s are destroyed. Since victory and defeat there
must be, the victory to be philosophically prayed for is that of the
more inclusive side,--of the side which even in the hour of triumph
will to some degree do justice to the ideals in which the vanquished
party's interests lay. The course of history is nothing but the story
of men's struggles from generation to generation to find the more and
more inclusive order. _Invent some manner_ of realizing your own
ideals which will also satisfy the alien demands,--that and that only
is the path of peace! Following this path, society has shaken itself
into one sort of relative equilibrium after another by a series of
social discoveries quite analogous to those of science. Polyandry and
polygamy and slavery, private warfare and liberty to kill, judicial
torture and arbitrary royal power have slowly succumbed to actually
aroused complaints; and though some one's ideals are unquestionably the
worse off for each improvement, yet a vastly greater total number of
them find shelter in our civilized society than in the older {206}
savage ways. So far then, and up to date, the casuistic scale is made
for the philosopher already far better than he can ever make it for
himself. An experiment of the most searching kind has proved that the
laws and usages of the land are what yield the maximum of satisfaction
to the thinkers taken all together. The presumption in cases of
conflict must always be in favor of the conventionally recognized good.
The philosopher must be a conservative, and in the construction of his
casuistic scale must put the things most in accordance with the customs
of the community on top.

And yet if he be a true philosopher he must see that there is nothing
final in any actually given equilibrium of human ideals, but that, as
our present laws and customs have fought and conquered other past ones,
so they will in their turn be overthrown by any newly discovered order
which will hush up the complaints that they still give rise to, without
producing others louder still. "Rules are made for man, not man for
rules,"--that one sentence is enough to immortalize Green's Prolegomena
to Ethics. And although a man always risks much when he breaks away
from established rules and strives to realize a larger ideal whole than
they permit, yet the philosopher must allow that it is at all times
open to any one to make the experiment, provided he fear not to stake
his life and char