rom
me. I may now frame the idea of a mathematical circle, in which all
diameters are precisely equal, in express contrast to the series of
ellipses, with very unequal diameters, which the floundering hoop has
illustrated in its career. When once, however, the definition of the
circle is attained, no watching of hoops is any longer requisite. The
ellipse can be generated ideally out of the definition, and would have
been generated, like asymptotes and hyperbolas, even if never
illustrated in nature at all. Lemmas from a foreign tongue have only
served to disclose a great fecundity in the native one, and the
legitimate word that the context required has supplanted the casual
stranger that may first have ushered it into the mind.

When the idea which dialectic is to elaborate is a moral idea, a purpose
touching something in the concrete world, lemmas from experience often
play a very large part in the process. Their multitude, with the small
shifts in aspiration and esteem which they may suggest to the mind,
often obscures the dialectical process altogether. In this case the
foreign term is never translated into the native medium; we never make
out what ideal connection our conclusion has with our premises, nor in
what way the conduct we finally decide upon is to fulfil the purpose
with which we began. Reflection merely beats about the bush, and when a
sufficient number of prejudices and impulses have been driven from
cover, we go home satisfied with our day's ranging, and feeling that we
have left no duty unconsidered; and our last bird is our final
resolution.

[Sidenote: Arrested rationality in morals.]

When morality is in this way non-dialectical, casual, impulsive,
polyglot, it is what we may call prerational morality. There is indeed
reason in it, since every deliberate precept expresses some reflection
by which impulses have been compared and modified. But such chance
reflection amounts to moral perception, not to moral science. Reason has
not begun to educate her children. This morality is like knowing chairs
from tables and things near from distant things, which is hardly what we
mean by natural science. On this stage, in the moral world, are the
judgments of Mrs. Grundy, the aims of political parties and their
maxims, the principles of war, the appreciation of art, the commandments
of religious authorities, special revelations of duty to individuals,
and all systems of intuitive ethics.

[Sidenote: Its emo