every conscious volition-every act that is so characterised— the larger part of it is quite unconscious. It is equally certain that in every perception there are unconscious processes of reproduction and inference-there is much that is implicit, some of which cannot be made explicit a "middle distance' of sub-consciousness, and a "background" of unconsciousness. But, throughout, the processes are those of Sentience.

Unconsciousness is by some writers called latent Consciousness. Experiences which are no longer manifested are said to be stored up in Memory, remaining in the Soul's picture-gallery, visible directly the shutters are opened. We are not conscious of these feelings, yet they exist as latent feelings, and become salient through association. As a metaphorical expression of the familiar facts of Memory this may pass, but it has been converted from a metaphor into an hypothesis, and we are supposed to have feelings and ideas, when in fact we have nothing more than a modified disposition of the organismtemporary or permanent-which when stimulated will respond in this modified manner. The modification of the organism when permanent becomes hereditary; and its response is then called an instinctive or automatic action. And as actions pass by degrees from conscious and voluntary into sub-conscious and sub-voluntary, and finally into unconscious and involuntary, we call them volitional, secondarily automatic, and automatic. If any one likes to say the last are due to latent consciousness, I shall not object. I only point to the fact that the differences here specified are simply differences of degree-all the actions are those of the sentient organism.

Picture to yourself this sentient organism incessantly stimulated from without and from within, and adjusting itself in response to such stimulations. In the blending of stimulations, modifying and arresting each other, there is a fluctuating composition of forces," with ever-varying resultants. Besides the stream of direct stimulations, there is a wider stream of indirect or reproduced stimulations. Together with the present sensation there is always a more or less complex group of revived sensations, the one group of neural tremors being organically stimulated by the other. An isolated excitation is impossible in a continuous nervous tissue; an isolated feeling is impossible in the consensus or unity of the sentient organism. The term Soul is the personification of this complex of present and revived feelings, and is the substratum of Consciousness (in its general sense), all the particular feelings being its states. To repeat an illustration used in my first volume, we may compare Consciousness to a mass of stationary waves. If the surface of a lake be set in motion each wave diffuses itself over

the whole surface, and finally reaches the shores, whence it is reflected back towards the centre of the lake. This reflected wave is met by the fresh incoming waves, there is a blending of the waves, and their product is a pattern on the surface. This pattern of stationary waves is a fluctuating pattern, because of the incessant arrival of fresh waves, incoming and reflected. Whenever a fresh stream enters the lake (i.e., a new sensation is excited from without), its waves will at first pass over the pattern, neither disturbing it nor being disturbed by it; but after reaching the shore the waves will be reflected back towards the centre, and there will more or less modify the pattern.

GEORGE HENRY LEWES.

III. THE SUPPRESSION' OF EGOISM.*

As Mr. Sidgwick's book on The Methods of Ethics seems thought to have cast some discredit on the system which he calls 'Egoistic Hedonism,' and which indeed he himself distinctly claims to have suppressed,' I propose in this paper to consider his treatment and non-treatment of that system.

Of the principle that the Ethical end of Action is Pleasure of the Actor, there are three distinct and independent proofs, which I may call respectively the Physical, the Introspective, and the Intuitional. My aim will be to show that of these Mr. Sidgwick has omitted the first, has not disproved the second, and has established the third. If any one of these propositions be accurate, then, since one proof is sufficient to prove, and truth is not made doubtful by the possibility of reaching it falsely, Egoism will be untouched by Mr. Sidgwick's attack. stead of the suppressor' of Egoism, I hope to show him its unwilling prophet. Let me remark at the outset that it is the Science, not the Art, of Morality that I am concerned with; the truth of principles, not the method of using them. If a man can establish a thing to be true, he need not care for its practical application: that will take care of itself.

In

* Notwithstanding that so much space has already been given in MIND to the criticism of Mr. Sidgwick's work, I do not hesitate to print the following article, written as it is from a fresh point of view. The interest that continues to be excited by The Methods of Ethics, shown also in the recent appearance of Mr. F. H. Bradley's pamphlet (Mr. Sidgwick's Hedonism, King & Co.), is a notable fact in English philosophy at the present day, and there should remain due record of it in the pages of this Journal. EDITOR.

I. The title of Mr. Sidgwick's book should have been The Introspective Method of Ethics. For starting with the assumption of a Moral Faculty, into the origin of which it refuses to enquire, the whole book is an elaborate analysis of the dicta of this Faculty'. There is therefore but a single method examined, the Introspective; and the various so called 'methods' are distinguished by the different axioms or principles which Reason dictates, and not by the method of arriving at them which is throughout the same, viz., self-interrogation. They are in fact not different 'Methods of Ethics' but different results of the same method.

Of course an author is perfectly justified in confining himself to any branch of a subject which he may select, and so impartial and thorough an investigation of any single method as that which Mr. Sidgwick has given to the Intuitive method of Ethics cannot fail to be of great value, if the only result were to bring into clear relief the divergent results to which such method leads and its consequent uselessness for scientific purposes. But it is hardly fair to take arbitrarily a single method, and treat it as the only one possible, or even as the only one worthy of a particular name. A man who wrote a treatise on The Methods of Acoustics' and confined himself to an examination of the various opinions as to the nature of sound held by persons with a good ear,' and refused all enquiry into its physical properties, and all aid from any sense except that of hearing only, as foreign to his subject and of no practical import, might compose a very instructive and valuable work, but would hardly be thought to have exhausted the possibilities of a Science of Sound. Yet he would be clearly more justified by at least the etymological meaning of words in saying that Acoustics has to do with the sense of hearing only, than Mr. Sidgwick has in saying that Ethics has to do only with the Moral Faculty. Mr. Sidgwick says (p. vi.) that "the investigation of the historical antecedents of this cognition, and of its relation to other elements of the mind, no more properly belongs to Ethics than the corresponding questions as to the cognition of Space belong to Geometry". But in the first place, Geometry does not assume a Spatial Faculty and proceed simply to interrogate that and chronicle the results; it measures one sense against another and so arrives at what we call 'objective' or what is in fact consistent truth. And secondly, if Geometry assumes the fundamental properties of space as axioms or postulates, that is because there is no dispute about them; they are indisputably or at least undisputedly valid, and that is sufficient. But in Ethics it is as to the axioms that the great dispute arises, their application being scientifically of minor importance. And to

say that the latter only is the proper province of Ethics, is clearly opposed to the ordinary use of the word, and as clearly opposed to Mr. Sidgwick's understanding of it, seeing that he defines it as "the study of what ought to be done" (p. 4) and that his whole book is a consideration of the relative value of first principles and not only of their application to practice. But Mr. Sidgwick may say: 'I do not object to your discussing principles as much as you like, so long as you keep to the Moral Faculty, but if you go behind that you get out of Ethics'. To this I answer: In the first place, I doubt the validity of your Moral Faculty, and in order to determine that I must compare it with my other faculties. No doubt, as you say (p. 4) “if we were only agreed as to what we ought to do, the question 'How we come to know it' would be one of quite subordinate interest"; but we are not agreed, and the question therefore becomes vital. But in the second place, suppose this moral faculty to be valid, why should Ethics be confined to it alone, any more than Acoustics is confined to the faculty of hearing? There can be no science which is confined to one sense, because there can thus be no objectivity. From hearing alone how can we know that sound means the same, that is, stands in the same relation, to all men? Similarly from the moral faculty alone how can you distinguish "between what men think to be their duty and what really is such"? If the moral faculty be ultimate, what is a man's duty is what the moral faculty says, i.e., to each man is what he thinks his duty. So we get to the old sophistic doctrine of individualism, which is plainly exclusive not only of a science of Ethics but of all ethical reasoning. If on the contrary it be assumed as it is by Mr. Sidgwick (p. 6), that there is an objective good, and that this can be known, interrogation of the moral faculty can clearly not yield it, and therefore the insufficiency of the Introspective Method is assumed in all moral reasoning. To say that men know 'objective' good, but can give no reason for it or explanation of it, is really to say that good is in the knowledge of it, or in other words is subjective only.

I may here make a remark, the importance of which will be seen hereafter, that there may be an objective good which is still relative to the individual, if it bear the same relation to all individuals for instance, it may be Pleasure, which though relative to the organism is in a universal relation, and therefore satisfies the conditions of Science. Mr. Sidgwick is not accurate here. He says (p. 6): If it be maintained that two men may act in two different ways under circumstances precisely similar, and yet neither be wrong because each thinks himself right: then the common notion of morality must be rejected as a

chimera. That there is in any given circumstances some one thing which ought to be done and that this can be known, is a fundamental assumption." Now if under circumstances' he includes internal circumstances such as character and belief, his hypothesis is self-contradictory, because different beliefs as to what is right are different circumstances: if not, the conclusion is false; for common morality says that a man ought to act not only according to his beliefs but according to the whole of his nature, and that what is right for one man may be wrong for another. The only fundamental assumption either necessary for a Science of Ethics or warranted by common notions is that morality conforms to the general law of uniformity, i.e., that in the same circumstances, external and internal, the same thing is morally good : “ ὁμοίων γὰρ ὄντων καὶ πρὸς ἄλληλα τόν αὐτὸν τρόπον ἐχόντων τοῦ τε ποιητικοῦ καὶ τοῦ παθητικοῦ, ταυτὸ TéQUкe yiveσla". If this be so, then in any given circumstances "there is some one thing which ought to be done"; one, not in the sense that it is the same for each man, but that it has the same relation to each man, and therefore is capable of being known in the case of each man by all men.

But there is another reason why Mr. Sidgwick objects to going outside the moral faculty and explaining its derivation, namely, that "this would require us to prefer the coarsest and lowest of our pleasures to those that are more elevated and refined which no one would maintain to be reasonable (p. 42). And again (p. 186) "Why should our earliest beliefs and perceptions be more trustworthy than our latest, supposing the two to differ? The truths of the higher mathematics are among our most secure intellectual possessions, yet the power of apprehending these is rarely developed until the mind has reached maturity." Now, inasmuch as Mr. Sidgwick has defined Reason' as the faculty which prescribes moral rules, it is a clear fallacy to argue in favour of these rules that they are more reasonable' than others. But apart from this, Mr. Sidgwick should not forget that a thing may be φύσει πρότερον, but voTepov nμiv. He would surely not argue against the ὕστερον Cosmogony of Laplace, that it is 'unreasonable' and retrogressive, because it goes back to the mean and beggarly elements' of nature. Surely this is the very law and order of knowledge, to return on nature's tracks, so that the farther back it can get the more perfect it is; and the truths of Mathematics are secure for this very reason that they go back the farthest of all. This is just what we wish to do with the Moral Faculty, to carry it farther back into its elements and thus rest it on a secure foundation. No one says that it is 'unreal' or 'vanishes' because it is found to be compound; on the contrary its exist