THE GOVERNMENT OF LIFE.

In the preceding number of this Review an inquiry was tentatively entered into as to the meaning of life, especially of human life, both social and individual. Therein the conclusion seemed unavoidable that the true purpose of life was to serve as 'an arena for the exercise of free volition,' the fulfilment of duty being the proper end and aim of both individual and social existence. In the course of the inquiry certain subordinate principles were arrived at relating both to the duties of individuals and governments and respecting the relations of 'Church' and 'State.' These it is proposed here to pass in review, in order to see what, if any, more definite rules may be thence deduced for conduct-i.e. for the government of individuals and of communities.

It may perhaps be objected in limine: You have considered man and his social relations in the abstract, not in the concrete; you have had to do with so many puppets, not with men and women. Even if you were right in what you before said, you will certainly be wrong as to any positive rules and maxims you may deduce from a set of abstract speculations-suitable perhaps to wear away an idle hour, but of no practical use to anybody whatever. As men really live and move, it is but an infinitesimal portion of them that will even understand, still less appreciate, the ideas you enunciate. Living men are really dominated mainly by their material wants, and too generally by their lower emotions. Beware, whatever you do, of attempting to construct an ideal community of abstractions, and thence deducing rules for the action of real communities. To do so would be to act like Rousseau and the well- and ill-meaning dreamers of the eighteenth century, the survivors of whom were rudely awakened to behold the dissolution of a great commonwealth in blood and mire. At no time were individuals isolated; they have always existed as constituents of some social organism which has done far more to make them than they have done to constitute it. The social unit was at first "the tribe: even "the family" was a comparatively late formation. That the teaching coming from such a source as you have chosen will be pernicious, is probable; that it will be thoroughly unreasonable is certain.'

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The objection would be unanswerable had the writer the pretension to draw out rules for actual conduct from abstract principles without regard to the many limitations which circumstances render necessary in the concrete. The intention of paying due regard to such limitations and circumstances was announced at the close of the preceding paper, and special attention will be here directed to bearing them in view. Not that the author ventures to hope that he can take anything like a complete view of their number or form an adequate estimate of their importance; he ventures but to throw out a few suggestions which have appeared to him and to some of his friends likely to be useful, especially for conciliating opponents who mistake each other for foes when they really differ only because they respectively see but opposite sides of the same shield.

As to the criticism of the supposed objector based on his estimate of his fellow-men's intellectual powers and moral tendencies, together with their barbarous past and want of individuality, it may be replied as follows: Men, as they exist with all their faults, are, after all, animals with at least latent moral perceptions and emotions and volitional power; they can apprehend more or less distinctly, however imperfectly, the useful, the beautiful, and the good, and for the most part they are more or less, knowingly or unknowingly, religious. Whatever was the physical origin of man, such is his nature now, a nature capable of progressively appreciating his position, his rights, his duties. It may be that all our ancestors were once in a very degraded state; but the individual man, however degraded as it is he alone who thinks and feels-we must consider as being, and having ever been, the real social unit-a unit, however, of which the tribal or family "state" may have made, and probably did make, small account. Probably also at no time and nowhere have individuals failed to form a 66 state of some definite kind, large or small, and existing nations, their laws and customs, have doubtless been derived through diverse sources from rude origins. To seek then violently to change the laws and customs of communities (the masses of which have too often the passions of men with the intellects of children) in obedience to an arbitrary, absolute ideal, would be even more a blunder than a crime.'

But all this is no bar to advocating political ideals in the pages of a periodical addressed to the cultured few, nor does it forbid the attempt to satisfy that desire to justify the ways of man to man which every rational mind must feel as it developes. Moreover, each day advances the movement which transforms the process of civilisation from an unconscious evolution to a fully self-conscious and deliberate development. It is true that vast follies and terrible crimes have been committed in seeking to realise abstract political ideals drawn from within, without due regard to circumstances of time and place. But that is no reason for erecting empiricism itself into an

ideal. Let us at least try to be rational. God has given us our reason as the test and measure of all that comes within the range of our experience and of much that transcends it. However expedient it may be to acquiesce in the continued existence of the less good, for the sake of not destroying in embryo a greater good, let us not regard that acquiescence as if it were a thing to take pride in. If a teaching drawn from principles may be pernicious, certainly that drawn from the chapter of accidents with avowed disregard of principles must be yet more so.

It is true enough, as we shall see later on, that we cannot draw from abstract considerations hard and fast absolute lines to anticipate and guide human concrete actions in all cases; but if we are hindered from laying down such absolute rules we may none the less keep before us certain salutary ideals which may help us to hold fast to the dictates of developed reason.

As in the former paper, so here we may divide the subject into three heads, with reference respectively to (1) the individual, (2) the community, and (3) the race.

As to the meaning of life for the individual, we concluded before 1 that it might be taken to be a series of opportunities for exercising right volition, our pains and pleasures supplying us with continually recurring occasions for the exercise of our power of choice according to the dictates of conscience, and strengthening us morally by the exercise of self-denial.

Self-culture, physical, intellectual, and æsthetic, as well as (but in due subordination to) moral improvement, was also recognised as one form of duty, the cultivation of each such perfection being limited only at that point where its further development would occasion moral retrogression. And though reason tells us that it is right for the individual to cultivate all these lesser goods according to their relative degrees of value, at the same time it is plain that it may often be a better thing for this or that individual to neglect such minor good, lest its culture should lead to the neglect of greater good. Thus it may be that to this or that young man or woman a diminished care of physical beauty may be a condition of greater advance even intellectually and a fortiori morally. Again, a good housewife with small means and a large family may be bound in conscience to sacrifice an æsthetic advance in painting or music to her domestic duties. Similarly her husband may have a strong inclination to intellectual culture, but would seriously deteriorate in virtue if he gratified that inclination by devoting to it time which the needs of his family required him to devote to some bread-winning drudgery. Doubtless many a noble mind with intellectual aspirations and powers which circumstances repress, dutifully spends days shovelling coals into a furnace or in the monotonous toil of some factory, a spectacle for angelic eyes far grander than any 1 Loc. cit. p. 501.

that could be afforded by a world-renowned intellectual triumph and social elevation, accomplished at the sacrifice of some unobtrusive duty.

But, apart from such moral neglect, it is evidently not only right for the individual to cultivate himself, but reason tells us that it is a minor duty to aid in the cultivation and improvement, in lesser matters, of the world as he finds it. He has not merely to do good morally to his fellow-men, which is, of course, a major duty, but also to seek the promotion of truth, harmony, and beauty, as far as may be, in every sphere and in all directions, in the beautiful world committed by its Creator to our rule and government. Thus every science and every fine art can be legitimately cultivated from mere inclination, when no higher duty intervenes to forbid it-scientific knowledge and artistic excellence, the promotion of truth and the development of beauty, being each a good in itself absolutely.

But the scientific man and the artist may follow their pursuits from a higher motive-namely, from the belief that they ought to follow them, and from the perception that they in fact are absolute goods' in themselves, and lawfully to be followed for their own sake. A higher motive still may, however, intervene, that of benevolence; they may be followed from goodwill to our fellow-men, and from a desire to benefit them intellectually or æsthetically by devoting to their service such scientific or æsthetic aptitudes as we may possess. A yet higher motive may be followed, if we believe (as we most reasonably may) that such culture will result in some ethical gain to the world, for they may then be cultivated as a means direct or indirect towards the increase of virtue; and a still higher end than even this may also actuate us, as will be shown later.

In the preceding paper intellectual culture was represented as a duty, and also as a necessary means of enabling us to understand better our moral obligations through the perception thence to be derived of our true relations towards other beings.

As to living impersonal creatures, we concluded that they might justly be treated as mere instruments and slaves, yet not altogether without reverence or without consideration for the feelings of such as are sentient if unintelligent.' It is manifest that such reverence is quite incompatible with the reckless cruelty towards animals practised in the south of Europe, and with the unscrupulous advocacy of vivisection made use of by certain of its foreign defenders. It is evident also that the tenderness towards animals which is one of the most recent developments of civilisation is in itself a legitimate development. But this conclusion none the less justifies the infliction of death and any amount of pain which human welfare really makes it needful for us regretfully to give to animals, when every care has been taken scrupulously to minimise it. Moreover, the gulf recognised as existing between personal and impersonal animals tends to show that, desirable

as mercifulness to the beast is for the beast's own sake, it is indefinitely more desirable for the sake of the person who directly or indirectly may be deteriorated morally by its even involuntary neglect, and still more by its wanton abandonment and outrage.

As to 'persons,' we saw that 'from the ethical standpoint,' 'whatever their position, they have the same one great end set before them, and their life has the same objective value.' The life of each one is an end in itself, and no one can be justly used by another as a mere 'means.' The rights of each must therefore limit the rights of all, and be limited by the rights of every other. We also saw the 'priceless value' of human life as the one indispensable condition for the performance of that which we found to be the ultimate end of all organic life, irrational as well as rational--namely, the exercise of volition in accordance with the dictates of reason judging as to what is right.

And, indeed, the supreme sacredness of human life comes out with special plainness when compared with the life of beings whose existence is but a means, and may therefore be sacrificed without scruple to our needs. Human life, as the life of a being whose moral nature makes its existence an end in itself, is of incomprehensible, of infinite significance.

From this point of view, it is plain how grossly and grievously those err who would urge the destruction of deformed or unhealthy children, and who would sanction euthanasia and the painless extinction of the aged and hopelessly sick. Those who would do so would pervert the whole aim and object of human life, and would place physical welfare and the cessation of physical suffering above moral good; they would deem the good actions of the unhealthy and the deformed of less moment than their physical defects, and the pains of the aged and the hopelessly sick of greater account than their virtuous volitions. Similarly condemned are those who would advocate or sanction the voluntary limitation of conjugal fecundity. The painful life of struggle, which parents of large families may have to go through, is not for a moment to be denied or ignored; but, apart even from the many consolations which may be fairly expected to attend it, the moral gain of such a self-denying career is out of comparison with any physical, intellectual, or aesthetic losses which may attend it. So also as regards the children themselves, it is neither to be denied nor ignored that less health and strength, less knowledge and less culture may be the lot of a large family as compared with a small one; but apart again from the many consolations and supports of fraternal affection, the moral gain of the generous self-denial and mutual sacrifice between the brothers and sisters of a large and painfully struggling, but virtuous family, is out of all comparison with the lower benefits which may accompany its diminution in number.

The next relation which was before considered, was that borne by