ch might be
regarded as merely a waste by-product, becomes in its turn a powerful
incentive to further exertion.

* * * * *

"_But is there not too much joy in Utopia? Is not the sky too
cloudless? Is not the atmosphere too clear? Does the Utopian never
act from a sense of duty? Has he never to do anything that is
distasteful to him?_" This objection raises an interesting question.
Is the function of the sense of duty to enable us to do distasteful
things? And if so, are we to regard it as the highest of motives to
moral action? In the days when Kant's idea of the "moral imperative"
was in the ascendant, the belief got abroad that the essence of
virtue was to do what you hated doing. Looking back to my Oxford
days, I recall some doggerel lines, of German origin, in which this
belief finds apt expression. A disciple who is in trouble about his
soul says to his master:

"Willing serve I my friends, but do it, alas! with affection,
And so gnaws me my heart, that I'm not virtuous yet."

To this the master replies:

"Help except this there is none: you must strive with
might to contemn them,
And with horror perform then what the law may enjoin."

If this conception of morality is correct, if it is true that the
atmosphere of the virtuous life should be one of horror and even of
hatred, then it must be admitted that the Utopian children are
receiving a seriously defective education. But the "if" is a large
one; and for my part I incline to the belief that love, as a motive
to action, is better than hatred, joy than horror, sunshine than
gloom.

The day will indeed come when the Utopian--a child no longer--will
have to do things, either for his own sake or in order to discharge
obligations to others, which will be, or will seem to be, against the
grain even of his happy nature; and the sense of duty will then have
to come to his aid. But there is no reason why he, or his teachers,
should anticipate that day. To compel him, while still a child, to
work against the grain of his nature, when there was no real need for
this, would not be the best preparation for the trials that await
him. To compel him to spend the greater part of his school-life in
doing what was distasteful to him, would be the worst possible
preparation for them.

For, to begin with, the sense of duty is not the highest motive to
action. A far higher motive is love. If the sense of duty to God, for
example