of these maxims become so deeply enshrined in the reverence of communities, that to consider them as deduced appears sacrilegious. Nevertheless, custom does but hide, not change, the truth. Those maxims have the sanction of virtue because they embody and express the spirit of perfection in man. They define his path toward the goal. The end is not an end for A and B, but for all men. Herein is the vital distinction between virtue and vice. In the 'sphere of the latter, just in so far as vice, that is, selfishness, prevails, every man is an end in himself, for himself. It is not the common but the individual good which is his goal. This sphere is not a kingdom, for every individual is a king, striving to reduce all other persons and things to subjection, that they may serve him. Here all is strife and antagonism. Its mark is that the success of one is the loss of another. But the sphere of virtue is a true kingdom. In it all men bow to the one law, the common good. Here for strife is substituted harmony, for antagonism co-operation. Its mark is that the success of one is the gain of all. This is so,

not merely because the example of a moral conquest is stimulative to others, not because the spectacle of sobriety conquered by stern resolve inspirits him who has not yet reached that level; but because virtuous action, being action perfectly adjusted to the common good, will embrace every practicable aid that can be rendered to those who strive to make moral progress. It will, in truth, consist in this. Every achievement is thus an aid rendered to the common cause of all.

The very life of virtue consists in progress from the one sphere to the other. By primitive nature, the desires are private desires; they are ranged round self. It is the task of moral life to unbuild and re-erect them around their truer centre, the common good, the universal self; and so out of the fabric of the lower nature to construct the higher-out of the animal nature to construct the rational. If, at any given moment, we could discern the true lifepath of any man in virtue, we should see it cross many interests and likes, for its course would be direct towards the central point of human

progress. Yet, in the obedience thus demanded, however much it may conflict with our preferences, is no asceticism. Nor is Altruism implied in the sense which Mr. Herbert Spencer attaches to that term, for that writer uses the word to denote the absolute sacrifice of self. While a life guided only by the motive of service to man is demanded, yet it is here affirmed that thus only the selfish self is wrecked, while its counter, the unselfish self, is cherished, grows, absorbs into itself the vigour of that lower nature, till, in the ideally virtuous man, that nature ceases to be. He lives solely for human welfare, and living thus, he lives the largest, fullest life that is within the utmost bounds of human conception and possibility.

We are cognizant of the universal impulse towards the end of virtue—towards the common good. It is the prompting of duty. Whenever a course of conduct is seen by us to be the path of virtue, we recognize the obligation to pursue it. If the impulse to rightness of life presents itself only as obligation, we are on a low level of ethical attainment. The respect, the attach

ment, the reverence for right, and our desire for the moral progress of man, which are implied in a perception of duty, exist, of course; but they exist in a nature whose emotional forces do not flow readily at that level. A pull of will is necessary to neutralize the counter-energy of the selfish desires. The feeling of duty is but love and enthusiasm in germ-the love for humanity, the enthusiasm of humanity. It is when the self-regarding desires have been directed into the current of the universal, when life rolls along in a full tide of passion for the realization of the true and final human interests, that an effective moral life is reached. Then it loses the negative quality, which tends to cling to a morality resting on the colder dictates of duty. It refuses to remain satisfied with a life that can say, “I owe no man anything; I have been honest; I have spoken no lies." It passes over instinctively into positive virtue, whose claims are not satisfied till the individual's powers are treated by him as a trust held in the positive service of man. Thus duty and moral love dictate to every man, though with varying degrees of clearness and

energy, that he is bound to the service of the

And the bond is fundamental. Duty dictates the course which is right. Moral enthusiasm sweeps its living vehicle along, by a power which presents itself to our judgments as the one God-like, golden stream. Below these there is no deeper dictate, nor above them any loftier feeling. If we seek something other than the course which is right, we do but inquire for one which is more right; and so we affirm rightness to be the final judge. If we seek a passion higher than that for the good, it must be in the search for a better; and thus we discover the passion for goodness to be supreme.

Further, the bond is not only fundamental; it is co-extensive with our rational life. In so far as men's actions are not voluntary they do not come within the sphere of their rational life. The beating of the heart, a twitch in the gait,

* "Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the chords with might;

Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, pass'd in music

out of sight."

(Tennyson.)