some particular disposition of all the elements, with paramount sovereignty. But we must pass on to notice a defect inherent in this and every attempt to map out human nature into various compartments,-a defect which, when unperceived, as it mostly is, distorts, if not falsifies, the whole work of the analysts. Even if the most exact enumeration, the most minute analysis could be made, would this give all that makes up character? It is a common mistake with psychologists to suppose that it does. They fancy they can grasp life by victorious analysis. There can be no greater, though there is no more common delusion. What is it that analysis, the most perfect, accomplishes? It gives the various elements which go to make up a moral fact, or it may be said to give the various points of view which a phenomenon or group of phenomena presents. But is this all? Is there nothing more than what is found in the analyst's crucible? The analysis, that is the unloosing, the taking down into pieces of the bundle, may be complete; but where is the power of synthesis, the bond which held the bundle together? Where is the life which pervaded the several elements, and made of them one entire power? It is gone, it has escaped your touch. Can the botanist, after he has divided a flower into its component parts, pistil, stamen, anther, petals, calyx, put them together once more, and restore the life and beauty that were there? This is the main error of psychologists. They fancy that when they have completed their analysis they have done all, not considering that it is just the most unique and mysterious part of the problem which has eluded them. What the late Professor Ferrier shows so well against the psychologists, that the ego,' the one great mystery, ever escapes them, the same takes place in the analysis of every other living entity. In a human character, when you have done your best to exhaust it, to give its whole contents, that which is its finer breath, has it not escaped you? must not you be content to own that there remains behind a something which no language may declare'? What end then serves analysis? By bringing out, separately and in detail, each side, aspect, or element in any problem, and fixing the eye on each successively, it helps to give distinctness and exactness to our whole conception of it. But it is only the multiplicity that is thus given, the unity or rather the unifying power still remains ungrasped. And if we are to see character in its truth, we must, after analysis has done its work, by an act of philosophic imagination remake the synthesis, put the elements together again; and if we do this rightly something will reappear in the synthesis which had disappeared in the analysis, and that something will be just the idiosyncratic element which gives individuality to the whole man. To a moral philo

sophy which shall give the truth, this synthesis is not less essential than the analysis.

Of the many questions which have been, and may still be, asked respecting virtuous character, there is one, not the least important, and certainly the most practical of any, which has received less attention from moralists than it deserves. It is this: Supposing that we have settled rightly what the true ideal of character is, how are we to attain to it? what is the dynamic power in the moral life? what is that which shall impel a man to persevere in aiming at this ideal, shall carry him through all that hinders him outwardly and inwardly, and enable him, in some measure at least, to realize it? Other questions, it would seem, more stimulate speculation, none has more immediate bearings on man's moral interests. For confused and imperfect as men's notions of right may be, it is not knowledge that they lack, it is the will and the power to do. Change one word, and all men will make the apostle's confession their own: To know is present with me, but how to perform that which is good I find not.'

On this subject, then, the dynamic or motive power in moral life, we would turn attention in the sequel. Under the word motive three things are included, which are usually distinguished thus, the outward object or reality, which, when apprehended and desired, determines to action; the mental act of apprehending this object; and the desire or affection which is awakened by the object so apprehended. To this last step, which immediately precedes the act of will, and is said to determine it, the term motive' is often exclusively applied. But in our inquiry into the dynamic or motive power we shall use the word in a wider sense, including all the three elements in the process, and applying it more especially to that one which is the starting-point, namely, the outward object or reality, which, addressing the understanding, and stirring the affections, ultimately determines the will. And the question we ask is, What is that outward object, or class of objects, which determines the will in a way which can rightly be called moral? What are those truths which, apprehended and entering into a man, enable him to rise into that state of being which is truly virtuous or moral?

In doing so it will be well to ask first what answers to this question may be found in the works of some of the great masters of moral wisdom. In his survey of moral systems, Adam Smith remarks that there are two main questions with which moralists have to deal. The first is, What is virtue? or, more (a) concretely, In what consists the virtuous character, that temper and conduct in a man which deservedly wins the esteem of his fellow-men? The second is, What is the faculty in us

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by which we discern and approve the virtuous character ?—in other words, by what power do we distinguish between right actions and praise them, and wrong actions and blame them? Of the question we are now to consider, the dynamic power which enables us to do the right, it is remarkable that Smith makes no mention. In discussing this, which we may call the third main question of morals, we shall have occasion to advert to the former two, but we shall do so no farther than as they bear on the third, which is our more immediate concern.

Smith has classified philosophers mainly by the answer they give to the first of the three questions, according as they place virtue in the proper balance and harmony of all the faculties and affections which make up our human nature, or in the judicious pursuit of our own happiness, or in benevolence, that is, in the affections which seek the happiness of others. The first of these three answers to the great question, What is the virtuous character? has been sanctioned by the greatest names of past time,-by Plato, by Aristotle, by the Stoics, and by Bishop Butler. Let us glance at their theories, with a view to find what help there is in them as to the dynamic power we are in search of.

With Plato originated the idea that virtue is a proper balance or harmony of the various powers of soul; and though it has often since been elaborated into detail, it has never been put in so beautiful and attractive a form. It is one of those great though simple thoughts first uttered by that father of philosophy, which have taken hold of the world, and which it will never let go. Repeated in our ordinary language, it sounds a commonplace; but in the Greek of The Republic it stands fresh with unfading beauty. He divides the soul, as is well known, into three elements,-desire, passion or courage, and intellect; and this division, variously modified, has held its ground in philosophy till now. The δικαιοσύνη, or righteousness of the individual soul, he places in a proper balance or harmony of these three elements, in which each holds that position which rightfully belongs to it. The State is the counterpart of the individual soul, and its dikatoσúvn, or right condition, is attained when the three orders of guardians, auxiliaries, and producers, answering to reason, passion, appetite, respectively stand in their proper order of precedence. This is the philosophy which Shakespeare makes Ulysses speak. In the observance of degree, priority, and place,' stands

'The unity and married calm of States.'

'How could communities,

Degrees in schools, and brotherhoods in cities,

Peaceful commerce from dividable shores,
The primogenitive and due of birth,
Prerogative of age, crowns, sceptres, laurels,
But by degree, stand in authentic place?
Take but degree away, untune that string,

And, hark, what discord follows! each thing meets
In mere oppugnancy.'

The man is righteous in whom each of the three elements holds its proper place, and does its proper work; and this inward harmony expresses itself in an outward life which is every way righteous. The power which discerns the right and orders all the elements of the soul, is intellect or reason, whose right it is to rule. But how is this harmony of soul, once discerned, to be reached, maintained, made energetic? Plato, of philosophers the least mechanical, the most dynamic, the most full of powers of life, cannot have left this question wholly unanswered, though he has not dealt with it systematically. His hope was that this may be done in the State by educating the guardians, who are philosophers; in the individual, by educating the reason, which is the sovereign principle, by the continual study of real truth, the contemplation of the ideal good. The highest object of all is the Essential Form or Idea of the Good which imparts to the objects known the truth that is in them, and to the knowing mind the faculty of knowing truth. This idea of the good is the cause of science and of truth. It gives to all objects of knowledge not only the power of being known, but their being and existence. The good is not existence, but is above and beyond existence in dignity and power. The purpose of education,' he says, 'is to turn the whole soul round, in order that the eye of the soul, or reason, may be directed to the right quarter. But education does not generate or infuse any new principle; it only guides or directs a principle already in existence.' So far in The Republic.

Again, in the famous myth where reason is imaged by a charioteer driving a chariot drawn by two horses, one high-spirited and aspiring, the other earthward grovelling, Plato makes the charioteer able just to raise his head, and look out for a moment on that super-celestial place, which is above heaven's vault, and to catch a glimpse of the realities that are there, the colourless, formless, intangible substance on which the gods gaze without let or hindrance. The glimpse which the better human souls get fills them with love of the reality. They see and feast on it, and are nourished by it. It is this idea or essence of the good, the cause of existence and knowledge, the vital centre in the world of thought, as the sun is in the world of sight, which is the

object of contemplation to the reason. 'And reason,' Plato says, 'looking upwards, and carried to the true Above, realizes a delight in wisdom, unknown to the other parts of our nature.' This idea of good is the centre at once of morals and politics, the rightful influencing power in human action. It should be ever present to the mind; a full philosophic consciousness of it should be the ruling power in everything. Nor is it an object merely for the pure reason, but for the imagination also, and an attractive power for the higher affections which side with reason. This glimpse, then, granted only to the purest in their purest hour, may be supposed to be to them an inspiration that will not desert them all their lives after. It will make them hunger and thirst after truth and righteousness, and despise, in comparison of these, all lower goods. So far this intuition of the good will be a dynamic power. But this master-vision, if it be possible at rare intervals, for the select souls of earth, and if it were adequate to sustain them in the pursuit of goodness, is at best a privilege for the few, not an inheritance for mankind. And Plato did not dream of it as more. From the mass of men he turns in despair, and leaves them to their swine-troughs. He did not conceive that for all men there was an ideal, or any power sufficient to raise them towards it. In Plato, then, the moral dynamic force we are seeking is in small measure, if at all, to be found.

Shall we find it in Aristotle? Although the Ethics contains more than one division of human nature, which helped forward psychological analysis, yet the whole system is not determined by any such division, but by certain leading objective ideas. Foremost among these is that of an end of action. There is an absolute end of all action, an end in itself, and man's constitution is framed conformably to this end, and in realizing it lies the total satisfaction of his nature, his well-being. Everything in nature has its end, and fulfils it unconsciously, but a moral being must fulfil his end not blindly, but with conscious purpose. The end in itself consciously chosen and pursued, this is Aristotle's fundamental ethical idea.

The end or the good for man is a vivid consciousness of life, according to its highest excellence, or in the exercise of its highest powers. Sir Alexander Grant, in his very able dissertation on évépyea, shows, with singular felicity, how Aristotle regarded man's chief good as nothing external to him, but as existing in man and for man; existing in the evocation, the vividness, and the fruition of his powers. It is the conscious vitality of the life and the mind in the exercise of its highest faculties. This, however, not as a permanent condition, but one that arises in us, oftenest like a thrill of joy, a momentary