are personal agents in the forming of it. In such a simple case, for instance, as in choosing an orange from a heap, we look first at one orange and then at another, until we find one which appears to us to be the best. And we thus form the determination to take that particular orange. It is evident, therefore, when we know the facts of the subject, that it is a mistake to suppose that our will-to-act is in all cases "given us without any efforts of ours". And if "we never yet caught ourselves in the act of making a volition," it was not because we never did make one-it was because our ideas of the mental facts of the case were so vague and erroneous that it was impossible that we should know what we were doing when we did so. In some cases, it is true, the forming of the decisive impulse is so instantaneous that our will to act may truly be said to be "given us without any effort of ours". As when, for instance, one orange is offered to us and we take it. But even in such a case, there is often a rapid keeping up of various thoughts before we decide. And in very many cases we attend carefully to various considerations before our decision is produced, and are therefore distinctly personal agents in the forming of it.

The instinctive consciousness of the difference between forming a choice or a determination, and having a choice or a determination when it has been formed, is shown in the common language of men. To "elect," to "determine," to "decide" upon a course of action, is to form an election, a determination, a decision, a will-to-act. To "prefer" is to have a preference. But the vagueness of the instinctive consciousness is shown by the use of same word in both senses. To "choose," for instance, may mean either to form a choice, or to have a choice or preference when it has been formed. And the verb to "will," though it can only be used correctly in the sense of having a will-to-act, is often used in the active sense, or as if to will to do an act were to do an act of will"—as in the quotation above from Jonathan Edwards.

We have a curious illustration of the vague consciousness of effort in the forming of our determinations, while in theory the occurrence of effort is denied, in a remark of Mr. Mill, in his Logic, when he says that "even in yielding to his temptations a person may know that he could resist ". But to resist " temptation is to do something in the forming of our determination. Mr. Mill's explanation that in such a case "there would not be required a stronger desire than the individual knows himself to be capable of feeling," is no description of what takes place when we resist a temptation. When we resist a temptation we do something to produce in ourselves the preponderating impulse to refrain from doing what we are tempted

to do. And nothing of this kind could occur if our will to act were at all times "given us without any efforts of ours".

VI. We have thus obtained the object of our introspective investigation. And the result turns out to be the reverse of that which was looked for. It is, however, a result which may be said to be scientifically certain; for it has been obtained by the process of observing and re-observing the facts of the subject, and its correctness is guaranteed by the facts, which may be observed again and again, and have been so observed until what may be called complete practical verification has been obtained. While these facts were viewed and spoken of in the confused and erroneous manner in which in various ways they have been viewed and spoken of by philosophers and by mankind in general, it was impossible that the mental process by which we form determinations should be ascertained. It was by obtaining step by step, and by slow degrees, correct and clear perceptions of the nature of the mental facts which occur in this process, that the process was analysed. And now that it is analysed, the facts of it are seen to be extremely simple, although they appeared mysterious and inscrutable before-as all facts are while they are not understood and cannot be pointed out.

Many highly important consequences follow from the correct view of the subject which has thus been obtained, and many comments upon it may be made. But the consideration of these must be reserved. In the meantime, the reader has now before him, so far, in a short compass, the result of years of careful investigation.

HENRY TRAVIS.

III. HEDONISM AND ULTIMATE GOOD.

IT has often been observed that systematic enquiry into the nature of the Supreme End of human action, the Bonum or Summum Bonum, belongs almost exclusively to ancient ethical speculation; and that in modern ethics its place is supplied by an investigation of the fundamental Moral Laws, or Imperatives of the Practical Reason. While the ancients appear as chiefly endeavouring to determine the proper ultimate object of rational pursuit, the moderns are chiefly occupied in discussing the basis and validity of a received code of rules, for the most part restrictive rather than directive of human effort. But though this difference has frequently been noticed, I am not aware that any distinct explanation of it has ever been offered: while again there are many signs that ethical speculation in England has reached a point at which this old question as to the nature of

Ultimate Good again presents itself as fundamental. If these signs are not misleading, it will be interesting to ascertain, from a comparison between ancient and modern thought, how far the speculative excursion which has ended in conveying us back to the old problem has brought us to face it from a new point of view, and under new conditions.

When we compare the Greek investigation of Ultimate Good with our own, we find an important difference in the very form of the fundamental question. What we, as moralists, are naturally led to seek, is the true account of general good; for most of us almost unhesitatingly assume that moral action, as such, must have relation to universal ends. But for the Greek moralist, the primary question as naturally and inevitably took an egoistic form.* The Good which he studied was 'good for himself, or for any other individual philosophic soul, enquiring after the true way of life. This difference is sufficiently obvious and has been noticed by more than one writer; but it has perhaps been somewhat obscured for modern readers by the antithetical fact, to which more attention has been drawn, that the political speculation of Greece differs from our own precisely in its non-individualistic character. There is really no contradiction between the assumption in ethics of the agent's private good as the ultimate determinant of rational action; and the assumption in politics of the good of the state-without regard to any 'natural rights' of its component parts as the ultimate end and standard of right political organisation. Indeed it would not be difficult to show that the two assumptions naturally belong to the same stage in the development of practical philosophy. Still they have somewhat tended to confuse each other, through that blending of politics with ethics in philosophical discussion which characterises the period from Socrates to Aristotle; and the confusion has been further increased by the analogy between the Individual and the State, which forms the basis of Plato's most famous treatise. This very analogy, however, when carefully examined, brings out most strikingly the characteristic which it, at first, tends to obscure; for the individual man being considered as a polity of impulses, his good is made to consist essentially in the due ordering of the internal relations of this polity, and is only secondarily and indirectly realised in the relations of this complex individual to other men. And in Aristotle's detailed

* This statement requires some qualification in so far as it concerns Plato, on account of his peculiar ontology. Still this does not so much affect the question Plato asked, as the answer he gave to it, and even that only to a limited extent; not (e. g.) in the Philebus, where the ἀγαθὸν investigated is just the ἀνθρώπινον ἀγαθὸν οf Aristotle.

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analysis of the moral ideal of his age, the fundamental egoism of the form in which it is conceived is continually illustrated, in striking contrast to the modern tendency to regard "the scope and object of ethics as altogether social".* The limits of Aristotle's Liberality are not determined by any consideration of its effect on the welfare of its recipients, but by an intuitive sense of the noble and graceful quality of expenditure that is free without being too lavish; and his Courageous warrior is not commended as devoting himself for his country, but as attaining for himself, even amid pains and death, the peculiar καλὸν of a courageous act.

No doubt we must bear in mind that this egoism is chiefly formal. The orthodox moralist, from Prodicus to Chrysippus, in recommending the preference of Virtue to Pleasure, is substantially recommending the sacrifice of individual inclinations to social claims; and the explicit "communis utilitas nostræ anteponenda" of later Stoicism, (which in this respect forms a transition from the ancient point of view to the modern), is no doubt implicit in the practical teaching of earlier schools. Still the effect of the egoistic form is very clearly seen in the actual course of ethical discussion. It rendered it absolutely necessary for the orthodox moralist to settle the relation of the individual's virtue to his Pleasure and Pain. A modern moralist may leave this undetermined. He cannot of course overlook the paramount influence of pleasure and pain, in the actual determination of human actions; and he must be aware that the obtaining of future pleasure and the avoiding of future pain constitute at least the chief part of the common notion of happiness,' 'interest,' 'good on the whole,' or whatever else we call the end which a prudent man, as such, has in view. But he may regard the discussion of this as bearing on the Sanctions of morality, not Morality itself; that is not on the theory of what duty is, but on the practical question how a man is to be made to do his duty. The Greek, however, who regarded the determination of the individual's good as supplying the fundamental principle on which the whole code of rules for reasonable conduct must ultimately depend, was obliged at the outset to consider the popular view that this good was Pleasure. He either, with the Cyrenaics and Epicureans, accepted this view unreservedly, and held Virtue to be valuable merely as a means to the enjoyment of the virtuous agent; or, with Zeno, he rejected it altogether, and maintained the intrinsic valuelessness of pleasure; or with Socrates, Aristotle, and Plato in his soberer moods, he argued the inseparable connection of the best and really pleasantest pleasure with the exercise of

* Cf. MIND III., p. 341.

virtue. The first position was offensive to the moral consciousness; the third imposed on it the necessity of proving what could never be really proved without either dialectical tricks or assumptions obviously transcending experience; and it was not surprising that the chief part of the moral earnestness of ancient society was ultimately enlisted on the side of the second alternative. Still the inhuman severity of the paradox that 'pleasure and pain are indifferent to the wise man,' never failed to have a repellent effect; and the imaginary rack on which an imaginary sage had to be maintained in perfect happiness, was at any rate a dangerous instrument of dialectical torment for the actual philosopher.

Christianity extricated the moral consciousness from this dilemma between base subserviency and inhuman indifference to the feelings of the moral agent. It compromised the long conflict between Virtue and Pleasure, by transferring to another world the fullest realisation of both; thus enabling orthodox morality to assert itself, as reasonable and natural, without denying the concurrent reasonableness and naturalness of the individual's desire for bliss without alloy. Hence when independent ethical speculation recommences in England after the Middle Ages, we find that the dualism—if I may so say-of the Practical Reason, which Butler afterwards formulated, is really implicit in all the orthodox replies to Hobbes. It is not denied in these replies that man's 'natural good' is pleasure, or that the self-love which seeks the agent's greatest happiness is a rational principle of action; they are only concerned to maintain the independent reasonableness of Conscience, and the objective validity of moral rules derived from a quite other source than the calculations of self-interest. Thus, for example, though in Cumberland's view the ultimate end and rational basis of the moral code is commune bonum omnium rationalium," the obligation of the code on each individual "rational" is imposed "sub pœna felicitatis amittendæ aut propter spem ejusdem acquirendæ". And even Clarke, who is often thought to have carried his argument for the independence of morality up to the point of paradox, is yet after all found to make only the very moderate claim "that Virtue deserves to be chosen for its own sake, and Vice to be avoided, though a man was sure of his own particular neither to gain nor lose anything by the practice of either". But since in the actual world "the practice of vice is accompanied with great temptations, and allurement of pleasure and profit, and the practice of virtue is often attended with great calamity, losses, and sometimes with death itself, this alters the question," and, in fact, Clarke is of opinion, not only that men under these circumstances will not always prefer