stands; and one trembles to think what it may become
in the mouths of their disciples. Intolerance itself is a form of
egoism, and to condemn egoism intolerantly is to share it. I cannot
help thinking that a consciousness of the relativity of values, if it
became prevalent, would tend to render people more truly social than
would a belief that things have intrinsic and unchangeable values, no
matter what the attitude of any one to them may be. If we said that
goods, including the right distribution of goods, are relative to
specific natures, moral warfare would continue, but not with poisoned
arrows. Our private sense of justice itself would be acknowledged to
have but a relative authority, and while we could not have a higher
duty than to follow it, we should seek to meet those whose aims were
incompatible with it as we meet things physically inconvenient,
without insulting them as if they were morally vile or logically
contemptible. Real unselfishness consists in sharing the interests of
others. Beyond the pale of actual unanimity the only possible
unselfishness is chivalry--a recognition of the inward right and
justification of our enemies fighting against us. This chivalry has
long been practised in the battle-field without abolishing the causes
of war; and it might conceivably be extended to all the conflicts of
men with one another, and of the warring elements within each breast.
Policy, hypnotisation, and even surgery may be practised without
exorcisms or anathemas. When a man has decided on a course of action,
it is a vain indulgence in expletives to declare that he is sure that
course is absolutely right. His moral dogma expresses its natural
origin all the more clearly the more hotly it is proclaimed; and
ethical absolutism, being a mental grimace of passion, refutes what it
says by what it is. Sweeter and more profound, to my sense, is the
philosophy of Homer, whose every line seems to breathe the conviction
that what is beautiful or precious has not thereby any right to
existence; nothing has such a right; nor is it given us to condemn
absolutely any force--god or man--that destroys what is beautiful or
precious, for it has doubtless something beautiful or precious of its
own to achieve.

The consequences of a hypostasis of the good are no less interesting
than its causes. If the good were independent of nature, it might
still be conceived as relevant to nature, by being its creator or
mover; but Mr. Russel