ext time. The trouble, the pain, we have
brought on ourselves by our ignorance, we note, as showing that we have
disregarded a law, and we profit by the additional knowledge in the
future.

Thus understanding conscience, we shall not take it as a basis of
morality, but as our best available individual light. We shall judge
our conscience, educate it, evolve it by mental effort, by careful
observation. As we learn more, our conscience will develop; as we act
up to the highest we can see, our vision will become ever clearer, and
our ear more sensitive. As muscles develop by exercise, so conscience
develops by activity, and as we use our lamp it burns the more brightly.
But let it ever be remembered that it is a man's own experience that
must guide him, and his own conscience that must decide. To overrule the
conscience of another is to induce in him moral paralysis, and to seek
to dominate the will of another is a crime.

* * * * *

III

UTILITY

To those whose intelligence and conscience had revolted against the
crude and immoral maxims mixed up with noble precepts in Revelation; to
those who recognised the impossibility of accepting the varying voices
of Intuition as a moral guide; to all those the theory that Morality was
based on Utility, came as a welcome and rational relief. It promised a
scientific certitude to moral precepts; it left the intellect free to
inquire and to challenge; it threw man back on grounds which were found
in this world alone, and could be tested by reason and experience; it
derived no authority from antiquity, no sanction from religion; it stood
entirely on its own feet, independently of the many conflicting elements
which were found in the religions of the past and present.

The basis for morality, according to Utility, is the greatest happiness
of the greatest number; that which conduces to the greatest happiness of
the greatest number is Right; that which does not is Wrong.

This general maxim being laid down, it remains for the student to study
history, to analyse experience, and by a close and careful investigation
into human nature and human relations to elaborate a moral code which
would bring about general happiness and well-being. This, so far, has
not been done. Utility has been a "hand-to-mouth" moral basis, and
certain rough rules of conduct have grown up by experience and the
necessities of life, without any definite investigation int