ive experience of the race.
Life itself is the only adequate experiment in living. Virtues are
properly verified only in the history of society, in the development of
institutions, and in the evidences of progress in civilization at
large. I shall confine myself, then, to such verified virtues, and
seek to show their relation to morality as a whole.[1]

Virtues vary in generality according to the degree to which they refer
to special circumstance; and, since there is no limit to the variety of
circumstance, there is, strictly speaking, no final and comprehensive
order of virtues. The term may be applied with equal propriety to
types of action as universal as justice and as particular as conjugal
fidelity. We shall find it necessary to confine ourselves to the more
general and fundamental virtues.

I have adopted a method of classification to which I attach no absolute
importance, but which {74} will, I trust, serve to amplify and
illuminate the fundamental conceptions which I have already formulated.
I shall aim, in the first place, to make explicit a distinction which
has hitherto been obscured. I refer to the difference between the
_material_ and the _formal_ aspects of morality. On the one hand,
action is always engaged in the fulfilment of an immediate interest;
this constitutes its material goodness. On the other hand, every moral
action is limited or regulated by the provision which it makes for
ulterior interests; this constitutes its formal goodness. Let me make
this difference more clear.

A particular action is invariably connected with a particular interest;
and in so far as it is successful it will thus be directly fruitful of
fulfilment. And it matters not how broad a purpose constitutes its
ultimate motive; for purposes can be served only through a variety of
activities, each of which will have its proximate interest and its own
continuous yield of satisfaction. Life pays as it goes, even though it
goes to the length of serving humanity at large, and the larger
enterprises owe their very justification to this additive and
cumulative principle.

But if action is to be moral it must always look beyond the present
satisfaction. It must submit to such checks as are necessary for the
realization of a greater good. Indeed, action is not wholly {75} good
until it is controlled with reference to the fulfilment of the totality
of interests.

It follows, then, that every action may be judged in two