ities,
and to all those peoples that have been able to do great work, and to
all the faiths that contain any recognisable element of higher
religious significance.

III

I can best show you what I mean by next very briefly reviewing the
motives upon which the idea of duty itself rests, and by then showing
to what, upon the noblest level of human effort, these motives lead.

Our moral interests have a development which, in all its higher
phases, runs at least parallel to the development of our religious
interests, even in cases where the two sorts of interests seem to
clash. The moral problems arise through certain interactions that take
place between our individual and our social experience. The reason
reviews these interactions and takes interest in unifying our plan of
life. The will is always, from the very nature of the case, concerned
in the questions that here arise. For whatever else morality is, it is
certain that your morality has to do with your conduct, and that {183}
moral goodness cannot be yours unless your will itself is good. Wealth
might come to you as a mere gift of fortune. Pleasure might be brought
to you from without, so far as you have the mere capacity for
pleasure. The same might appear to be true even in case of salvation,
if, indeed, salvation is wholly due to saving grace. But moral
goodness, if you can get it at all, requires your active cooperation.
You can earn it only in case you do something to possess it. Its motto
reads: _"Erwirb es um es zu besitzen."_

Therefore the moral question always takes the form of asking: What am
I to do? The first contribution to the answer is furnished, upon all
levels of our self-consciousness, by our individual experience. And
one apparently simple teaching that we get from this source may be
stated in a maxim which wayward people often insist upon, but which
only the very highest type of morality can rationally interpret: "I am
to do what I choose, in case only I know what I choose and am able to
do it." From this point of view, my only limitations, at first sight,
seem to be those set for me by my physical weakness. There are many
things that, if I had the power, I should or might choose to do. But
since I frequently cannot accomplish my will, I must learn to limit
myself to what I can carry out. So far, I say, our individual
experience, if taken as our sole moral guide, seems at first to point
out the way.

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