ns. The more action which might express prevailing ideals
was checked, the more the inner possession and cultivation of ideals was
regarded as self-sufficient--as the essence of morality. The external
world in which activity belongs was thought of as morally indifferent.
Everything lay in having the right motive, even though that motive
was not a moving force in the world. Much the same sort of situation
recurred in Germany in the later eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries; it led to the Kantian insistence upon the good will as
the sole moral good, the will being regarded as something complete in
itself, apart from action and from the changes or consequences effected
in the world. Later it led to any idealization of existing institutions
as themselves the embodiment of reason.

The purely internal morality of "meaning well," of having a good
disposition regardless of what comes of it, naturally led to a reaction.
This is generally known as either hedonism or utilitarianism. It was
said in effect that the important thing morally is not what a man is
inside of his own consciousness, but what he does--the consequences
which issue, the charges he actually effects. Inner morality was
attacked as sentimental, arbitrary, dogmatic, subjective--as giving men
leave to dignify and shield any dogma congenial to their self-interest
or any caprice occurring to imagination by calling it an intuition or an
ideal of conscience. Results, conduct, are what counts; they afford
the sole measure of morality. Ordinary morality, and hence that of the
schoolroom, is likely to be an inconsistent compromise of both views.
On one hand, certain states of feeling are made much of; the individual
must "mean well," and if his intentions are good, if he had the right
sort of emotional consciousness, he may be relieved of responsibility
for full results in conduct. But since, on the other hand, certain
things have to be done to meet the convenience and the requirements of
others, and of social order in general, there is great insistence upon
the doing of certain things, irrespective of whether the individual has
any concern or intelligence in their doing. He must toe the mark; he
must have his nose held to the grindstone; he must obey; he must form
useful habits; he must learn self-control,--all of these precepts being
understood in a way which emphasizes simply the immediate thing tangibly
done, irrespective of the spirit of thought and desire in w