s or some other general
notion is the highest principle of human life. We may try them in this
comparison by three tests--definiteness, comprehensiveness, and motive
power.

There are three subjective principles of morals,--sympathy, benevolence,
self-love. But sympathy seems to rest morality on feelings which differ
widely even in good men; benevolence and self-love torture one half
of our virtuous actions into the likeness of the other. The greatest
happiness principle, which includes both, has the advantage over all
these in comprehensiveness, but the advantage is purchased at the
expense of definiteness.

Again, there are the legal and political principles of morals--freedom,
equality, rights of persons; 'Every man to count for one and no man
for more than one,' 'Every man equal in the eye of the law and of the
legislator.' There is also the other sort of political morality, which
if not beginning with 'Might is right,' at any rate seeks to deduce
our ideas of justice from the necessities of the state and of society.
According to this view the greatest good of men is obedience to law: the
best human government is a rational despotism, and the best idea which
we can form of a divine being is that of a despot acting not wholly
without regard to law and order. To such a view the present mixed
state of the world, not wholly evil or wholly good, is supposed to be a
witness. More we might desire to have, but are not permitted. Though a
human tyrant would be intolerable, a divine tyrant is a very tolerable
governor of the universe. This is the doctrine of Thrasymachus adapted
to the public opinion of modern times.

There is yet a third view which combines the two:--freedom is obedience
to the law, and the greatest order is also the greatest freedom; 'Act so
that thy action may be the law of every intelligent being.' This view
is noble and elevating; but it seems to err, like other transcendental
principles of ethics, in being too abstract. For there is the same
difficulty in connecting the idea of duty with particular duties as
in bridging the gulf between phainomena and onta; and when, as in the
system of Kant, this universal idea or law is held to be independent of
space and time, such a mataion eidos becomes almost unmeaning.

Once more there are the religious principles of morals:--the will of
God revealed in Scripture and in nature. No philosophy has supplied a
sanction equal in authority to this, or a motive equa