ly human system can
gratify the philosopher's demand as well as the other is a different
question, which we ourselves must answer ere we close.

III.

The last fundamental question in Ethics was, it will be remembered, the
_casuistic_ question. Here we are, in a world where the existence of a
divine thinker has been and perhaps always will be doubted by some of
the lookers-on, and where, in spite of the presence of a large number
of ideals in which human beings agree, there are a mass of others about
which no general consensus obtains. It is hardly necessary to present
a literary picture of this, for the facts are too well known. The wars
of the flesh and the spirit in each man, the concupiscences of
different individuals pursuing the same unshareable material or social
prizes, the ideals which contrast so according to races, circumstances,
temperaments, philosophical beliefs, etc.,--all form a maze of
apparently inextricable confusion with no obvious Ariadne's thread to
lead one out. Yet the philosopher, just because he is a philosopher,
adds his own peculiar ideal to the confusion {199} (with which if he
were willing to be a sceptic he would be passably content), and insists
that over all these individual opinions there is a _system of truth_
which he can discover if he only takes sufficient pains.

We stand ourselves at present in the place of that philosopher, and
must not fail to realize all the features that the situation comports.
In the first place we will not be sceptics; we hold to it that there is
a truth to be ascertained. But in the second place we have just gained
the insight that that truth cannot be a self-proclaiming set of laws,
or an abstract 'moral reason,' but can only exist in act, or in the
shape of an opinion held by some thinker really to be found. There is,
however, no visible thinker invested with authority. Shall we then
simply proclaim our own ideals as the lawgiving ones? No; for if we
are true philosophers we must throw our own spontaneous ideals, even
the dearest, impartially in with that total mass of ideals which are
fairly to be judged. But how then can we as philosophers ever find a
test; how avoid complete moral scepticism on the one hand, and on the
other escape bringing a wayward personal standard of our own along with
us, on which we simply pin our faith?

The dilemma is a hard one, nor does it grow a bit more easy as we
revolve it in our minds. The entire undertak