A REJOINDER 183 



truths. If Miss Wodehouse contends that she can 

 by " temperate training instil a deep rich undertone 

 into the lives " of all boys, I am afraid, if she attempts 

 it, she will experience many disappointments. I 

 have in mind just now two young boys of a hooligan 

 family, and if Miss Wodehouse would care to under- 

 take such an instillation, and if those philanthropists 

 who believe that " golden conduct can be wrought 

 from leaden instincts " will test the courage of 

 their convictions by defraying the cost of the process 

 of instillation and of the keep of these boys from 

 now until they are twenty-five or thirty, and will 

 give them the ordinary liberties of citizens, we shall 

 have come down from metaphysical platitudes to 

 mundane biological facts, and have ascended to the 

 experimental verification or destruction of our 

 beliefs. 



These considerations hold, too, for the common- 

 place of ethics cited by her, namely, " that nothing 

 in heaven or earth is good without qualification, 

 except the good-will." But if there be no good- 

 will the " common-place of ethics " has no meaning ; 

 while the biological fact that the relatively good and 

 bad are hereditarily transmitted is full of pregnant 

 significance. 



Miss Wodehouse has urged that the civic value of 

 a quality may be rendered negative or positive by 

 the " direction of purpose and will." She thinks 

 it is difficult or even not possible for natural science 

 to judge the nature of this direction and this purpose 

 and will aright. She says " that from the standpoint 



