satisfactory to the oyster, would leave him restless and bored. If you are a Socrates, you realize similarly that you could not find satisfaction in the fool's life. You know that although you have sorrows the fool wots not of, you also have a whole range of joys beyond his ken; and those joys are particularly precious to you. In the fourth place, the very words "oyster" and "fool" beg the question. "Fool" means by very definition a sort of person one would not choose to be; and the very vizualization of an oyster is repellent. Were one to offer as the alternative a happy lion or eagle; or a happy, free-hearted savage such as Chateaubriand and Rousseau painted, one suspects that not a few suffering men and women would jump at the chance.

It is not really important to decide, however, what any one would choose. Our choices are biased and often foolish. The actual question is, Is the happiness of a fool, or of an oyster (if happiness it has) as worthy, as objectively desirable, as that of a wise man? And here again we have to say, not extrinsically so desirable. The wise man is he who finds his happiness in activities that conduce to his ultimate welfare and that of others. The happiness of fool or oyster is transitory, blind, and fraught with unseen dangers; it is of no value to the community in which they live. But intrinsically, just qua happiness, it is if it is as good. What makes one form of happiness more worthy than another is simply, in the first place, its greater keenness or extent or freedom from pain, and in the second place its potentialities of future happiness or pain for self and others.

When Mill wrote, therefore, in his classic treatise, that "some kinds of pleasure are more desirable and valuable than others," he showed a - for him unusual failure to analyze. Some kinds of pleasures are more desirable, for the reasons summarized above. But pleasure, in the abstract,

pleasantness, agreeableness, intrinsic worth, whatever you choose to call it, is itself a quality; there can be more or less of it in a concrete experience, that is all. To speak of kinds of pleasure is to mean kinds of experience which have the common attribute of pleasantness. In themselves all kinds of experience that are equally pleasant are equally worthy; there is no meaning to that adjective as applied to intrinsic immediate good. "Worthy" and "unworthy" apply to experiences only when we begin to consider their consequences.

Is morality merely subjective and relative?

Different people find happiness in different ways; if morality is simply the means to happiness, is it not relative to their varying desires; is it not a purely subjective matter and without a fixed objective nature?

We must discriminate. Morality is not relative to our inclinations and desires, because those often do not rightly represent our own true welfare, still less the general welfare. Happiness is desirable whether our impulses are adjusted so as to aim for it or not. Nor is morality relative to our opinions; an act may be wrong though the whole world proclaim it right. It is a matter not of opinion but of fact whether an act is going to bring the greatest attainable welfare or not. However biased and short-sighted we may. be, the consequences of acts will be what they will be. In a very real sense, then, morality is objective; it is valid whether we recognize its validity and want it or not. It represents our needs more truly than our own wills, and thus has a greater authority, just as the rules of dietetics are not a matter of appetite or whim, but have a rational authority over our caprices. Morality is not, like imagination, something we can shape at will; it is imposed upon us from without, like sensation. Its development is predetermined by

the structure of human nature and its environment; we do not invent it, we accept it.1

But although imposed upon our restive impulses, it is not imposed by any alien and arbitrary will. It is imposed by the same cosmos that set our consciousness into relation with a given kind of body in a given world. Submission to it is simply submission to the laws of our own natures. Lasting happiness can be found only in certain ways; we must make the best of it, but it is for our own good that we obey. Morality is relative to our organic needs and particular environment. It is a function of human nature, varying with its variations. A different race of beings on another planet might have to have a very radically different code. Ours is a distinctively human code, bearing the earmarks of our humanity and stamped with the particular nature of our earth-life.

To say this is to admit that morality varies with different temperaments and different needs. What is best for one person is not necessarily best for another; what is right for an early stage of civilization is not always right for a later. The patriarchal family was a source of strength in primitive society; to-day it would be a needless tyranny. Life in a tropical isle frees man from the necessity of many virtues which a more rigorous climate entails. The poet needs to live in a different way from the coal-heaver. Just so far as our individual and racial needs vary our real needs, not our supposed needs and pathological desires (and always

1 Cf. Cudworth (ca. 1688), Treatise, chap. II, sec. 3: “It is so far from being true that all moral good and evil, just and unjust, are mere arbitrary and factitious things, that are created wholly by will, that (if we would speak properly) we must needs say that nothing is morally good or evil, just or unjust, by mere will without nature, because everything is what it is by nature, and not by will."

A good recent discussion bearing upon the question of the relativity of morality will be found in Santayana's Winds of Doctrine, pp. 138–154.

bearing in mind the needs of others) - just so far is what is right for one different from what is right for another. This is no condemnation of eudæmonistic morality. On the contrary, a clear recognition of this truth would happily relax the sometimes over-rigid conventions of society, its cut-anddried-made-on-one-pattern code, and make it more elastic and suitable to individual needs.

However, we are not so different from one another as we are apt to think. The extenuation of sin on the plea that the "artistic temperament" demands this, or a "sensitive nature" needs that, is much overdone. Differences in temperament are superficial compared with the miles of underlying strata of plain human nature. "A man's a man for a' that," and must submit to the rules for human life. The man of "artistic temperament" does not know himself well enough. He feels superficial and transient cravings; he ignores his underlying needs, and the fundamental duties which, in common with all other men, he owes to his fellows.

The standard of morality is absolute and objective, then, for each individual, and approximately the same for all human beings. He is wise who seeks not to mould his life according to his longings, but who accepts the rules of the game and follows the paths blazed by the seers and doers before him. Only those individuals and those nations have achieved success that have been willing to learn and follow the ideals which life itself imposes, the eternal laws which religious men call the will of God.

For criticisms of the account of morality here defended: F. Paulsen, System of Ethics, bk. II, chap. II. J. Martineau, Types of Ethical Theory, bk. II, chaps. 1, I. T. H. Green, Prolegomena to Ethics, bk. II, chap. II; bk. III, chaps. I, IV; bk. IV, chaps. I, IV. Dewey and Tufts, Ethics, chap. xiv. J. S. Mackenzie, Manual of Ethics, 2d ed., chap. VI. H. Rashdall, Theory of Good and Evil, bk. 1,

chap. II; bk. II, chaps. I, II. W. Fite, Introductory Study of Ethics, pt. 1. G. E. Moore, Ethics, chap. vII. W. T. Bixby, The Crisis in Morals. W. R. Sorley, The Ethics of Nationalism. W. G. Everett, Moral Values, chap. v.

In rebuttal of some of these arguments: J. S. Mill, Utilitarianism, chaps. II and IV. H. Spencer, Data of Ethics, chaps. IX, X. Leslie Stephen, Science of Ethics, chap. x.