54 INTELLIGENCE AND MORALS 



was prevailed upon to damn the body on principle, 

 and to relegate to insignificance as merely mun 

 dane and temporal the problem of a just industrial 

 order. Circumstances of the times bore with suffi 

 cient hardness upon successful scientific investiga 

 tion ; but philosophy added the conviction that in 

 any case truth is so supernal that it must be super- 

 naturally revealed, and so important that it must 

 be authoritatively imparted and enforced. Intelli 

 gence was diverted from the critical consideration 

 of the natural sources and social consequences 

 of better and worse into the channel of meta 

 physical subtleties and systems, acceptance of 

 which was made essential to participation in the 

 social order and in rational excellence. Philosophy 

 bound the once erect form of human endeavor and 

 progress to the chariot wheels of cosmology and 

 theology. 



Since the Renaissance, moral philosophy has re 

 peatedly reverted to the Greek ideal of natural ex 

 cellence realized in social life, under the fostering 

 care of intelligence in action. The return, how 

 ever, has taken place under the influence of demo 

 cratic polity, commercial expansion, and scientific 

 reorganization. It has been a liberation more than 

 a reversion. This combined return and emancipa 

 tion, having transformed our practice of life in the 

 last four centuries, will not be content till it has 

 written itself clear in our theory of that practice. 



