blackness and whiteness or light and dark.  Take, as a typical moral situation, a case in which a thirsty man drinks polluted water.  In the diagram the arrow represents the direction of the flow of time, and each of the ribbons below represents the stream of consciousness of an individual concerned-the uppermost being that of the thirsty man himself, the others those of his wife, children, or friends.  The plus sign early in the drinker’s stream of experience stands for the plus value which drinking the water effects-the gratifying taste of the water and the allaying of the discomfort of thirst-real values, whose worth cannot be gainsaid.  Following, in his own stream of experience, are a row of minus signs, indicating the undesirable penalties in his own life which follow-disease, pain, deprivation of other goods.  No good accrues to others, unless the slight pleasure of seeing his thirst allayed.  But evils follow in their experience:  worry, sympathetic pain at his suffering, expense of doctor’s bills, perhaps (which means deprivation of other possible goods), etc.  It is clear at a glance that the positive good attained is not worth the lingering and widespread evils; and the act of drinking the polluted water, though to a very thirsty man a keen temptation, is immoral.  Morality is thus an acting upon a right perspective of life.  Personal morality considers the goods and evils in the one stream of consciousness, social morality the goods and evils in other conscious lives concerned.  Between them they sum up the law and the prophets.

The best life for humanity is that which is, on the whole, felt best; not necessarily that which is judged best by this man or that, for our judgments are narrow and misrepresent actual values,-but that which has had from beginning to end the greatest total of happiness.  No other ultimate criterion for conduct can ever justify itself, and most theoretical statements reduce to this.  To be virtuous is to be a virtuoso in life.  All sorts of objections have been raised to this simple, and apparently pagan, way of stating the case; they will be considered in due time.  The reader is asked to refrain from parting company with the writer, if his prejudices are aroused, until the consonance of this sketchy account of the basis of morality with Christianity and all idealism can be demonstrated.

H. Spencer, Data of Ethics, chap.  III.  S. E. Mezes, Ethics, chap ix.  Leslie Stephen, Science of Ethics, chaps.  II, ix.  F. Thilly, Introduction to Ethics, chaps.  IV, V. F. Paulsen, book ii, chap.  I. J. S. Mill, Utilitarianism.  B. P. Bowne, Principles of Ethics, chap.  II.  The classic accounts of a rational foundation of ethics are to be found by the discerning reader in Plato’s Protagoras, Gorgias, and Republic (esp. books.  I, ii, iv), and Aristotle’s Ethics (esp. books.  I and ii).  For refinements in the definition of right and wrong, see G. E. Moore, Ethics, chaps.  I-V; B. Russell, Philosophical Essays, I, secs.  II, iii.  International Journal of Ethics, vol. 24, p. 293.  Definitions of value without reference to pleasure or pain will be found in Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods, vol.  II, pp. 29, 113, 141.  An elaborate and careful discussion will be found in G. H. Palmer’s Nature of Goodness.