the rule of action, not rising into definite thought, but none the less unquestioned.

But, when impulses conflict, when the following of something desirable is felt to have as its result something which is undesirable, some form of pain or unhappiness, or when we have a secret sense that our pleasure is accompanied by the unhappiness of others, and a notion of sympathy (however that may have been produced) converts this unhappiness of others into our own pain; then for the moment at all events our guide, nature, speaks ambiguously, how are we to act?

Or, again, suppose that no strong impulse urges us at that moment; suppose we feel ourselves without active choice of any kind, or with none such as we find really pressing and urgent, and simply seek and inquire what is best for us to do, how then will moral philosophy direct us?

We will answer this last question first, because the position thus indicated is the one which Utilitarianism tacitly and plausibly assumes, and from this assumption builds a code of abstract ethics, such as may appear not to depend on the caprices of individual nature. The position, then, is one of which we deny the real possibility. There is, no doubt, a certain even tenor of custom, that is of passive obedience to the common general tendency of the wills around, which is the danger and the weak side of civilisation; but which from its imperturbability appears to afford room and scope for a calm and scientific determination of conduct. But a true philosophy will strike through this even tenor and uniform aspect of men's minds, and will reveal the individual impulses beneath. It will not indeed make men comprehend these impulses, for they are not to be comprehended, they are only to be felt; but it will remove the veil by which men blind themselves to their own real thoughts and desires; and, in removing it, it will bring to light that deep individuality in each of us which will not consent to be the slave of our deliberate calculations, which demands a place and a sphere of its own, which cannot, except in a mutilated and impoverished state, enter into our intellectual judgments, seeing that it is deeper than the intellect, and belongs to the primal and vital, not to the secondary and reflexive, part of our nature.

But men's moral needs are not satisfied by the mere possession of spontaneous unsophisticated feeling. Were it so, there would have been no need of any moral governance at all. Where, then, is the guide that shall determine between conflicting impulses (for here we return to the question put by us a little way back)?

Now, not for the solution of this problem, but for its proper Vol. 141.-No. 282. understanding,

2 L

understanding, we may remark that impulses really and absolutely conflicting are less common than may at first sight appear. The motions of human nature are complex, and what appears at first as one impulse often consists of many parts, and by selecting time and occasion we may often reconcile courses which at first seemed hopelessly jarring. Still, after all, we do every now and then find ourselves compelled to choose between rival and incompatible courses of conduct, the incompatibility of which is absolute and cannot be removed or softened in any way. And even when we stand in doubt between courses apparently though not really irreconcileable, we need the guide that shall lead each part of our nature, each contending element of our impulses forward in its proper season. Where shall this guide be found?

We answer, first, that the human heart is naturally endowed with a power, to a certain extent, of determining between the scope and worthiness of different desires. The Utilitarian would say that the human mind is naturally endowed with the power of judging between the comparative happiness that will result from different actions. And this, on some occasions, is true; for it is not to be denied that we do sometimes anticipate the resulting feeling of pleasure or pain, and that this anticipation, where it exists, is a guide to us. But we cannot force such anticipation; and those who refuse to do violence to their souls will often find themselves obliged to decide which impulse it is preferable to follow, when the feelings of pleasure or pain which may result from their decision are beyond their ken. The human heart, we say, is endowed with a natural power, up to a certain point, of deciding as to the preferability of one impulse over another; and this power is not unfitly named the moral sense. But when the heart of man fails, as it often will fail, to escape from its own internal struggles; when intellectual anticipation and moral feeling are alike inadequate, being unequal to the weight laid upon them; then, for the strengthening of the soul's vision, of the spiritual choice, we know no other guide but God. Prayer to God, and trust in God, are acts as elementary and as little explicable as the feeling of duty itself, and, in our belief, equally essential with that; but this is not the place to enter further upon these points.

We have implied above that those do violence to their souls who refuse to decide their action except by the intellectual rule of consciously foreseen results. In truth, the native spring of impulse is the deepest thing in our personal natures, and demands that we should listen to it, whether we can tell whither it is bearing us or not. When, indeed, an action is completed

and

and done, then the resulting happiness and unhappiness come into greater prominence in our judgment of it, and at last become even the sole test, except so far as reserve is always necessary in isolating an action as single, instead of considering it as a part of a greater whole.

This last consideration leads us naturally to quote that passage of Mr. Sidgwick's book which, on his side of the question, is argumentatively the most important; a passage well considered and well weighed; and one which appears to us only to fail to give a comprehensive rule of action, because Mr. Sidgwick has not remembered that our survey of conduct before the deed is done, and our survey of it after the deed is done, are intrinsically and unavoidably different. The passage is as follows (p. 371):

If such objects then as Truth, Freedom, Beauty, Virtue, &c., or strictly speaking, the objective relations of conscious minds which we call cognition of Truth, contemplation of Beauty, Independence of Action, Realisation of Virtue, &c., are good, independently of the pleasure that we derive from them, it must be reasonable to aim at these for mankind generally and not at happiness only, and so the principle of Rational Benevolence, which was stated in the last chapter as an indubitable intuition of the practical reason does not seem to direct us to a mere pursuit of universal happiness.

'But can this on reflection be maintained? It seems to me that it certainly cannot. Here I can only appeal to the intuitive judgment of each reader, when the question is fairly placed before it. For my own part, if I have any intention at all respecting the ultimate ends of action, it seems to me that I can see this: that these objective relations of the conscious subject, when distinguished in reflective analysis from the consciousness accompanying and resulting from them, are not ultimately and intrinsically desirable, any more than material or other objects are, when considered out of relation to conscious existence altogether. Admitting that we have actual experience of such preferences as have just been described, of which the ultimate object is something that is not feeling, it still seems to me that when such objects are conceived to come, not apparently or transiently, but really and finally, into competition with happiness, we cannot maintain the rationality of such preferences.'

That any course of action must be wrong, which we are on sufficient grounds convinced to be really and finally adverse to the general happiness, is a proposition undoubtedly true, and useful enough where it is capable of being applied. Mr. Sidgwick's attempt to erect this proposition into the one universal rule of action is highly abstract, and highly characteristic of Utilitarianism. Analyse,' he says, 'the objects of your desire, and you will find that you care for nothing but the

6

2L2

happiness

happiness contained in them; or, at the very least (for the position does not seem quite free from ambiguity), you care for happiness more than for anything else.' That piece of 'reflective analysis' is one that to us does not appear possible. If we desire a thing—be it Truth or be it ten thousand pounds in the Three per Cents.-can we possibly put the object of our desire on the one hand, and the happiness expected from it on the other hand, and say that we esteem the one more highly than the other? Can anticipated enjoyment be wholly severed from the thing to be enjoyed? We can distinguish, of course; but can we separate, so as to be able to compare? As we think, not. A man who, having lived for a long time on salt meat alone, has a craving for fresh green vegetables, will be able to distinguish clearly between the vegetables and his craving for them, but he will by no means be able to consider them out of relation to each other. It is not possible for us to put Truth or Beauty, or any other desired thing, in competition with Happiness, unless we in some degree embody that Happiness in an actual disposition of things. The real comparison is then between this happy-making disposition of things on the one hand, and Truth or Beauty on the other; and the preference for the former (if it be felt, as it may be) is vital and immediate, not a mere act of the reflective judgment. At the same time it is of course to be remembered that the reflective judgment is a real faculty of man; that we cannot help forming continually imaginations of the future, and comparisons of the different degrees of happiness attendant on different courses of action and on different phenomenal states; though in such comparisons we do not and cannot consider happiness as an abstract thing in itself, but as inherent in the phenomenal state with which it is associated. As long as this faculty is exercised in a natural way, it is a real guide to The danger in the exercise of this faculty begins when it is raised to the position of being the final judge and determinant of all actions; when it presses upon and curbs the action of those vital movements of the spirit which are continually rising up within us, but which in their first rising are immature, and convey no representation to the intellect of that which they will be in the time of their maturity and complete development. Those vital movements in their first rising are injured, and may be almost killed, by the endeavour to contemplate them intellectually; and though they do indeed need their guide, that guide is the Infinite and Eternal One, the source of being, touching man's soul, but not comprehended by his intellect.

us.

What we have said about morals is universally recognised in the fine arts. Everybody with any sense of what poetry is feels

that

that the poetic faculty is something different from intellectual power; that it is not the understanding which decides for a poet what he is to say and what to leave unsaid; that a poet must not be primarily scientific. Even more obviously is this the case with music. One of the most common modes of degradation in all the fine arts, but especially in poetry, is when the artist first conceives his meaning intellectually, and then proceeds to translate it into the forms of verse, or pencilled representation, or musical sound. So, too, oratory is debased when the orator makes it his first aim to be eloquent. It is almost a truism to say so with respect to these subjects; it is not equally recognised, but it is not less true, that morality is debased by being made the pursuit of happiness per se and alone. Doubtless, the sense of what is good in conduct is not a thing that can be labelled and portioned off into compartments, under the heads of Truth,' Courage,' Justice,' and so on. These, though indispensable terms, are not strictly definable, nor is it in the nature of the case that they should be so, any more than the terms by which we indicate the merit of a poet. Nor do we hold with those who say that there are certain fixed intuitive moral axioms. This is to make the subject intellectual, which is what we are striving to exhibit it as not being. We say that the good is one, yet ever various; that it is as 'the wind that bloweth where it listeth,' to which indeed the Spirit of God, of Goodness, is by the highest authority compared; that it is the seed of which happiness is the fruit, and that the seed is known first, the fruit afterwards; that it is the inmost life of the spirit, starting into action of itself.

If, then, we were to describe in a word the complaint we have to make against Utilitarianism, and against Mr. Sidgwick in so far as he is Utilitarian, we should say that they were too scientific. The old Epicureanism was very different; in so far as it is ethical at all, it is the apotheosis of beauty, as we may see in Lucretius; it ignores the reforming spirit; it treats each man as a microcosm, a little world in himself. These are characteristics which, if they belong to Utilitarianism at all, belong to its undercurrents, and are at any rate as far as possible from being intentionally inculcated by its principal authors. Utilitarianism takes the ethical tone of our own time, which is, comparatively speaking, profound, severe, and comprehensive, and endeavours to reason it out as Newton reasoned out the laws of gravitation and of light, and to prove its validity. It is the child of the eighteenth century, the merit of which lay in science. But in matters of conduct we feel and act before we know results. To do so is the excellence, and not the weakness

of