han
virtues; for although they are regarded by many as truly moral
when they are desired as ends in themselves and not for the
sake of something else, they are, nevertheless, inflated and
arrogant, and therefore not to be viewed as virtues but as
vices."[195:11]

The new ideal is that of renunciation, obedience, and resignation.
Ethically this expresses itself in _pietism_. Virtue is good neither in
itself nor on account of its consequences, but because it is
conformable to the will of God. The extreme inwardness of this ideal is
characteristic of an age that despaired of attainment, whether of
pleasure or knowledge. To all, even the persecuted, it is permitted to
obey, and so gain entrance into the kingdom of the children of God. But
as every special study tends to rely upon its own conceptions, pietism,
involving as it does a relation to God, is replaced by _rigorism_ and
_intuitionism_. The former doctrine defines virtue in terms of the inner
attitude which it expresses. It must be done in the spirit of
dutifulness, _because one ought_, and through sheer respect for the law
which one's moral nature affirms. _Intuitionism_ has attempted to deal
with the source of the moral law by defining conscience as a _special
faculty_ or sense, qualified to pass directly upon moral questions, and
deserving of implicit obediences. It is characteristic of this whole
tendency to look for the spring of virtuous living, not in a good which
such living obtains, but in a law to which it owes obedience.

[Sidenote: Duty and Freedom. Ethics and Metaphysics.]

Sect. 84. This third general ethical tendency has thus been of the
greatest importance in emphasizing the _consciousness of duty_, and has
brought both hedonism and rationalism to a recognition of its
fundamental importance. Ethics must deal not only with the moral ideal,
but also with the ground of its appeal to the individual, and his
obligation to pursue it. In connection with this recognition of moral
responsibility, the problem of human _freedom_ has come to be regarded
in the light of an inevitable point of contact between ethics and
metaphysics. That which is absolutely binding upon the human will can be
determined only in view of some theory of its ultimate nature. On this
account the rationalistic and hedonistic motives are no longer
abstractly sundered, as in the days of the Stoics and Epicureans, but
tend to be absorbed in broader philosophical t