acquaintance with the purposes of nature, were our only guides in this direction.

At the same time it may be said, that it is apparently a function of the constraints of harmony and of conformity to nature to compensate deviations from the path of orderly development which result from obedience to the constraint of the ideal. For the immediate development that is brought about by its agency appears to be in general, if not always, a one-sided development. It creates a disturbance of the harmony of the system of desires by stimulating or repressing some particular desire, doing temporary injury, which it is the business of other currents of constraint afterwards to repair, by bringing the rest of the desires into harmony with the one which has been stimulated or repressed. Actions which result from following the constraint of the ideal seem liable to be characterised by a quality of disproportionateness. In noticing the conduct of other persons, or looking back upon our own, we sometimes become cognisant of an action of which it seems to be a true description, that it was performed in obedience to a worthy motive, but is not in itself to be commended. The motive in question is not unlikely to be the constraint of the ideal. And our reason for not approving the conduct to which it led is, that this conduct fails to satisfy our present view of objective morality. We see in it, perhaps, a want of proper proportion between its parts, or some manifest incongruity between it and the circumstances which called it forth. We readily admit that it was generous and well-intentioned; but it nevertheless appears to us unbalanced and inconsequent. It may be that the constraint of the ideal has led us at one time to satisfy freely benevolent desire; and we now see that we gave most unwisely to undeserving cases. It may be that it has led us at another time to

fast, in order to subdue sensual desire; and we are now able to see that we deprived ourselves, mistakenly from one point of view, of needful food. But this seeming disproportionateness or extravagance of conduct is not to be regretted. It belongs to a stage in the moral progress of many persons, whose constitution and circumstances happen to be such that a perfectly orderly development of the system of desires does not fall to their lot. And the want of due balance seems to be gradually repaired by the other desires gradually accommodating themselves, according to the design of nature, to that which the energy of growth has stimulated or restrained. Thus, the desire to give help to others having been strengthened by exercise, the desire to make wise use of money may gradually become strong in due proportion. And the desire for sensual gratification having been weakened by restraint, the desire to partake of food may come to be again allowed natural indulgence.

III. The constraint of the ideal seems to be intimately connected with the sense of individuality. For it incites to the performance of actions, not only without reference to, but often in opposition to, the opinion of other persons. It often conflicts, not with desire alone, but also with the constraints of law and of conformity to nature; these constraints demanding that the agent shall behave in the way that others behave, and in the way that others expect him to behave. In the case of an ignorant and unreflecting person, his conduct is largely settled for him by other persons, through the operation of these two constraints, and of the many desires which meet with satisfaction through obedience to them. There is little to suggest to him that he should live any other than a conventional life. He unconsciously accepts his position as one of a community, as a member of the social organism, regarding as natural whatever conduct keeps him in generally unaltered

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relations to his fellow-men. He has little notion of the possibility of a life unshackled from the bonds of public opinion. He is content-content because he is without experience and without imagination of anything differentto share the opinions and beliefs of those among whom he chiefly lives, and to let his career be moulded by the circumstances which surround him. With such passive acquiescence in a life conducted according to a routine prescribed by others, an acquiescence common to childhood and to other states of immature intellectual development, the constraint of the ideal, when it is sufficiently awakened, begins to interfere. It informs the individual that he is under obligation, and has the power, to fashion his behaviour after a pattern prescribed for himself personally by nature; telling him this directly without the intervention of other men. No doubt the constraints of happiness and of harmony do this to some extent also, since they are constraints inciting to subjectively natural conduct; but they do not seem to apprise him of his individuality, or separateness from other men, with nearly the same distinctness that the constraint of the ideal often does. Until the constraint of the ideal has been for some time in active operation, the conduct to which they point is so very much the same as that which is looked for by society, that they can scarcely of themselves be of much effect in awakening a consciousness of independent life. Apparently it is not until the constraint of the ideal has freed man to some extent from the trammels of convention, that he finds his happiness in conduct other than that which on the whole is expected of him by those among whom he lives, or that the constraint of harmony bids him practise such conduct. Slight differences of taste and of habit are of course recognised by society; but a consciousness of these, and of the subjective naturalness of

indulging them, can scarcely, perhaps, be said to amount to a sense of individuality. It is in a consciousness of the subjective naturalness of acting in a manner which society may or does not recognise, that the sense of individuality seems more particularly to consist. And the constraint of the ideal urges man in the direction of this independent personal development. It may be the means of bringing him ultimately into closer relations of amity with his fellowmen; but for the time it is likely to conflict with conventional opinion.

In conclusion, it may be useful to remark, that the principle of the ideal appears to have entered largely into the Stoic philosophy.

CHAPTER XI.

THE SENSE OF ORDER.

I. We have now investigated the nature of the four currents of constraint, which in Chapter III, were said to enter into the composition of the constraint of order or the lifeforce. We have seen that among the motives are some which are different from desire, and which, as occasion arises, urge the individual agent to the practice of certain modes of conduct that appear to him to be in some way pointed out by nature. We seem, then, to be in possession of some knowledge of the kind of actions which constitute personal virtue; personal virtue being the one course of conduct which is required of the individual agent by the constraint of order, and the constraint of order being the natural resultant of inciting motives, taken as a whole. The modes of conduct which are recommended by nature through the operation of this or that current of constraint, can scarcely be otherwise than largely represented in the personal virtue of men in general; in the conduct, that is, which she actually demands of them through the constraint of order. Let us see what more can be ascertained concerning the particular conduct to which the constraint of order leads.

It appears to be the function of reason and perception to help in making known to the individual agent what for him is the one action which, on any given occasion, it is