True

love does not say “I ought to love,” nor does true compa ion stop to study some law of pity. The pure in heart are pure in deed, as far as their knowledge allows. Hating sin they yet pity the sinner, as one who has never understood the real reasons why certain actions are condemned by human experience of results. The moralist desires, by brave example as well as by true speech, to influence others even when he cannot make them fully understand why we must be reliable in word and deed. He feels a share of responsibility for the wrong doing of the society that surrounds him, and cannot isolate himself therefrom. He must live in and not out of the world, yet he must recognise that, like others, his moral code may not be absolute; for ethikal writers agree that normal judgments depend on experience, and that though we need no special faculty to guide us in conduct to others, yet human experience is ever growing wider and deeper. Pleasure is not the aim of morals, in the opinion of any sensible person; but general happine is an aim; and the formation of character is the goal. New light may enable us to follow reality better, but absolute morality could only belong to absolutely perfect character. Early races believed, like the Hebrews, that the reward of virtue was prosperity in this life, and they were greatly puzzled when experience taught them that this was not so (see Job). Such a view however strikes at the root of real morality, which teaches that if all men did what they ought they would be happy, and that some, who understand better what should be done than others do, must begin to set the example. Conduct must differ in different stages of the general advance, but the simple rule is to consider whether general benefit is the aim of anything said or done—that is (as Herbert Spencer says) whether our conduct tends to the infliction of pain. 585