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still be argued that impulse and emotion lie outside the sphere of morals because they cannot be helped'. One man is naturally agreeable, another naturally brusque. You may prefer the former's company but you cannot call him a better man. It is not a fault if a man is cold or unsympathetic any more than if he is stupid: indeed lack of sympathy sometimes appears to be nothing else than a kind of stupidity. But however plausible all this may sound, we are bound to ask what exactly is meant when we are told that people 'cannot help it'. If it is meant that they do not deliberately choose to be kind or spiteful, then to deny on that ground the value of kindness or the badness of malice is simply to reiterate that only deliberate will has moral goodness: which is precisely the question. at issue. If it is meant that such impulses and feelings are determined by altogether unspiritual causes while the will is not, a metaphysical doctrine in the highest degree doubtful and precarious is put at the basis of what ought to be a purely ethical doctrine. We are then asked to decide the value of conscious states, not by considering them in themselves, but by inquiring what caused them. Now if this is really the right procedure we may have to deny value of will too. For will, like other conscious states, appears to be determined by bodily conditions. Personality as we know it has for its basis throughout a certain stage of bodily development, and we do not expect to find deliberate will except when that bodily development is present. This is not to say that each act of will is the mechanical result of some bodily change itself mechanical in nature. But we need not, and indeed cannot believe that the laws of mechanical explanation will enable us to deduce impulse or emotion any more than will itself. The whole view we are rejecting really

demands for will an impossible 'freedom' from all bodily conditions, while at the same time it tends to regard impulse or emotion as the outcome of bodily causes in the same way that the movement of one billiard ball is the result of another ball's impact. But in fact determination is universal though it is not always mechanical. And if deliberate will is the only thing that possesses moral value, it cannot seriously be contended that this is because it is absolutely free, absolutely out of relation with every external condition. It may well be doubted whether in the long run the freedom' of the will is anything but an expression to indicate the undoubted fact of choice. It is involved in talking of will at all. It refers to the exaltation of the will over the medley of natural inclinations between which, as we express it in unsatisfactory metaphors, it makes its decision. If this is so, to confine moral value to acts of will because they are free is to say that they are valuable because they are acts of will. Any other sense of freedom which can be proposed seems to result in an unintelligible and unnecessary departure from the causal principle.

Such a doctrine, of course, limits human responsibility. But so must every theory which allows that man does not wholly make either his environment or himself. Faith in our power to advance in the moral life may in some form be essential to any high excellence of conduct but this is bound to be both faith in ourselves and in the kindliness of the world towards our purposes, whether this be put in a theological form or not.

Any satisfactory proof of the position that impulse has no moral worth would therefore have to be based on such an examination of the non-deliberate type of action as might prove its essential imperfection. Now it is fair to

say that so long as a man remains on the level of impulse, there are likely to be contradictions in his life: and even if the reason for this likelihood-viz., the existence of contrary impulses were not present that which is desired impulsively is best gained by action that is deliberate, not impulsive and such action is possible only when the object of impulse attains the dignity of being the stable and constant preoccupation of rational will. But nothing here seems to prove that there can be no moral value in an impulsive action. There is a peculiar charm in certain acts that results from their being spontaneousi.e. unreflective and uncalculated. Any immediate expression of sympathy, any .natural and unstudied courtesy illustrates what I mean. Now it is true that such acts, though not the outcome of reflective will, not done on principle', would often be commended by reason and reflection: it is true that a man might set before himself a certain ideal of conduct which, as it penetrated his life and thinking, issued, even in moments when reflection was absent, in such impulsive goodness. But the fact remains that what we approve in these cases is not in the full sense an act of choice, but for the most part a state of the impulses and emotions: and if, as we must, we allow high value to such states in developed persons, it seems very hard to dismiss them from all consideration when they stand unqualified by the so-called higher activities.

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The case put above has been stated broadly for the sake of clearness. In point of fact there may be a whole series of mental states intermediate between impulse which is nearly 'blind' to the fully clear and articulate act of intelligent will. It is true that in most of our apparently impulsive actions, it might be possible to

trace in some faint measure the assent of the moral judgement and the will which it guides. Those who find illumination in such ideas may talk of an evolution from the lower to the higher they may, with equal right and the authority of Hegel to support them, describe the lower stages as being 'implicitly' the higher. Language of this kind does not seem to bridge over the difference between them and even the knowledge that they are very subtly interwoven in our own conscious life does not make it an absurd or unimportant question whether the impulse, the natural feeling, unaccepted though unrejected by governing reason, can possess true moral value. I have argued in support of this view: and so far as feeling and impulse of this kind seem for the reasons given likely to be present where there is not yet personality, I could not maintain that personality is the indispensable basis of morals. What remains true is that the ethical life in which we are most interested, which we discuss and which we have to live, is the life of persons. If, further, there are elements of value which can be present also in animals below the personal level, still even these can be but partially the same once the personal stage is reached : and a discussion of moral principle must be of most interest and importance when life can be guided by such principle.

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IN the next section of this work I have to support a contention that magnifies the importance of personality far more than the last can have diminished it. I have tried to show that before consciousness has attained personal dignity, it may possess not only value but even the rudiments of moral value. But I have now to maintain that the highest goodness of which we can conceive is only possible in personal life and moreover in the lives of finite persons. This view is contrary to any which would maintain that perfection could be an attribute only of an impersonal reality or of an infinite person. Far from connecting finitude with evil, this theory holds that none.but finite persons exist at all and that their limitations need not be a root of evil. If these doctrines can be established, it will have been proved that personality is the necessary basis of morals in the sense that it is the condition of the highest goodness we can imagine. They will be best supported by considering the reasons for which men have been led to maintain that there was something necessarily imperfect or evil in the kind of personal existence with which we are ourselves familiar.

In the former section we were working with an admittedly provisional conception of personality. We wished to ascertain the indispensable basis of personality,

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