance struck between opposite excesses of feeling. Feelings, passions, actions, are the raw materials out of which character is to be wrought by aiming at a balance. Right reason is the power which determines what the mean or balance is. It reviews the whole circumstances of the case, strikes the balance, apprehends the rule by which the irregular feelings may be reduced to that regularity in which virtue consists, virtue as well in particular acts, as in habits, and in the whole character. The mean is not a 'hard and fast line,' but a balance struck anew in each particular case, from a consideration of all the circumstances. The virtuous character is slowly elaborated by a repetition of virtuous acts; acts, that is, midway between extremes. And then as to knowing what the real mean is, man must begin and act from his own perceptions, such as they are. His own individual reason must be the guide he starts with, but he is not therefore shut up in subjectivity. He has a surer standard than individual judgment to appeal to, even the universal moral sentiment of men. Or rather in the wise man, the ideally perfect man, he has a kind of objective conscience, an embodiment of moral law; and he judges according as he knows that this ideally wise man would judge. Here then we have a theory of virtue and the virtuous character, but no answer to the question, What is the motive power which shall propel men towards this ideal? Indeed, full though his

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treatise is of wise and penetrating practical remarks on character, this subject is nowhere discussed by Aristotle; but if we may gather an answer for ourselves, it might have been something like this:

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Reason of itself cannot reach the will and mould the choice. Yet reason and those emotions which are most obedient to it, act and react on each other. In time, by the law of habit, they blend together and make up a moral habit of soul, which restrains and directs all the lower impulses. When intellect and the more generous emotions combine in seeking one end, and by repeated acts form a habit, the result is the perfected moral judgment or practical wisdom, which itself is both a guide and a sufficient motive power to impel the soul steadily to good. Þpóvnois is -with Aristotle the perfection of the moral intellect. He does not say that it is an interpenetration of the moral with the intellectual side of human nature, but that there is an inseparable Coconnexion between this practical wisdom (ppóvnois) and moral virtue. In his view, these two sides, if not blended in one habit, are brought much closer together than in Plato, and that, both in the discerning and in the ruling moral faculty.

The elaboration of the virtuous character by the formation of good habits is a long and slow process. Does Aristotle point to any spring of inspiration which may carry a man through it? Plato after his own fashion does. Far off and inaccessible as his idea of the good may be, there is something in it, and in his enthusiasm for it, which must kindle, as by contagion, all but the dullest. But in Aristotle, though at every turn you meet insights into human nature which you feel to be penetratingly true, yet, after all, you are left to evolve the virtuous habit out of your own inward resources. There is in him no pointing to anything which may come home to a man inwardly, and supplement his mortal weakness by a strength beyond his own. All that he suggests is of a merely external kind. Besides moral teaching, such as himself and other moralists give, he bids men look for help to such institutions, either domestic or political, as may assist them in the cultivation of virtue.

Amongst moderns, it is well known, Bishop Butler has been the chief expounder of the idea which originated with Plato, that the virtuous character consists in a harmony of the different powers of man. This, the leading idea of his sermons, has so worked itself through his teaching into modern thought, that it need not now be dwelt on. A system, a constitution, an economy, in which the various parts-appetites, passions, particular affections are all ranged in due gradation under the supreme conscience; this is his doctrine of man. In working out this idea, while the great Bishop has contributed

much of his own, especially the masterly analysis by which he proves the existence in man of originally unselfish, as well as of self-regarding affections, he recalls here the teaching of Plato, there that of Aristotle. Though he deals entirely with individual man, he illustrates his idea of gradation and moral harmony by Plato's image of a civil constitution, with its various ranks subordinated under one supreme authority. On the other hand, his idea of conscience comes much nearer to that of Aristotle's opóvnous than that of Plato's reason. But in Butler's conscience,' there is a much more distinct presence of the emotional or moral element, while the notion of an obligatory power or right to command, so characteristic of modern as distinguished from ancient thought, comes strongly out. But paramount as is this idea with Butler, it is strange that whenever we go beyond it, and ask for a reason why conscience should be supreme, he fails us. Entrenched within his psychological facts, he refuses to go beyond them. Ask what is the rule of right, the canon by which conscience decides, he replies, Man is a law to himself; every plain honest man who wishes it, will find the rule of right within himself, and will decide agreeably to truth and virtue. This is like saying that conscience decides by the rule of conscience. If asked, Why should I obey conscience? Butler can but assume that conscience 'carries its own authority with it, that it is our natural guide' that it belongs to our condition of being, and therefore it is our duty to obey it. If a further sanction is sought, he seems to find it in the fact of experience, that the path of duty and that of interest coincide, 'meaning by interest happiness and satisfaction.' If there be exceptions, these will be set right in the final distribution of things. 'Duty and interest are perfectly coincident; for the most part here, entirely hereafter; this being implied in the very notion of a good and perfect ad ministration of things.' In this coincidence of duty and interest, so far fulfilled in our present experience, and ultimately made N., sure by the existence of a Moral Governor of the world, seems to lie a great part of the dynamic power in Butler's system. To this may be added his remark, in the spirit of Aristotle, that obedience to conscience, when it has grown into a habitual temper, becomes a choice and a delight.

But in the sermons on the Love of God he strikes a higher strain. He there demonstrates to an unbelieving age that this affection he speaks of is no dream, but the most sober certainty. For as we have certain lower affections which find sufficing objects in the world around us, so we have higher faculties and moral emotions, which find but inadequate objects in the scattered rays of created wisdom, power, and

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goodness which this world shows. To these faculties and affections God himself is the only adequate supply. They can find their full satisfaction only in the contemplation of that righteousness which is an everlasting righteousness, of that goodness in the sovereign mind which gave birth to the universe. This is Butler's highest doctrine, which he sets forth with a calm suppressed enthusiasm almost too deep for words. This contemplation would give rise to the highest form of happiness, but it is not for this that it is sought. It would cease to be the ultimate end that it is, if sought for the sake of happiness, or for any end but itself. There can be no doubt that if once realized, it would be, as we shall see, in the highest measure, the dynamic of the soul.

Butler's search for virtue is wholly through psychology. Plato and Aristotle, though they do not begin with it, very soon have recourse to it. Kant, on the other hand, when seeking for principles of morality, disdains to fumble after them among the débris of observation and experience, but searches for them wholly a priori among the pure ideas of the reason. We find nothing in him about the virtuous character consisting in a harmony of the mental elements, although it might be said that his idea of virtue is a will in harmony with the moral universe. Laying his hand at once on the individual will, and intensifying to its highest power the idea of responsibility, he starts with the assertion that the only real and absolute good in the whole world is a good will. And a good will is one purely and entirely determined by the moral law. This law is not a law generalized out of human experience, binding therefore only within the range of that experience, but a law which transcends it; is wide as the universe, and extends in its essential principle to all beings who can think it. Man, according to Kant, shut up on every other side of his being to a merely relative knowledge, in the moral law for the first time comes into contact with absolute truth, truth valid not only for all men, but for all intelligents. Human conscience is nothing but the entering into the individual of this objective law-the witness, as it has been called, that the will or self has come into subjection to, and harmony with, the universal reason, which is the will of God.

From the reality of this law Kant deduces three great moral ideas. First, since it commands imperatively, unconditionally, we must be able to obey it. Freedom, therefore, as a necessary consequence, follows from the consciousness of an imperative law of duty. Again, in this phenomenal life, we see the will that would obey duty hindered by many obstacles, crushed by many miseries, unrewarded with that happiness which rightfully belongs to well-doing. There must, therefore, be a life beyond

this phenomenal one, where the hindrances will be removed, where duty and the will to obey it will have full play, where virtue and happiness, here often sundered, shall at last meet. That is, there must be an immortality. Lastly, reason represents to us the moral will as worthy of happiness. But we see that here they do coincide, nature does not effect such a meeting. Man cannot constrain it. There must be somewhere a Power above nature, stronger than man, who will uphold the moral order, will bring about the union between virtue and happiness, between guilt and misery. And this being is God. Such is Kant's practical proof of the great triad of moral truths in which the morally-minded man believes, Freedom, Immortality, and God. The necessity for the belief in these arises}] out of the reality of the moral law.

To Kant's ideal of duty it matters nothing, though it is contradicted by experience, though not one instance could be shown of a character which acted on, or even of a single action which emanated from, the pure unmingled moral law. The question is not what experience shows, but what reason ordains. And though this ideal of moral excellence may never yet have been actualized, yet none the less it remains a true ideal the one standard which the moral heart of man approves, however in practice he may fall beneath it. On this pure idea of the moral law Kant would build a science of ethics, valid not for man only, but for all intelligent beings. Applied to man, it would need to be supplemented by an anthropology, and would then stand to pure ethics, as mixed stand to pure mathematics.

As to the relation in which, according to Kant, the objective moral law stands to the human conscience, there is a very ingenious speculation of the late Professor Ferrier, which will illustrate it. He asks the question whether it is the existence of our minds which generates knowledge, or the entering of knowledge into us which constitutes our minds? Is the radical and stable element mind, and is intelligence the secondary and derivative one? Professor Ferrier's reply is, that it is not man's mind which puts him in possession of ideas, but it is ideas, that is knowledge, which first puts him in possession of a mind.' The mind does not make ideas, but ideas make mind. In like manner, applying the same principle to poetic inspiration, he shows that it is not the poetic mind which creates the ideas of beauty and sublimity which it utters, but those ideas which, entering into a man, create the poetic mind. And so in moral truth, it is not our moral nature which makes the distinction between right and wrong, but the existence of right and wrong, and the apprehension of them by us, which create our moral nature. 'I have no moral nature,' he says, 'before the distinction between right and wrong is revealed to me. My moral nature