2. Its practical expression. This theoretical conflict has its counterpart in the practical life of man, and in the characteristic attitudes and moods of different ages, countries, and individuals in view of the actual business of life. Moral theory is the reflection of moral practice, and the interest of the high debate that has raged through all these centuries between the rival ethical schools has a practical and not a merely scientific, still less scholastic interest. Party-spirit runs high on the question of the summum bonum, for every man has a stake in its settlement, the stake of his own nature and destiny; and the side which each takes, in practice if not in theory, will be found to be the exponent of that nature, and the prophecy of that destiny. Let us look, then, for a moment at the practical expression of this fundamental ethical dualism.

It is not only in the philosophic schools, but in actual life, that we find the two moral types-the Stoic and the Cyrenaic. In all ages we can distinguish the rigorist, ascetic, strenuous temper of life from the impulsive, spontaneous, luxurious; the puritan from the cavalier spirit; the man of reason, cool and hard, from the man of feeling, soft and sensuous. We might perhaps call the two types the idealistic and the realistic. In historical epochs, and

in whole peoples, as well as in the individual life, the distinction is illustrated. The Greeks were a sensuous

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people, but gradually the reason found the life of sensibility unsatisfying, and the Greek spirit took its flight to the supersensible and ideal—to the world of pure reason; they were realists, they became idealists. result is found in Platonism, Stoicism, and Neo-Platonism. This mystic yearning after a satisfaction which the sensible world cannot yield, this home-sickness of a rational being, is at the heart of medieval Christianity, with its monastic ideal and its anxious denial of the flesh

for the sake of the spirit's life. The Byronic temper represents the other extreme. Man regards himself as

a creature of sensibility, of impulses, of enthusiasms and exaltations, of weariness and depression,-a kind of mirror that reflects the changes of his life, or a highstrung instrument that vibrates in quick responsiveness to them all. The realism of contemporary fiction represents the same one-sided assertion of the rights of sensibility; and the luxuriousness and material comfort of our modern life, the practical utilitarian spirit that threatens ideal aims, minister to the same result. But the two forces are always present and in conflict.

3. Attempts at reconciliation.-Each of these sides of our nature has its rights, just because both are sides of our nature, and, as Aristotle said, life and virtue must be in terms of nature. In actual life, we find either the sacrifice of one to the other, or a rough and ready, more or less successful, compromise between their rival interests. The task of ethical science, as it is the task of the moral life itself, is the reconciliation of these apparently conflicting claims-the full recognition both of the rights of reason and of the rights of sensibility, and their reduction, if possible, to the unity of a common life governed by a single central principle. This task of reconciliation was attempted long ago by Plato, who, after condemning sensibility as irrational, yet described virtue as essentially a harmony of all man's powers,a complete life in which every part of his nature, the lowest as well as the highest, should find its due scope and exercise, all in subjection to the supreme authority of reason. Aristotle, too, though he reasserted the Platonic distinction of the rational and irrational, conceived of man's well-being as a full-orbed life, which, while it was in accordance with right reason, embraced sensibility as well. To both Plato and Aristotle, however, the ideal life is the life of pure reason—of intellectual activity or contemplation.

The same kind of reconciliation has been attempted in

modern times, only in view of a deeper realisation of the width of the cleft than the Greek consciousness had attained. Hegel, in particular, has sought, in the ethical as in the metaphysical sphere, to correct the abstractness and formalism of the Kantian theory, by vindicating the rights of sensibility, and harmonising them with the rights of reason which Kant had so exclusively maintained. As, in the intellectual sphere, Hegel attempts to vindicate the rights of sensation and to demonstrate the essential identity of sensation and thought, so, in the ethical sphere, he seeks to prove the essential rationality of the life of sensibility. In both spheres he offers a concrete content for the abstract and barren form of the Kantian theory, since he holds that in both spheres the real is the rational.' This reconciliation has been so clearly and impressively set forth by the late Professor Green, in his Prolegomena to Ethics, that it is needless to reproduce it here. But in order that the reconciliation may be successful, the conflict must first be felt in all its intensity; and if the ancient moralists tended to exaggerate the sharpness of the dualism, the modern disciples of Hegel may perhaps be said to underestimate it. In that life of sensibility which the ethical rationalists had condemned as the irrational, the Hegelian idealist sees the image and superscription of reason. Are not both interpretations a trifle hasty and impatient? Were it not better to follow the workings of the moral life itself, and see there how the antithesis is pressed until it yields the higher synthesis? If, even in the intellectual life of man, there is labour, the labour of the notion,' still more so is there in the moral life; and an adequate ethic must take account of, and interpret, this labour. The defect of the Hegelian interpretation of morality is that it is not faithful enough to the Hegelian method of dialectical progress through negation to higher affirmation. The 'everlasting Nay' must be pressed to the

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last, before we can hear the 'everlasting Yea' of the moral life.

Finally, in the Rational Hedonism of Professor Sidgwick we found the consummation of the growing rationalism of hedonistic ethics. But Professor Sidgwick's theory is either a compromise of the old sort-the acceptance of reason as instrumental merely, though as instrumentally indispensable or the recognition of a higher significance in reason. In the former case, all the old difficulties which beset the hedonistic interpretation of the moral ideal return. Reason still exists and functions for the sake of sensibility; its only raison d'être is a larger and more complete sentient satisfaction. The only ethical interest is the interest of sensibility, namely, pleasure. And, from the standpoint of reason itself, such a view must always appear unworthy and superficial. In the other case, we must frankly abandon the hedonistic interpretation of the moral ideal, and, accepting the guidance of reason, re-interpret it in such terms as shall give a new rational significance to pleasure as an element in the life of a rational being. The ethical interest, not being an interest in pleasure merely, must receive a new interpretation from the point of view of reason. This Professor Sidgwick has not attempted.

4. The solution of Christianity. In Christianity we find the antithesis at its sharpest. It is just because Christianity recognises, and does full justice to, both sides of our nature, and because it asserts with a unique emphasis the conflict between them, that its interpretation of human life has been felt to be most adequate. The Greek ideal was one of moderation or the mean, a measured sensuous life. Christianity widens the breach between the spirit and nature, between the mind and the flesh, widens it that at last it may be overcome. The rights of the spirit are emphasised, to the negation, in comparison with them, of the rights of the flesh. The

flesh must be crucified, the natural man must die, the old man must be put off. The result is such a struggle between the flesh and the spirit, between the 'two men' in each man, that the victory seems uncertain, and the bitter cry is wrung from the weary wrestling spirit: "O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" But this widening of the moral breach is the necessary first step in the life of goodness. The ascetic note is the primary and fundamental one, self-sacrifice must precede and make possible self-fulfilment, the moral life is mediated by death. For man rises out of nature, and must, as a spiritual or rational being, assert his superiority to nature. That it may guide and master sensibility, reason must first assert itself to the negation of sensibility. The true self is rational and spiritual; and, that it may live, the lower, fleshly, sensuous self must die. Only through this 'strait gate' is the entrance to the pathway of the spirit's life.

Yet Christianity is no merely ascetic or mystic system. It does breed in its disciples a profound sense of dissatisfaction with the actual life, it does lead to the disparagement of nature and sensibility; but it does so just because it inspires in them the conviction of an ideal of which the actual for ever falls short, and shows man how much more and greater he is than nature. The sunny gladness of the Pagan spirit had to be darkened by the shadow of this prophetic discontent; but a new gladness came with Christianity. There can be no literal renaissance or re-birth of Paganism. The spiritual history of man does not repeat itself, there is no return to former stages of moral experience. The human spirit has been born anew, and has learned in Christianity lessons about its own dignity and task and destiny which it can never more unlearn. And in view of the fundamental lesson of Christianity, of the infinite, eternal, and divine worth of the human spirit, it may well seem as if all else