odiment, fall spontaneously into a scientific
system of thought.

There are two opposite types to which all moral systems tend. They
correspond to the two great intellectual families to which every man
belongs by right of birth. One class of minds is distinguished by its
firm grasp of facts, by its reluctance to drop solid substance for the
loveliest shadows, and by its preference of concrete truths to the most
symmetrical of theories. In ethical questions the tendency of such minds
is to consider man as a being impelled by strong but unreasonable
passions towards tangible objects. He is a loving, hating, thirsting,
hungering--anything but a reasoning--being. As Swift--a typical example
of this intellectual temperament--declared, man is not an _animal
rationale_, but at most _capax rationis_. At bottom, he is a machine
worked by blind instincts. Their tendency cannot be deduced by _a
priori_ reasoning, though reason may calculate the consequences of
indulging them. The passions are equally good, so far as equally
pleasurable. Virtue means that course of conduct which secures the
maximum of pleasure. Fine theories about abstract rights and
correspondence to eternal truths are so many words. They provide decent
masks for our passions; they do not really govern them, or alter their
nature, but they cover the ugly brutal selfishness of mankind, and
soften the shock of conflicting interests. Such a view has something in
it congenial to the English love of reality and contempt for shams. It
may be represented by Swift or Mandeville in the last century; in poetry
it corresponds to the theory attributed by some critics to Shakespeare;
in a tranquil and reasoning mind it leads to the utilitarianism of
Bentham; in a proud, passionate, and imaginative mind it manifests
itself in such a poem as 'Don Juan.' Its strength is in its grasp of
fact; its weakness, in its tendency to cynicism. Opposed to this is the
school which starts from abstract reason. It prefers to dwell in the
ideal world, where principles may be contemplated apart from the
accidents which render them obscure to vulgar minds. It seeks to deduce
the moral code from eternal truths without seeking for a groundwork in
the facts of experience. If facts refuse to conform to theories, it
proposes that facts should be summarily abolished. Though the actual
human being is, unfortunately, not always reasonable, it holds that pure
reason must be in the long run the dominant fo