some specific powers that I claim to possess, while trust in others, though it involves the belief that they possess certain desirable qualities, is more than merely that belief, is an attitude towards them as a whole. Self-love, self-respect, self-confidence, are all metaphors which seem to imply that we can treat ourselves in the same ways that we treat others. It is true that we can think of ourselves as persons with rights and duties just as we can so think of others. But beyond this, false implications are apt very easily to enter in, and at best we find in such terms only metaphorical descriptions of things that can be named more simply. Any term is metaphorical which seems to split the self into two persons with mutual rights and duties. In true love, respect, and confidence, no such artificial use of language is involved, and the state of mind indicated is indicated directly, not by metaphor. You cannot truly express what you mean in such cases unless you realize that you are describing the relations of persons to persons, and that the separation of persons thereby presupposed is an ultimate fact that no ethical doctrine may ignore. This then is the final justification of finite personality. Its existence is not merely compatible with goodness; it is also necessary for the existence of the highest good of which we can think. It is not merely that a number of finite persons might all be omniscient, or that they might all exercise an infinitely good will: nor merely that as a consequence it would be better that a plurality of persons should exist than not. A further examination of the good will shows that in its highest form it must develop into complex dispositions of mind towards other persons such as we call respect, trust, and love. These things cannot exist except between persons each of whom is self-conscious.

That these sentiments, or whatever we name them, are better than either knowledge or good will in the narrower sense is not a new conclusion in a Christian era to which St. Paul's first Epistle to the Corinthians is a familiar book. But its metaphysical implication has not always been observed. If the highest good is of this nature, then it can be realized only in a society of persons and so far as the existence of an Infinite Personality is incompatible with the existence of finite persons, it follows that the highest good does not demand but that it precludes the idea of infinite personality.

§ 5. Finite Personality in its Actual Forms

AND now let us endeavour to come back from heaven to earth. The supposition of a perfect society was made in order to discover whether finite personality would find a place in it. To answer this question has already involved a whole ethical theory. Put briefly the result is this. Supreme goodness cannot exist except as an attribute of persons living in relation with one another. Equally it can never be described accurately except by starting from the basis of a society composed of persons. Moral Philosophy has enveloped itself in phrases like 'the summum bonum': it has perplexed itself about the right method to produce the greatest amount of good on the whole. But whenever such phrases are used there is danger of unreality. It is the existence of good persons and their personal happiness that moral philosophy must contemplate, not mere abstract goodness. The same amount of knowledge may be much less valuable if it is all concentrated in one person than if it is divided in fragments among a number, and

conversely it may sometimes be better that it should be concentrated than that it should be split up. The reasons decisive in one sense and the other have to do largely with the relation knowledge bears in each case to the individual person possessed of it. A man in whom the theoretic interest is absolutely starved is a maimed personality and we should not welcome a world in which one man held in his mind all the treasures of Encyclopaedia Britannica while the rest did not know the alphabet. Not a number of moral excellences no matter where found or in whom, but a number of morally excellent persons: not a supply of knowledge, pleasure or good will stored up in huge impersonal reservoirs, but a society of persons knowing the truth, willing the good, loving one another and enjoying the fullness of their lives such is the ideal of any unsophisticated mind. It is only when it tries to explain itself that it begins to talk in abstract terms of this good or that good as if it were an irrevelant fact that it existed in persons, and then, perhaps, dismisses by some simple arithmetical formula the question in whom these things are to be planted. To correct this error is to realize more clearly two sorts of values; first the value of a personality as more than the separate good things which make it up: secondly the value of the various states of mind in which one person stands related to another.

On the first point it is clear that in every person there may be combined a number of activities which somehow become better by being interwoven together in one character. The entire absence of certain interests and emotions definitely detract from the goodness of a person even though in other respects he is very good indeed : though it is true that under certain circumstances the

very self-control that has eliminated a normal human interest is itself the keynote to an admirable character. The laws therefore according to which we could estimate the merits of persons as wholes are very difficult to formulate. But it is at least clear that such estimates are and ought to be formed. When we take stock of a character as a whole, we find in it a goodness which is not simply the presence of this or that good element, still less a tendency to bring into the world other good elements. We have already, in fact, reached the plane on which it is significant to talk of the excellence that consists in a 'personality': a moral ideal not only to be attained by persons, but to be realized in their individual selfdevelopment. The further consideration of this I will

return to later.

On the second class of values now clearly discovered, consisting in sentiments entertained towards other people, I have already dwelt. Let me give some further illustration of the practical difference made by the acknowledgement of the values in these attitudes of mind towards other people. The traditional argument against lying is the inconvenience and dislocation of society thereby produced. Now in what do these inconveniences consist? In the disturbance of the credit system, the difficulty of economic co-operation and the consequent impossibility of establishing a high degree of wealth and comfort? That these are sufficient evils no reasonable person could deny and of themselves, apart from the prospects of future reward and punishment, they would be sufficient to restrain the wise and prudent from all but the most necessary lies. But the old-fashioned moralist is right in believing that more can be said. That men should be able to trust one another is in itself a good thing

apart from all economic advantages that can thus be obtained. It is the first step in that series of mental dispositions which ends in love. If anyone is unwilling to admit the excellences of love to consist merely in the subsequent conveniences and advantages that it may entail, he ought to admit an analogous though perhaps less striking excellence in trust, in the faith of one man in another. Now this sort of mutual trust and confidence is not possible if men lie to one another.

Again, let me illustrate from a simple problem of distribution, how the values we have been discussing cut across the ordinary utilitarian formulas. An uncle with three nephews, and only a certain limited amount of leisure and money for their amusement, might give three different treats to one child or one treat to each of the three children. Now, supposing that the quantity of pleasure secured is as great in the first case as in the second, there is nothing so far to show why he should not spend all his energies on one child and leave the other two to their own devices: the utilitarian axiom of equality will not help here, for that only forbids preferring an inferior pleasure in one person to a greater pleasure in another. Yet we think of such behaviour as unjust, and deprecate the favouritism involved. The reason must be that the right regard for persons is not the same thing as the judicious calculation of enjoyments. The uncle in this case is neglecting two of his kinsmen : his attitude of mind towards them is wrong though his hedonistic arithmetic may be unimpeachable.

But now suppose a different problem of the same kind.

1 At any rate so long as the other two children did not know what was happening, in which case the pain of their disappointment and sense of injustice would have to be considered.