ing of the philosopher
obliges him to seek an impartial test. That test, however, must be
incarnated in the demand of some actually existent person; and how can
he pick out the person save by an act in which his own sympathies and
prepossessions are implied?

One method indeed presents itself, and has as a matter of history been
taken by the more serious {200} ethical schools. If the heap of things
demanded proved on inspection less chaotic than at first they seemed,
if they furnished their own relative test and measure, then the
casuistic problem would be solved. If it were found that all goods
_qua_ goods contained a common essence, then the amount of this essence
involved in any one good would show its rank in the scale of goodness,
and order could be quickly made; for this essence would be _the_ good
upon which all thinkers were agreed, the relatively objective and
universal good that the philosopher seeks. Even his own private ideals
would be measured by their share of it, and find their rightful place
among the rest.

Various essences of good have thus been found and proposed as bases of
the ethical system. Thus, to be a mean between two extremes; to be
recognized by a special intuitive faculty; to make the agent happy for
the moment; to make others as well as him happy in the long run; to add
to his perfection or dignity; to harm no one; to follow from reason or
flow from universal law; to be in accordance with the will of God; to
promote the survival of the human species on this planet,--are so many
tests, each of which has been maintained by somebody to constitute the
essence of all good things or actions so far as they are good.

No one of the measures that have been actually proposed has, however,
given general satisfaction. Some are obviously not universally present
in all cases,--_e. g._, the character of harming no one, or that of
following a universal law; for the best course is often cruel; and many
acts are reckoned good on the sole condition that they be exceptions,
and serve not as examples of a universal law. Other {201} characters,
such as following the will of God, are unascertainable and vague.
Others again, like survival, are quite indeterminate in their
consequences, and leave us in the lurch where we most need their help:
a philosopher of the Sioux Nation, for example, will be certain to use
the survival-criterion in a very different way from ourselves. The
best, on the whole, of the