his own ends. "The ultimate ground of public life and of social coherence was placed in the interests of individuals.' Man was an isolated unit, essentially unsocial, if not anti-social; the ethical ideal of life was personal, and consisted in the fullest development of the individual's possibilities. Such an individual was therefore lacking in definite altruistic responsibilities; his first duty was to himself and not to others. The Hedonists and Utilitarians developed a 'logical' explanation of all human life based on these premises.

On them, too, were founded the new democratic theories of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Society was to Rousseau a voluntary union of individuals each of whom entered the social compact with the intention of receiving as great benefits as possible in exchange for the renunciation of as little as possible of his liberty. "The best government,' said Jefferson, 'is that which governs least.' The rights of the individual to better his own condition, Rousseau declared, were inherent, imprescriptible, inalienable; inasmuch as laws, courts, and kings normally stood in the way of his development, restraints upon him should be as few and infrequent as possible, and the fewer and more infrequent the better for him and for society. Crime lay not in the infringement of some absolute standard, but in the breach of another's rights. 'Nothing can be prevented,' read the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, 'which is not forbidden by law, and no one may be forced to do anything not provided for by law.' Such a notion of 'liberty' could not fail powerfully to support the old common law notion already applied to the law of trade.

Upon this same hedonistic basis of individual satisfaction, Adam Smith, Ricardo, and Mill reared the new science of political economy, the science

of wealth and of the most efficient methods for its speedy acquisition. The normal individual, they premised, was purely selfish, and as the existence of ethical impulses could not be predicated with certainty, such motives must be considered accidental, capable of producing exceptions to the general law, but not of influencing the operation of the law of economic development itself. To have based the science of business logic upon selfishness, to have made the chief limitations upon the acquisition of wealth the strength of the desire for it, to have declared these considerations the 'law' by which the community had grown into being, to have assumed that to interfere with them would hinder the normal development of both community and individual, was indeed to place the right of man to follow his inclinations. in pursuit of wealth, wherever they might lead him, upon a high pedestal. It was even easy to conclude that the working of economic law could not be changed, and that no conscious reform would be possible. Indeed, if this were the law of life, no reform was needed, for what existed was for that very reason right.

Upon very nearly this same basis, Spencer and Darwin constructed the doctrine of evolution. Each individual shall take the consequences of his own nature and actions; survival of the fittest being the result.' That cunning, ability, high morality, as well as physical force, might be decisive factors in determining who was fit, Spencer readily conceded; but he clung steadfastly to the conclusion that the man who survived, for whatever reason, would be thus proven the man whom the future needed. The individual was to use in every possible way every faculty he possessed, and those methods by which he secured his continued existence were proved by their success to

have been the right ones in his particular case. An altruism which resulted in the sacrifice of the individual was not only a mistake from his point of view, but a crime from that of society: he had broken the law of life wittingly; he had committed suicide.

In this very struggle of individuals for survival, Spencer taught, was progress; and the greatest progress, and indeed any progress at all, was possible only by giving the individual full scope to develop in any direction he pleased. He therefore concluded, as had Rousseau and Jefferson for different reasons, that the function of the state was purely negative; that no virtues or values could be created or changed by legislation; that the state should merely insure the individual a fair chance. To him, as to Darwin, the 'natural' impulses of man's nature-his strength, cunning, cupidity, selfishness - had been the dominant factors in the evolution of existing society, and must be accepted therefore as the proper factors, as right and ethical as any, unless one assumed that the evolutionary process was in itself wrong. Ethics, morality, religion, all played their only part in evolution, not as absolute factors, but as elements in the strength or weakness of some individual which influenced the result of his struggle to best the other man. Is not the ethics of business the Spencerian law of social development? Are not its processes the very methods by which Spencer believed the world itself had been built?

In the subtlest of subtle ways has come from the latest American philosophy a sort of esoteric support for those who had begun to have vague doubts about the doctrines of Mill and Spencer. From the Pragmatism of William James they have drawn a conclusion which he certainly never intended, but which men unskilled in philosophical speculation not unnatu

rally drew. Professor James many times insisted that the test of the truth of an idea was its 'cash value' for the individual. What, indeed, he had in mind was the very subtle idea, based upon Lessing's standard of the relativity of truth, that the criterion of truth is not so much the conformity of a concept to some absolute standard, as its workableness for the individual in question; but the popular conclusion was that the truth of ideas, religion, ethical standards, was to be tested by their usefulness to the individual, a standard which naturally became his material welfare. The individual, they understood, in fact created his own standard, and was furnished with the right to reject all other notions of right conduct than his own.

Undoubtedly, any one with the prophet's vision who will now lift his eyes to the hills will see them already filled with chariots and horsemen ready to do battle with the present conception of business ethics. Undoubtedly, a proper understanding of the very factors here traced has been slowly undermining their past influence upon the public mind. Undoubtedly, many other powerful influences are building a strong social consciousness and a social concept of the loftiest and truest altruism, and steadily bringing to its support more and more noble men and women. There has probably never been a time in the history of the world when so large a proportion of the community was as anxious to do right as to-day. But it is none the less true that we must tilt, not against windmills and imaginary armies, but against the mental and moral standards of the race.

The new ethics of business proposes nothing less than to abolish a standard of right conduct by which the race has lived, and to put in its place an ideal of which a part of the race

has often dreamed. We are face to face with the fact that the race is still essentially primitive in its social relations and aspirations. The few thousand years of recorded history have found it difficult to erase the impressions ground into us by the hundreds of thousands of years of barbarism.

The problem of reform is fundamental and transcends the individual. The summary punishment of many men, volumes of statutes, many political expedients, will not seriously affect the instinctive preferences and inarticulate beliefs which lead the average man to believe in the rectitude of his present

conduct, and to declare that he cannot do business otherwise. All unconscious of his support, he is intrenched behind the primitive conception of trade, sustained by the common law, and fortified by modern philosophy, political economy, and the theories of democracy and evolution. The remedy must be no less fundamental than the problem. Until we have destroyed the fortifications, we shall not seriously impair the enemy's real strength, and it is still to be proved that the walls will fall, if we, like Joshua and the Children of Israel, continue to march round them shouting and blowing rams' horns.

I

THE Reverend John Scattergood, D.D., Professor of Systematic Theology, was of Puritan descent. The founder of the family was Caleb Scatter-the-good-seed, a cornet-of-horse in Cromwell's army, who had earned his master's favor by prowess at the battle of Dunbar. The family tradition averred that when Cromwell halted the pursuit of Lesley's scattered forces for the purpose of singing the One Hundred and Seventeenth Psalm, it was Caleb Scatter-the-good-seed who gave out the tune and led the psalmody. This he did at the beginning of every verse by striking a tuning-fork on his bloody sword. He was mounted, said the tradition, on a coal-black horse.

John Scattergood, D.D., was a hardheaded theologian. His lectures on Systematic Theology ended, as all who attended them will remember, in a cogent demonstration of the Friendliness of the Universe, firmly established by the Inflexible Method. This was a masterpiece of ratiocination. The impartial observation of facts, the evenhanded weighing of evidence, the right ordering of principles and their application, the separation and weaving together of lines of thought, the careful disentangling of necessary presuppositions, the just treatment of objectors -all the qualities demanded of one who handles the deepest problems of thought were combined in Dr. Scattergood's demonstration of the Friendli

ness of the Universe according to the Inflexible Method. Most of his hearers were convinced by his arguments, and went forth into the world to publish the good news that the universe was friendly.

Hard-headed as Scattergood was, it would be unjust to his character to describe him as free from superstition. Much of his life, indeed, had been spent in attacking the superstitions of the ignorant and the thoughtless; but this very practice had bred in him, as in so many others, a superstitious regard for the argumentative weapons used in the attack. Like his ancestor at Dunbar he struck his tuning-fork on his sword. To be sure he was a Rational Theist, and a cause of Rational Theism in others; but, unless I am much mistaken, the ultimate object of his faith, the Power behind his Deity, was the Inflexible Method. Superstition never dies; it merely changes its form. It is not a confession we make to ourselves so much as a charge we bring against others, and its greatest power is always exercised in quarters where we are least aware of its existence. And Scattergood, of course, was unaware that his attitude toward the Inflexible Method was profoundly superstitious. It follows that he was unprepared for the part which superstition, changing its form, was destined to play in his life.

Theology, then, was his vocation, but I have now to add the Horse was his hobby. Although he had taken to riding late in life he was by no means an incapable rider or an ignorant horse

man. Next to the Universe, the Horse had been the subject of his profoundest study; and as he was a close reasoner in regard to the one, he was a tight rider in regard to the other. His seat, like his philosophy, was a trifle stiff; but what else could you expect in one who had passed his sixtieth year? He never rode to hounds, or otherwise unduly jeopardized his neck; but for managing a high-spirited horse, when all the rest of us were in difficulties, I never knew his better. 'Let Scattergood go first,' we cried, as the traction engine came snorting down the road and our elderly hacks were prancing on the pavement; and sure enough his young thoroughbred would walk by the monster without so much as changing its feet.

'Scattergood,' I once asked him, 'what do you do to that young mare of yours when you meet a traction engine or a military band?'

'Nothing,' he replied.

"Then what do you say to her?'
'Nothing.'

"Then how do you manage it?'

'I have n't the faintest idea.'

jockey-bred, sir, you take my word for it. Well, his father may have been a bishop, for all I care. But what about his mother, and what about his mother's father, and his father before him, and all the rest on 'em. When it comes to a matter o' breedin', you don't stop at fathers; you take in the whole pedigree. Was n't his Lordship's father a brewer? And what difference did that make? When 'orse-sense once gets started in a family it takes more than brewin', and more than bishopin', to wash it out o' the blood.'

'I've heard that gypsies have the same gift,' I said.

'I've 'eard it, too, sir. But I never would have nothing to do with gypsies; though his Lordship was as thick as thieves with 'em. And thieves are just what they are, sir, and if it were n't for that, I'd say as the old gen'l'man was as like to be gypsy-bred as jockey. Don't you never let the gypsies sell you a 'oss, sir; you'll be took in if you do. But they could n't gypsy him! Why, I don't believe as there's a 'oss-dealer for twenty miles round as

Needless to say that he was deeply respected in the stables. 'A gen'l'man with a wonderful 'orse-sense,' said the old ostler one day, expatiating, as usual, on Scattergood's virtues. 'If I'd had a 'orse-sense like him, I'd be one o' the richest men in England. If ever there was a man as throwed himself away, there he goes! 'Orse-sense is n't a thing as you see every day, sir. The only other man I've ever knowed as had it was his Lordship, as I was his coachman in Ireland more than twenty years ago. His Lordship used to say to me, "Tom," he says, "Tom, it all comes of my grandfather and his father before him bein' jockeys." And between you and me, sir, that's what's the matter with his Reverence. He's

That the ostler's last remark was true in the spirit, if not in the letter, the following incident seems to prove. Once I was myself entrapped into the folly of buying a horse, and I was on the point of concluding the bargain, which seemed to be all in my favor, when a friendly daimon whispered in my ear that I had better be cautious. So I said to the dealer, 'Yes, the horse seems all right. But before coming to a final decision, I'll bring Dr. Scattergood round to have a look at him.' Whereupon the dealer abated his price by fifteen pounds, on the understanding that that there interferin' old Scattergood, as had already done him more bad turns than one, was not