truth, we have had quite enough of the system-mongers. Gentlemen who include in a single glance a period of a thousand years or so, and extract from the complex history of politics and morals, and philosophy and religion, some half-dozen definite dogmas, set down in uncompromising black and white, and forced upon us at the point of the pen, are common enough, and serve for little more than to intensify our conviction of the depths of human ignorance. We are quite content to follow Mr. Lecky for a guide, and without insisting upon a distinct map of the ground over which he leads us, to visit a number of striking points of view, and gather up a good many detached reflections for future use.

In one part of his book, however, Mr. Lecky's want of definite system appears to us to have tempted him into inconsistencies. The first chapter, in which he discusses the rival theories of morality, has been very sharply criticised, and we confess that, in our opinion, it strongly illustrates his deficiency in systematic clearness of perception. It is rather unfortunate, too, that here, and here alone, he has been betrayed into a peremptoriness very unusual with him, and which, sensible of the impropriety of its presence, has concealed itself in the comparative obscurity of foot-notes. Mr. Hecky, for example, has hardly earned the right to speak of Bentham as a writer who has added surprisingly little to moral science (considering the reputation he attained), except a barbarous nomenclature, and an interminable series of classifications, containing no real subtlety of thought.'

Mr. Lecky, at times, is guilty of the too common error of arguing, not against the strongest, but against the weakest, form of his opponents' doctrines. He fights successfully against Hobbes or Mandeville, but his weapons are pointless against Mill or

Austin. Indeed, Mr. Lecky is much closer to his utilitarian enemies than he imagines. He confesses as much in the case of Mr. Mill; and he apparently classifies with the intuitivists every one who admits the existence of benevolent instincts. He seems to agree to a great extent with Hume, who is amongst the most genuine of utilitarians; and he quotes Hutcheson as distinctly on his side, on the faith of the term 'moral sense,' though Hutcheson had plainly declared, before Bentham, that that action is the best which procures the greatest happiness for the greatest number.' The example might have shown him that it is possible for a man to accept unreservedly the utilitarian test of morality whilst denying in the strongest way that virtue can be resolved by mental chemistry into merely selfish feeling. If by denouncing utilitarianism Mr. Lecky merely intends to oppose this last proposition, we should heartily agree with him. We must add, indeed, that there is some justification for what we hold to be in the main a palpable blunder. Utili tarian writers, when discussing the motives which lead men to be virtuous, instead of the test of virtue, have frequently, as we think, maintained untenable positions, and they have probably done so from accepting Mr. Lecky's account of them, and holding that it was incumbent upon them to disprove the existence of unselfish instincts. Even when free from this paradox, they have very frequently taken a low view of the happiness, the promotion of which, in their belief, was the ultimate obobject of morality. While anxious to bring virtue under their powers of analysis, they have missed many of the more delicate and lofty kinds of virtue. They have said, and, as we hold, rightly, that the morality of actions depends on their tendency to promote happiness; but when they have tried to define

happiness, they have observed only its grosser and more palpable forms. Their psychological net, so to speak, only brought up at its first casts the solid tangible objects of human ambition-the bread and butter, the hard cash, and the physical comforts; the more ethereal elements escaped from their clumsy grasp; and virtue, as defined by them, included little more than the teaching of that practical good sense which was embodied in the moral axioms of Franklin and his like. The intuitional school did good service in preserving the memory of a higher ideal, and preventing our moral standard from sinking to a point where honesty is the best policy,' 'a penny saved is a penny got,' and 'a thief will sooner or later come to the gallows,' would be the sublimest truths to be inculcated by preacher or philosopher.

Moreover, it must be admitted, that the metaphysical doctrine often insisted upon by moralists of this school has at first sight an ugly look. They are fond of declaring that the human will is invariably determined by the strongest motive, and further, that the strongest motive is always the greatest happiness of the agent. It is easy to give this assertion a turn which makes it appear to be either immoral or futile. If it is meant that a man will always pursue that course which on the whole promises to procure the greatest amount of selfish satisfaction, it is easy to deduce those consequences which Mr. Lecky imputes to utilitarians in general. It is possible that a fear of hell, or even of temporal punishments, may force a man acting on such principles to be decently honest, and to obey the supplementary commandment, Thou shalt not be found out; but his morality, to say the best of it, will be low in tone, and liable to break down in practice. If, on the

other hand, we give a greater latitude to the term 'happiness,' the assertion becomes meaningless. We may define happiness to be that end of action, whatever it may be, the gratification of benevolent as well as of selfish instincts being included, which has at the time the greatest charm. The happiness of a man's future life may affect his imagination less powerfully than the future happiness of his relatives or of mankind. He may reduce himself to poverty in feeding and clothing his neighbours, though he may be aware that in the long run the pleasure of having performed a benevolent action will not counterbalance the miseries of want; for, at the time of the action, his own pleasure to come will move him less powerfully than the pleasure of his fellow-creatures. Yet, when interpreted in this way, the statement seems to lose its meaning. If we can only measure happiness by the effect it produces,. we appear to say that the strongest motive is always-the strongest motive. To this objection, as urged by Mr. Mansel, Mr. Mill has replied ' that, even so, the assertion has a meaning. When we declare that the heaviest bucket at a well will raise the other, we mean by 'heaviest' merely that bucket which raises the other. But the assertion implies that one and the same bucket will always raise the other, and that it is not a mere matter of chance which comes uppermost. Thus the statement about the strongest motive comes in fact to this, that the human will is subject to certain laws of causation, and does not act arbitrarily. It further implies that the action is that which at the moment brings the greatest happiness; but it leaves the question of what constitutes happiness studiously vague, and is as far as possible from denying, by implication, the existence of the

most heroic and self-sacrificing impulses conceivable. The difference between Mr. Lecky and Mr. Mill thus becomes almost evanescent. Mr. Lecky says that the will is acted upon both by happiness and by the idea of duty. Mr. Mill says that it is acted upon simply by the happiness. But they both admit the existence of the same efficient motives, though they call them by different names. As in most metaphysical discussions, the facts admitted are the same, but the mode of accounting for them is verbally and perhaps not more than verbally -different.

Mr. Lecky, like Mr. Mill, observes that men will occasionally perform heroic deeds; that a martyr, for example, will undergo fearful tortures rather than affirm what he believes to be false. Mr. Lecky infers that the martyr must be actuated by some other motive than his own happiness.

Mr.

Mill would infer, on the contrary, that a love of truth may become so strong that a man promotes his own happiness by gratifying it even at the price of fearful tortures. The dispute is removed from the domain of observed facts into those dim regions where every truth is susceptible of two diametrically opposed and equally plausible explanations. Whether the proposition that two and two make four is known by experience or intuition, we are equally satisfied of its truth, and mathematical inferences are equally valid; and the metaphysical discussion as to the origin of our motives has not, when fairly explained, much more significance for practical inquirers. The relative strength of the unselfish and the purely self-regarding instincts, and the mode by which one set may be strengthened at the expense of the other, are questions of immense importance; but the metaphysical discussion throws little light upon the subject.

Turning, however, from these perplexed labyrinths, we come to a matter which has far closer bearing upon the true moral of Mr. Lecky's book. Mr. Lecky, like every other moralist, remarks that the standard of morality has at different times undergone surprising changes; and, indeed, his main purpose is to trace out the singular variations which have occurred within the period of which he treats. A savage will knock on the head anybody outside his own family to whom he takes a dislike; an ancient patriot thought it wrong to behave in this way to one of his own city or province; the civilised Christian respects the persons of all mankind. The fact is at first sight fatal to the intuitive theory of morals, and it is certainly fatal to that form of it which should declare that all men have an immediate and irrefragable knowledge of certain elementary moral laws. Mr. Lecky evades the difficulty by limiting the domain within which the intuitions are supreme. Intuition can only teach us, he thinks, that benevolence differs radically from malevolence, and that it is intrinsically superior. The utilitarian would accept both these propositions without hesitation. We know that benevolence differs from its opposite, as we know that black differs from white, or sweet from sour, by constant and universally accessible experience; a savage can understand that giving a man bread is more likely to promote his happiness than taking his scalp, and when he is once satisfied that he has an interest in making the man happy, he will be contented to leave his scalp upon his head. Our knowledge of the moral duties is gradually extended, according to Mr. Lecky, by the awakening of certain latent intuitions, as prepared paper develops the figures imprinted upon it under the action of sunlight. From the utilitarian

point of view, the same process would be described as the gradual influence of experience and observation, facilitated by various changes in the social organisation. The same facts are stated with equal ease in the phraseology of the rival sects of philosophy. There is, however, one point which demands a little further explanation, with a view to certain important consequences. When a utilitarian says that the test of morality is in the 'greatest happiness of the greatest number,' he cannot mean that any existing moral standard exactly satisfies that condition. Our moral sentiments at any moment are the product of all the conditions through which society has passed; they embody instincts founded on a bygone state of affairs and often inapplicable to present circumstances. The military instincts, for example, survive that order of things in which military excellence was really essential to the improvement of mankind. We continue to give an undue place in the hierarchy of virtue to physical courage, though we no longer regard a soldier as the highest type of mankind. Duelling still survives in the greater part of Europe, and a man is despised for unreadiness to comply with a custom which we have agreed to condemn in the abstract. To say then that the 'greatest happiness principle' supplies the proper test of morality, is to say not that it is, but that it 'ought' to be, the test. And when it is asked what is meant by the word 'ought' in this connection, the utilitarian can only reply, that it is, on the whole, for the good of mankind. His assertion, therefore, merely amounts to this; that a certain moral code is at a given period conducive to the highest degree of general happiness. If he believes in the theological sanction, he holds that a sufficient motive for a virtuous life is to be found in the hopes and

fears connected with a future life; or, if he denies this, he will believe that the instincts by which men are actuated will, on the whole, be sufficient to secure а tolerable degree of virtue, and a progressive rise in the moral standard, though with many crimes and many periods of backsliding. A thinker of Mr. Lecky's school might declare that the motives thus indicated were insufficient; and that when we have proved that certain rules of action are conducive to the happiness of the race, we have given them no sort of cogency notwithstanding. Yet what more can Mr. Lecky say? As he tells us very forcibly, men at one time hold the ascetic virtues, and at another the patriotic virtues, in the highest esteem. How are we to tell which is right or what is the standard to be preferred? If our intuitions tell us only that benevolence is better than its opposite, and so forth, they only give us truisms on which everybody is agreed. If they venture to pronounce upon matters still in dispute, they have no authority. Their decisions destroy each other, like the opposite assertions of two infallible popes. man knew intuitively that suicide was a dignified and proper action; his Christian opponent knew intuitively that suicide was a deadly sin. How are we to decide between these rival decisions of an infallible authority? By showing that the practice of suicide is on the whole prejudicial to the happiness of society, we assign an intelligible motive for disapproving of it; but we are at a loss to see what other evidence can possibly be produced to determine reasonable men. conviction that it is wrong, is no answer to an equally strong conviction that it was right, unless we assume, what seems to be very untenable, that the latest conviction is always the right one. If it is supposed to be a logical inference from some admitted axiom, the inference

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