high, indeed the highest place. In the same way vice has been popularly used with special reference to bad sexual conduct. Moralists have hardly done their duty in so far as they have failed to point out the distorting effects on popular morality of this one-sided restriction.

§ 8. Merit.

.

An act which is of more than ordinary goodness is often called meritorious. The term implies either that the act is specially difficult to the ordinary man, or is specially difficult for the doer, and that therefore the moral law does not require the act, or, at any rate, not the degree of perfection in the act which is actually attained. This idea of merit obviously depends on the jural view of morality being taken, and stands in some opposition to duty. What duty requires strictly is not a source of merit; merit comes in where strict obligation no longer exists. If we comply with a higher law not rigidly binding on us we have merit or desert. This may be looked on as a sort of debt owed us by God, by the State, or by our fellow-men; who if they act justly will not only consider us. free from desert of punishment, but as actually worthy of approval. But "in his own judgment a morally developed man does not inquire what will give him a claim to receive praise, but simply what is right; and he does not compare himself to others, but with his own. moral ideal.

Therefore, in reference to himself, he

knows only duty, not desert" (Gizycki and Coit, p. 103).

§ 9. Responsibility.

Responsibility means answerableness.

A man is

responsible to his employers for his use of their money or goods; he can be called upon to give an account of that which has been entrusted to his care. By an extension of the idea we speak of a man's responsibility to a political superior for the employment of his time or activity. In this wide sense of the word, to say that a person is responsible is to say that he can be punished.

The conditions under which it is possible for a man to be legally responsible, i.e., to be under legal obligation with regard to an act, are fixed somewhat arbitrarily by law. For instance, a man is sometimes held responsible for injury done to others by his servants, even if they are not acting on an implied command from him, thus in most countries an innkeeper is bound to make restitution for robberies committed by his servants, while this is not the case with other masters. The conditions of moral responsibility, on the other hand, are determined by the psychological condition of the individual, without regard to consequences; hence moral and legal responsibility often rest on quite different persons.

1

The object of the law is to bring pressure to bear on innkeepers to take the greatest care to ensure the honesty of their

servants.

F

The conditions of moral responsibility seem to be:

(1) Knowledge of the nature and conditions of the act. This must be an actual present knowledge, and not a merely constructive knowledge. There must be full consciousness for responsibility to be complete. But yet we are obliged to assume that the temporary forgetfulness due to passion does not absolve. Strictly speaking we ought to say that a person who does wrong in a passion is not responsible for the act then. committed, but for the original evil of getting into the passion. And so with regard to drunkenness; although per vinum delapsis capitalis pœna remittitur," yet the original fault of taking too much wine is punishable. If a man produces mental disease by taking nervous stimulants, we do not hold him responsible for any further immoral act he may commit, but only for the course of conduct which made it possible or even probable.

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(2) Knowledge of the rule which the act contravenes. Here there is divergence between legal and moral responsibility. Ignorance of the law does not excuse in law. But it certainly does in morality, subject to the same exceptions mentioned above, viz., that the ignorance be not itself due to our own fault.

(3) Power of choice. There must be no external compulsion, physical or mental. Compulsion may (it is usually said) take the form of (a) actual force, such as binding or gagging, or (b) "duress per minas," that is, threats so dreadful and instant as to destroy

the possibility of free choice, or (c) personal ascendency. This last can hardly be admitted as a bar to responsibility in the case of adults who are compos mentis, excepting in the form of hypnotic suggestion. The tyranny of the fixed idea," whether suggested by others or arising from within, certainly destroys the liberty of choice. But as the passive co-operation of the patient is at first necessary, the responsibility is merely transferred further back to the time when the individual originally submitted himself to the ascendency of the hypnotizer or the incendiary orator.

(4) The presence of adequate moral motive in the shape of moral feeling, which is not necessarily implied by the normal development of the intellectual faculties. The moral idiot is incapable of social sympathy or other unselfish impulses.1

1 Havelock Ellis, "The Criminal," pp. 229-231.

CHAPTER IV.

HEDONISTIC THEORIES.

§ 1. The Hedonistic Calculus.

In chapter ii. we have already discussed some of the fundamental points which lie at the basis of any hedonistic theory of ethics. It has been pointed out that pleasure is an abstraction, that we do not commonly desire pleasure, and that if we did this would not prove that pleasure is itself desirable. Let us waive these considerations and consider in detail some of the assumptions made by the scientific hedonists.

Pleasures are commonly regarded as capable of rough quantitative treatment. We speak of one pleasure as being greater than another. The hedonists as a rule try to make this quantitative treatment precise. They assume that there is such a thing as a unit of pleasure, and that units of pleasure can be added, subtracted, and multiplied. Regarded by itself, and without reference to other pleasures and pains which may accompany it, the value (i.e., desirability) of a pleasure depends according to Bentham on its (1) intensity, (2) duration, (3) certainty, and (4) proximity. Proximity resolves itself into certainty, and certainty only affects