Critical miscellanies
Morley, John Morley, viscount, 1838-1923. [from old catalog]
(4) 6 ik irpwroc <fv(rrri<Tag fiiyifrruv dyaOiav alrtoQ. &<nrip ydip jcac riKtiaBiv fiiXritrrov nSv ^tpuw dvOptairoc hriVf o^na cat xwpKrd^v vofxov cat dUric xeipcirrov iravTuv (I. ii. 15). Compare -what Hume says : * Of all men that distinguish themselves by memorable achieyements, the first place of honour seems due to legislators and founders of states 1 must regard antiquity as somewhat unjust in its distribution of honours, when it made gods of all the inventors of useful arts, such as Ceres, Bacchus, JEsculapius ; and dignified legislators, such as Romulus and Theseus, only with the epithet of demi-gods and hcrots.'— Essay, Of Parties in General, 844 SOME GREEK OONCEPTIONS OF 800UL GROWTH. merely as a repudiation, not less emphatic for being undesigned, of the later doctrine of the superiority of some imagined state of nature imder the imagined law of nature, but much more so as a recognition of the indispensable part which has been played by individuals of superior political capacity, in making the spontaneous social quality of men effective for its own ends and final aims. It was not unnatural that this condition of social growth should be prominent in the mind of a Greek, to whom the importance of the primitive lawgiver in each state was a matter of familiar tradition : yet, as we have already seen, it was overlooked by Plato, who seems to have thought the existence of the ruler of exceptional type a secondary fact in the genesis of a society, compared with the demands made upon a readily responsive human nature by outer circumstances. It has been overlooked, also, and in equal degrees, by two chief schools of more modem times, otherwise wide as the poles asunder : by those who insist that all the radical facts of the social union, law, sovereignty, and the like, are the mysterious works of direct divine agency ; and by those, again, who give to inherent impulses of the race, and dominant currents of circumstance, the supreme control of all leading movements, excluding the individual from any but a subordinate and auxiliary office.^ It is not, therefore, precisely accurate to assert that Aristotle (1) The reader of the Polities will remember that in the disouanon <m monarchy in the Third book, Aristotle expressly considers the case of a citiaen appearing, endowed with surpassing merit. ' It would certainly not be right to exile such an one ; nor yet to hold him subject} for that would be much as though in their distribution of offices they were to presume to hold Zeus subject. The only course, then, and this seems the natural course, is that all should pay to a man of that kind a joyful allegiance, and that thus such men should be kings to the end of their lives.' (III. xiv. 13). This applies not merely to pximitiTe societies, but to a community in any stage. Aristotle, however, tells us as little as Mr. Carlyle as to mode of practical accomplishment. 80MB GREEK CONCEPTIONS OF SOCIAL GROWTH. 345 was wholly imalive to the natural laws of civilisation. More than one of the most important of these laws revealed them- selves to his sagacious and patient meditation. Of the dynamic principles in commimities, he certainly perceived in a partial way the three most important : the innate sociality of man, the organising power of some men of exceptional quality, and the principle of Adaptation, animating and controlling this power. The defect, of course, of his social conception, so full of what is instructive in other ways, lies in its failure to include the idea of progress, either as a fact in itself, or with reference to its conditions and limitations. How great a defect this is, we may best measure by considering the space which the idea of progress £lls in all the best social speculation, as in all the most enlightened social action, of modem times. Even now, it is true, there is one school of writers, numerically powerful, to whom progress, at all events since the foimdation of the Catholic Church and the consolidation of the Eoman headship of it, and especially since 1789, is a name of abomination and a symbol for the destruction of society. And there is, too, or perhaps it would be more correct to say there has been, an opposite school, which has treated progress as some automatic force and irre- sistible tendency of things in themselves, a kind of concrete divinity with fixed attributes, such as parliamentary govern- ment, free commerce, and a religion of privatives. But the most fruitful modem thought grows from a reasoned doctrine of the conditions which lead &om the less developed to the more developed social state ; a doctrine based upon the analysis of history, in the light of the permanent elements of human character, resulting in practical generalisations of the most strictly relative, and therefore of the most manifold kind. Of this Aristotle saw nothing, nor did any other thinker before Turgot and Condorcet, who had bright, though partial, glimpses 846 SOME GREEK CONCEPTIONS OF SOCIAL GROWTH. of it. There was not only no reasoned account, but there was no adequate recognition, of that continuity of advance, th^t successive series of evolutions, by which the foremost generation is as different from that which is least developed, as the maturity of the civilised individual is different from his infancy. That there had been a progressive movement it was impossible, even with so scanty a historical record, wholly to ignore, but the ruling conviction was that the limits of govern- ment, the most important of social facts in the eyes of Aristotle, had been reached, and all its varieties exhausted. To those who, living many hundred years since this great man, perceive that we have not even yet entirely so much as crossed the bare threshold of political science, there is something almost painful in that strange parenthesis which explains that all the con- siderations needed for correct political judgments had been dis- covered, though they had not always been carefully collected nor consciously applied.^ This sentence occurs, it will be remem- bered, at the close of the review in the second book, not of a systematic collection of such miscellaneous facts and traditions as Herodotus and the other logographoi had compiled, but of half a dozen mere constitutions, from that of Phaleas of Chal- cedon downwards. Considering the hardly less narrow and meagre survey which has been constantly mistaken for the history of a society, there is nothing to make us wonder in this, but there is in it proof positive that there was in the writer's mind no true historical conception of the broad movements of communities, in obedience to definite and measurable social forces. It is much that, without this, his acuteness and sagacity enabled him to give the highest place, among the many kinds (1) TT&vra 9xiibv f^prirai /«cv, &\X(k rd fikv ob avviiKTai^ toIq S* ov XJ^QvTai yiy vwoKOVTiQ. — Polit.^ II. v. 16. s \ \ •v SOME GREEK CONCEPTIONS OF SOCIAL QROWTH. 347 and degrees of human wisdom, to the constructiye political judgment.^ It is deplorable to think that the later countrymen of Aristotle and Plato contributed nothing to social philosophy, either in its statical or its dynamical part. Their intellectual energy and speculative ingenuity were frittered away, for many generations, upon the sophistical nullities of metaphysics and metaphysical ethics, and then for many generations more upon those of metaphysical theology. The Boman Empire came and decayed, the spiritual power of the Papacy arose and was dis- solved, feudal communities grew up and carried on with varying fortunes a prolonged strife in the West with monarchy, on the one hand, and industrialism on the other, and it was not until the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that the concision of social life and the displacement of old ideas led speculative men once more to reflect systematically on the ideal state, the origin of governments, and the other rudimentary questions of the philosophy of society. The conditions of political speculation had by then under- gone the profoundest changes at the very roots. Commerce, which Aristotle disliked so much, and insisted on reducing to the position of a rather undesirable accident in states,' was rapidly acquiring a prominence among social facts, which eventually made it one of the most important regulators of the growth and movements of European conmiunities. Slavery, which was a normal feature of all ancient societies, had dis- appeared before the operation of economic causes, slightly accelerated by changes in religious sentiment. Population, the strict limitation of which had always been regarded by both (1) if ^pdvijaiQ iroXirun) iLpx^'^'^'^^oviKi}, (2) See the passage on the sense in which the City might be ifiiropiK^, in the Politics, IV. xi. 4. '^ • ^ 348 80MB GREEK COKCEPTIOKS OV SOCIAL GROWTH. Plato and Aristotle as essential to the wellbeing of every state, and as one of the most important objects of the ruler's care/ was now transferred into the region of things beyond human control, and left to the working of physical causes and appetites. Finally, the organisation of the spiritual power in the Western Church, and its independence of temporal authorities, once real, and always maintained in theory, separated men's thoughts by a wide gulf from speculations which, like those of the Greek philosophers, always assumed, more or less, the combination of polity with education.' With the change in matter, there had come also a change in manner; and we are conscious, in the social and moral inquiries of Plato and Aristotle, of certain fine qualities, of candour, of freedom in the working of the intelligence, of closeness to fact and reality, which did not emerge in the polemists who continued their discussions. (1) Cf. ToUHn, n. yi, 11, vii. 6. (2) Cf. Grote'B P/ato, liL 169. ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF MORALS. ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF MOEALS. 'PJtLK writer of a higUy interestmg article in a recent number of Hie North British Review^ has reyived once more, in a manner which is very far removed from commonplace, the con- troversy as to the comparative progressiveness of the moral and intellectual elements in mankind. Mr. Buckle, in one of the most hotly disputed portions of his book, declared that the moral element is stationary ; that ' there is nothing to be found in the world which has undergone so little change as those great dogmas of which moral systems are composed;' and that, as civilisation does somehow advance, it must, therefore, be the intellectual element which promotes this advance. Pro- gress depends upon increase of knowledge, and not upon the amplification of moral codes, for the simple reason that moral, codes are substantially not susceptible of ampb'fication. The elements of the moral law are very much the same at one time as at another. 'To do good to others; to sacrifice for their benefit your own wishes ; to love your neighbour as yourself ; to forgive your enemies ; to restrain your passions ; to respect those who are set over you ; — ^these, and a few others, are the sole essentials of morals ; but they have been known for thou- sands of years, and not one jot or tittle has been added to them by all the sermons, homilies, and text-books which moralists and theologians have been able to produce.' To this the writer (1) No. XCV. 1868. i 352 ON THB DEVELOPIOBNT OF MORALS. in the North British Review replies, with the greatest anxiety, it should be said, to do full justice to his opponent) that morality does advance, just as knowledge advances. The lead- ) ing principle of scientific inquiry, to investigate nature, to interrogate facts, was perfectly well known to such a man as Aristotle ; scientific advance consists, less in the improved state- ment of formal methods of research, than in their improved application and development. So with Morals. The general statement of a primary moral precept may be now much what it was thousands of years ago. Moral advance consists in the improved interpretation, the ever-widening application, of the primary maxim. Morals * develop quickly under the influence of two causes ; first, the circumstances of the time, which are ever changing, and ever bringing up new cases for judgment at the bar of conscience : and, secondly, those leanings towards particular ways of thinking, which are the net result of aU the forces, moral, intellectual, and physical, that act on each age.' The science and practice of Casuistry imparts to the original code of morals a new scope, and previously unimagined mean- ing. As thousands of cases come up for judgment, it fills in the scheme of the moralist, and proves the fertility of great ethical precepts, by showing how, as human nature grows, and human circumstances become more complex, they grow too, and manifest fresh energies. Take slavery, for example. The founder of Christian morality did not condemn slavery, but he laid down a general system with which we have now discovered that slavery is wholly incompatible. Is not such a discovery as this a distinctly moral advance, and is it not a disproof of the alleged stationariness of ethical systems P The writer's position, therefore, as against Mr. Buckle, comes to this : — it is only the leading principles of morality that have anything like a stationary character ; the leading principles of science are Dot ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF MORALS. 353 less stationary ; the progress of science mainly results from the application of its frmdamental canons to practice ; finally y the application of the ftmdamental canons of morality leads to a corresponding advancement. The too unqualified and even crude manner, in which Mr. Buckle stated his doctrine, has indisputably left him open to a decisive refutation of this sort. But the completeness and ease of his triumph may perhaps have suggested to so acute and fair a critic as the author of the article, the suspicion that Mr. Buckle could hardly have meant that the morality of England to-day, for example, is precisely the same as that of Athens in the time of Plato. Men of the highest moral elevation in Athens thought that it was a good, or at least a perfectly harm- less, thing to expose a new-bom child, which it would have been inconvenient for them to rear; they saw equally little harm, indeed they saw some indirect virtue, in frienddiipe which to us appear too vile and abominable to be even named. An Athenian might be imimpeachably moral, and yet pursue a course which with us would, not only subject him to the extreme legal penalty, but would stamp him as a depraved and inhuman monster. This variability of moral practice is now a common- place. Of course, therefore, nobody of Mr. Buckle's calibre could seriously maintain that morals are stationary, in the sense that the same actions either really are moral or immoral, or are thought to be so, in one generation as in another. All that could be meant by such an assertion as Mr. Buckle's is conceded by the critic himself at the close of his essay, where he expressly declares his belief in the unchangeable character of moral truth.^ * Moral truth,' he says, ' is immutable, but (1) It seems to be a matter for regret, that a writer whose essay is so remark- able an illustration of the rapidity with which the historical is superseding the metaphysical method, should have thought it worth while to offer a pinch of incense to the old gods. ^ Moral truth * is only a set of individual propositions, A A I 354 ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF MORALS. the circumstances of the age determine the nature and range of its application/ Or, as he has put it elsewhere, * Moral pro- gress consists in giving a grander sweep to the application of tenets which the old world knew, not in finding new tenets out/ The real question, therefore, is not, after all, whether there is a movement in morality, hut entirely turns upon the agencies by which that movement is furthered. In what way do the circumstances of an age determine the evolution of the moral maxims which prevailed in itP What directs the coxirse of development from the morality of one age to that of another P The history of human advancement may be said to consist of two main processes, first the progressive elevation of what is technically called Deontology, or morality as it ought to be; next the continuous transfer of maxims which are accepted in Deontology, into the codes of positive morality, or morality as it is. In other words, human progress means, first, the multi- plication and elevation of types of virtuous character ; and next, the practical acceptance of these types by the general senti- ment ; — first, a constant raising and purifying of the ideals of virtue ; next, their realisation in conduct. That is to say. and there is not one of these propositions which any rational person now holds to be, and to have been, of nniyersal obligation upon all persons under aU circumstances at all times. We may believe that moral truth is immutable, as soon as we have found any one moral precept immutable, and not before. The writer will say, that in the most primitive time there was such a crime as ^ murder, for instance ; that even then there was a moral precept against killing persons standing in some relation to one. But he would admit that the precept) * Thou shalt not kill,' is meaningless until the question has been answered, ' Thou i shalt not kill whom $* Now nobody can say that the answer to this question is always the same. 80 that the only immutable part of the precept is that which is meaningless. Closely examined, people can only mean by the immutability of moral truth, that under all circumstances there it eueh a thing as Duty, tom^ '4 obligation incumbent on every member of a society. * ON THB DRVBLOPMBNT OF MORALS. 355 moral advance in a community or a number of commimities depends upon the perpetual improvement of the conception of duty, in the first place, and, in the second, upon the constant willingness of most of the members of the commimity to obey their conception of duty, in however rudimentary or however complex a stage it may happen to be. It is of the highest importance, in considering the natural history of Morals, to separate these two very distinct aspects and parts of morality ; for the process by which one of them arises may well be very different from that which creates the other ; and a good deal of the controversy has had its origin in a persistent confusion and identification of two barely connected sets of moral elements. It is obvious to anybody who thinks about it, that in criti- cising the morality of a man's character, we consider, or at any rate we ought to consider, both the comparative elevation of his standard, and the sincerity and constancy of his efforts to con- form to it. If his notions of duty are low, relatively to the average notions of his time, then the circumstance of his fidelity to this standard entitles him to no approbation. And if, on the other hand, his avowed standard is high, while he makes no proportionately strenuous endeavour to reach it in his conduct, then he not only wins no approval, but incurs cen- sure. Of these two factors in a high moral character — a high ideal of duty, and an unhesitating ^^ollingness to sacrifice all other interests in striving to reach such an ideal — ^it is some- how felt, and aU language testifies to the existence of the feeling, that the latter, the willingness to prefer duty, to prac- tise the self-denial involved in its performance, to follow what seems to be right because it is right, is the more dii^tinctively and peculiarly moral. Men are sensible (as indeed how could they fail to be P) that there is a radical distinction between the A a2 356 ON THE DBVELOPMCNT OF MORALS. kind of conditions which produce this willingness to obey duty, and the kind of conditions which lead to an enlightened and elevated idea of what duty is. If it were otherwise, we should never be able, as we clearly are able, to forgive or even to praise the agent while condemning the action; to admit the morality of the motive, while pronouncing on the inimorality of the action which sprang from it. For the latter depends upon the consequences of the action, and to be able justly to estimate them is felt not to be a result of virtue merely, but of wisdom, which is virtue and something besides. The inquiry, therefore, which has been usually treated as one, is in reality twofold. The single question, by what pro- cess man's moral nature is modified, would be better studied as two questions. First, how do ethical systems arise P by what process do moral ideas expand and acquire their complexity and comprehensiveness P By what sort of process — ^mark, not for what reason — is it that certain things come to be regarded as right, and certain other things as wrong P Second, by what sort of process does the presiding general idea of Duty or Virtue acquire its high place P First, what agencies contribute to correctness and elevation in the precepts enjoined in any moral code P And, second, what agencies contribute to the growth of a very high degree of sensitiveness to the claims of duty in the persons to whom the code is delivered P The first of these questions is much simpler than the other, and Mr. Buckle's critic has treated it very ably — ^in some points, indeed, which space will not allow us to discuss, very originally, — showing that social circumstances give rise to types of character, or, as it would perhaps be better to say, rules of conduct, some of which are exclusively local, while others are of more universal fitness ; that the last survive, while the former pass away with the p^uliar conditions from which ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF MOKALS. 357 they arose ; in short, that ' the Natural History of Morals is the history of social conditions.' But surely this is a moral movement, which follows after, and depends upon, a purely intellectual energy. Morals, it may safely be said, are in the first instance the products of positive institutions, and these positive institutions, in turn, are the products of an intellectual discernment, in the chief or lawgiver, of the requirements of the circumstances in which his society is placed, of the conse- quences of certain kinds of conduct. The lawgiver forbids or enjoins given actions, and then public opinion gi-adually asso- ciates the ideas of praise and blame, virtue and vice, the idea of Duty, in a word, with his injunctions or prohibitions. In Texas, or Nevada, or Nebraska, you may watch the growth of the ideas of Law and Duty just as if they were plants. The process is just the same as in the old primitive societies, with the pregnant and instructive difference that no Divine sanction is appealed to. Lawless desperadoes in these frontier settle- ments find, after a certain experience of savagery, that on the whole it is more conveniefit, in the long run, not to rob and murder. A public opinion grows up that is hostile to these malpractices, and a willingness to unite to repress them. Then a Vigilance Committee puts theft and excessive murder down 358 ON THE DBVELOPMENT OF MOBAI^. by hanging anybody who takes another man's life or another man's property. And so, as population increases, and men's relations to one another become both closer and more extensive, other kinds of acts are put along with robbery and homicide as things that will not be endured. A legal code grows first, and the ethical code follows steadily behind it. By-and-by the ethical code expands in directions of its own ; ideas begin to occupy a place in it, which are not embodied in positive law ; but they win their place by the same process which preceded the earliest enactments ; a process, that is, of regard, more or less conscious and deliberate, to the consequences of given pieces of conduct to everybody concerned, not excluding the character of the doer. In inquiring, therefore, into the growth of ' the complexity and majesty of moral codes,' should we not be principally engaged in observing an intellectual operation — the acquisition of a wider knowledge of effects, a keener insight into consequences, a greater power of reasoning correctly about them P Just as primitive morality grows out of consulting con- venience, in its narrow sense, so later morality is the outcome of some man's mind who consults convenience, or fittingness, in its loftiest and noblest sense. The great moral refoimer is simply the man who brings the healthiest and strongest intel- lect into questions of conduct and character, instead of into chemistry, physiology, or any other science. He is empha- tically the possessor of Vision, and Vision is not the less a quality of the intelligence for being directed to moral subjects. It is the difference in the subjects on which they bring their powers to bear, not in the kind of powers employed, that makes the distinction between the man who augments the treasures of science, and the man who gives new meanings to Duty and Virtue. One of the most impressive proofs of the dependence of this ON THB DEVELOPMENT OF MORALS. 359 side of morality upon intellectual movement is the fact that, where the latter does not exist, the former is stationary too. The conception of the ingredients of duty alters least where there is least intellectual activity, where there are least addi- tions to the stock of knowledge. Other conditions, besides stationariness of knowledge, enter into stationariness of a moral system. But it is remarkably significant that where, as in Spain or in Turkey, the intellect lies very stagnant, the articles in the current ethical code remain in a similar degree unmoved and unamended. And, on the other side, when has there been a great stir in the region of knowledge which has not been followed by a stir in the region of duty? When have men known more about other things, without subsequently knowing more about duty also P The revival of learning preceded the Beformation, the latter being, in substance, quite as much a moral as a theological movement. The wonderful additions to human knowledge, which took place in France in the last century, preceded the ethical development which so amazingly distinguished the close of the century — a development to which, among other gifts, modem society is indebted for the important idea that the life of a man is of value to his fellows. In these and other cases, where mental progress has advanced by an immense stride, enlightenment in morals has followed en- lightenment in scientific and literary knowledge. Moral dogmas do thus advance, but it is by intellectual processes. The articles of moral systems become refined and elevated, if not in their formal statement, still in their interpretation and application to practice. But the instruments by which this improving operation is conducted are the usual instruments of the intelligence, bent to ideas of character and conduct, instead of to the themes of art, physics, history, or any of the other objects of understanding. V 360 ON THB DEVELOPMENT OF MORALS. But let US turn to the other side of morality. If it is as clear as Mr. Buckle held it to be, and as his critic's theory of the natural history of morals equally implies, that it is by intellectual deliberation, by rational argument, by all the agencies of an instructed understanding, that the objects of moral conviction become purer, loftier, more conformable to the requirements of contemporary circumstance, it is certainly not by these agencies also, not by them only, that a corresponding quickening of moral sensitiveness takes place. In this region, to instruct the understanding is to do very little. Arguments are not adequate to the task of making men more willing to do their duty. Reasoning is never strong enough of itself to beget a love of virtue. The scales fall from the eyes of him who has been blind to Duty by what is, to mere intelligence, a miracle. The philosopher who adds new aims to the moral creed raises them by means of the width and ftdness of his vision. To him right and wrong is a distinction of the intelli- gence. To the many it is a distinction of feelings, affections, sympathies. Duty is a growth of that part of their nature, in which the rays of reason, when they penetrate into it, are softened and sufi^ed by a thousand elements of prejudice, sympathy, and association. The love of duty, virtue, holiness, or by whatever name we call this powerful sentiment, exists independently of argument. St. Bernard was in instruction of understanding very inferior to Ab^lard, yet he stirred the love of duty, as duty was then conceived, in the breast of every one who came within his influence, and filled his age with moral heroism. And so at most times, the preacher who is most powerfully able to excite the love of virtue, is least competent to enlarge the ingredients and elevate the standard of virtue. The aims which St. Bernard extolled as virtuous, and the obligations which he imposed, were not new. Other great ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF MORALS. 861 saints had proclaimed exactly the same moral convictions. He did nothing to advance the theory of conduct. His contribu- tion, and the contribution of men of his type, consists in stimulating men to more enthusiastic willingness to rise in practice to the requirements of the theory they accept. There have been men, like Plato, endowed enough both with the intellectual quality of vision to add new discoveries to the theory of right conduct, and at the same time with delicate and sympathetic ^tfo9, to communicate to every listener, with the faintest susceptibility to moral impressions, a new and ener- getic impulse in the direction of virtue and duty. Alas the great teachers of this class are too soon numbered. The scientific historian of ci'y;ilisation commits a stupendous error who leaves out of his account, among the potent agencies of mental progress, both this non-intellectual capacity in the teacher of quickening and exalting the love of virtue, and this non-intellectual sensibility to virtuous aspirations. Yet, in one sense, it might obviously be said of this moral element, that it is stationary. It is stationary in qtmlity. Strong spiritual emotion is just the same mood in kind at one time as at another. It is just the same thing in Plato as in St. Paul; in the Corinthian husbandman, who was struck with such admiration at the Oorgias, that he abandoned his fields and his vines to sit at the feet of its author, as in Cornelius, who sent for Simon Peter to teach him and his household. A virtuous Roman was as solicitous to do his duty as a virtuous Frenchman is ; that the precise objects of their solicitude should vary, makes no difference in the essential character, does not affect the sub- stantial identity of their solicitude. But, in another sense, this moral element is so far from being stationary that its fluctua- tions mark the most decisive conditions of the decline and advance. of hxmian civilisation and happiness. Always the 362 ON TBB DEVELOPMENT OF MORAUi. same in quality, sense of duty is constantly changing in quantity. The amount of it in different communities, or in the same com- munity at different periods, varies infinitely ; sometimes we may contemplate a whole nation of heroes, at another we may behold it sunk in corruption. The difference between the two stages measures the distance between the maximum and the minimum amounts of moral enthusiasm. The immediate cause of the decline of a people is nearly always a decline in the quantity of its conscience, not a depravation of its theoretical ethics. The Greeks became corrupt and enfeebled, not for lack of ethical science, but through the decay in the proportion of those, who were actually sensible of the reality and force of ethical obligations. The Mal^ometans were triumphant over Christians at Constantinople and in Spain, not because their scheme of duty was more elevated or comprehensive, but because their respect for duty was more strenuous and fervid. Hence, when we are told that ' low moral types are constantly making room for high,' it can only be accepted in the sense of a low or high degree of subjective sincerity, not of objective elevation. Viewed in this light, we may notice parenthetically, the much vaunted triumph of justice in human affiiirs is seen to be something very like a truism. That ' wrong-doing brings ruin ' is self-evident, as soon as we have agreed that wrong is non- conformity to the requirements of the surrounding conditions. There is nothing morally penal, no retributive justice, in the sufferings of the children for the sins of the parent. Indeed, to call this vicarious visitation of the offences of the guilty upon the heads of the innocent by the name of justice, retributive or otherwise, is about as strange a twist of a moral idea to suit a theological anachronism, as one may find in the history of thought. Define the high moral type as that which best meets ON TDB DEVBLOPHENT OF MORALS. 3(53 the reqxurements of the situation, and it flows from the very definition that the low moral type will fall before it, and be visited by ruin. Inferior morals, arising either from inferior vision of what social circumstances demand, or else from an indifference in the heart to the lessons of sight, must inevitably subject a man at least to the risk of a fatal clash. But when people say that God is not a God that hideth himself, that justice is supreme on the earth, that in the long-run even here it is well with the good and ill with the wicked, is this all that they mean, and all that they want us to believe P To sum up. The amount of respect for duty being not a stationary, but a very constantly fluctuating element in mental progress, in order to judge whether morals as a whole are as stationary as has been alleged, one has only to consider whether this element of desire to do what seems right, equally with the other element of power in finding out what is right, only moves secondarily to, and in dependence upon, the intel- lectual element. We soon perceive that this is not so. Some of our feelings seem to move in an orbit of their own. Sen- sitiveness of conscience, lively impressionableness to considera- tions of duty, the capacity of quick and frdl response to a vigorous appeal — the quantity of this in a community varies without reference to variations in instructed intelligence. And again, the possibility of the appearance of a teacher, with the rare kindling and sympathetic power appears to be, partially independent of the general intellectual conditions of the time. These will determine within certain limits the form and tenour of his teaching, but they shed no light on the source of that ^Oos about it, which is so magically attractive. The fact of this quality in the teacher happening, at certain times, so to touch the corresponding receptive quality in a great number of other people, as to produce an unusually strong vitality in moral 364 ON THB DSVELOPMBNT OF H0BAI8. motiyesy cannot be explained at all satisfactorily by the influ- ence of opinions and intellectual ideas. Those extraordinary expansions in the quantity of conscientious feeling, which must be admitted to be causes of social progress, must be the results of the social conditions operating on the general character. APPENDIX. APPENDIX.' CONDORCET'S plea for the CmZENSHIP OF WOMEN. ▲ TRANSLATION. The piece wbiclx I have here reproduced, with the omission of one or two sentences of no significance, was published by Condorcet on the 3rd of July, 1790, in the Journal de la SociiU de MDCCLXXXIX,, and was no doubt intended to influ- ence the deliberations of the Constituent Assembly, of which he did not happen to be a member.^ It is natural that the question of the equal place of women with men in the rights of citizenship should come into pro- minence in times of reyolution, like '89. The more profound and moral the revolutionary feeling is, the more certain is the subjection of women to arrest attention. There are at least two good reasons why this should be so In such times men are deeply stirred by a sense of justice. And in such times they feel to an unusual degree the need of the intelligent co-opera- tion of women. Both conditions are to be met with in those men of our own day, who are most penetrated by social senti- ment, though there is marked difference among them as to the ideal of the female character, and also as to the precise way in which their action in public affairs may best make itself felt. The simplest and truest view surely is, that we have no right to (1) Cf. autea, p. 106. (2) (Euvres de Condorcet, yol. x. p. 121. 868 APPENDIX. deprive women of the opportunity of deciding both of these questions for themselves. It is in the power of habit to familiarise men with the violation of their natural rights to such a degree that, among those who have lost them, nobody ever thinks of reclaiming them, or supposes himself to have su£fered any wrong. There are even some of these cases of violation, which have escaped philosophers and legislators, when they were devoting themselves with most zeal to the establishment of the common rights of the members of the human race, and to the founda- tion in these rights, and in them only, of political institutions. For instance, have they not every one violated the principle of the equality of rights, in tranquilly depriving the half of the human race of that of assisting in the making of law ; in excluding women from the right of citizenship ? Is there a stronger proof of the power of habit, even over enlightened men, than the spectacle of equality of rights being invoked in favour of three or four hundred men that an absurd prejudice had deprived of them, and being forgotten in respect of twelve millions of women ? For this exclusion not to be an act of tyranny, it would be necessary either to prove that the natural rights of women are not absolutely identical with those of men, or else to show that women are incapable of exercising them. 