The recognition of these facts would only be a beginning; but it would be a beginning which would avoid the cardinal error fallen into not only by the leading exponents of evolutionist morality, but also to be found in much of the ethical work of idealist metaphysicians.  It seems to have been assumed that moral principles can be reached by the application of scientific generalisations or of the results of a metaphysical analysis which has started by overlooking the facts of the moral consciousness.  Even as a metaphysic this procedure is inadequate; and the interpretations of reality to which it has led have erred by over-intellectuality.

The systems of naturalism and of idealism, whose ethical consequences have been passed in review, have one feature in common; and it is a feature which from of old has been regarded as a mark of genuine philosophy.  They both seek the One in the many; but they seek it on different roads.  For the naturalist the most comprehensive description of things may be the conception of mass-points in motion; or it may be some more recondite conception to which physical analysis points.  In either case the unity reached will be mechanical.  For the idealist, on the other hand, reason may be said to be the central principle of things:  the unity of reality is a rational unity.  I have contended in these lectures that neither the mechanical unity of the naturalists nor the rational unity of the idealists has succeeded in comprehending within its unifying principle the essential nature of morality with its deep-going dualism of good and evil.  But while I have maintained that even the conception of reality as the reproduction of itself by an eternal self-consciousness is an inadequate conception, it is still possible to hold that reality is a connected whole, and that its true principle of unity is an ethical principle.

If I were asked what is meant by an ethical unity, I should answer, in the first place, that it implies purpose.  The unity of reality is not exhibited by a description of its present or past conditions or even by an account of its causal connexions.  These modes of description are all affected by the fragmentariness which always belongs to temporal apprehension.  But, when things are seen in the light of a purpose, a view of them as a whole becomes possible, and the fragmentariness of time is transcended.  And, in the second place, I should say that an ethical unity implies the presence within itself of different finite centres of conscious activity, whose freedom is not inconsistent with their relation to one another and to the Whole.