are not obvious from
its bare statement, will become clearer from the analysis of
the relativist or teleological positions. But its specific virtues
deserve attention. The Kantian or absolutistic position, by
its emphasis on the indefeasible and unwavering character of
moral action, suggests something that rouses admiration from
common sense, unsophisticated by moral theory. We do not
think highly of the man who is at the mercy of every chance
appetite, or every casual incident. Morality must be constituted
of more enduring stuff. We do not deeply admire the
caliber of a man who yields to every pressing exigency,
surrendering thereby every ideal, principle, or value, the
attainment of which demands some postponement or some privation
of the fulfillment of immediate desire. The man who compromises
his political ideals in the attainment of his personal
success, is a scornful figure morally. And we estimate more
highly the character of an individual who can persist in the
strenuous attainment of an ideal in the face of the counter-inclination
of passing pleasures. In its emphasis on the autonomy
and integrity of moral action, even its opponents credit
the Kantian or absolutistic position with having hit upon a
genuinely moral aspect of human action. It is, as we shall
see, in the rigidity and formalism of its conception, in its
fanatical allegiance to _a priori_ standards, and its absolute
sanctification of given ways of action, that the theory is
questionable.

RELATIVISTIC OR TELEOLOGICAL MORALITY. Contrasted with the
theories of morals that maintain that right and wrong are
absolute and eternal principles unaffected by time, place, and
circumstance, are those moral philosophies which set out
explicitly to discover a way of life by which human happiness
in this world of time and place and circumstance may be
attained. To know what is the supreme good, and to discover
what are the means of its attainment, are, as Aristotle
long ago and justly observed, of great importance in the regulation
of life. It is this knowledge and discovery that constitute,
according to Aristotle, the business of ethics. Regarding
this "supreme good," we may quote his own expressions:

We speak of that which is sought after for its own sake, as more
final than that which is sought after as a means to something else;
we speak of that which is never desired as a means to something else
as more final than the things which are desired both in