154 ASSAYS SCIENTIFIC AND PHILOSOPHICAL. 



But man is born a moral as he is born a rational 

 being. He can choose between alternatives, and 

 know them as higher and lower, i.e. as more or less 

 conducive to the rlXo?. He is thus an apxn m a 

 sense in which no other animal is, and because he 

 is so, and can take either of two courses, all human 

 affairs belong to the region of the contingent TO 

 t v^tyofjLivov aXXwc l\tiv. Human action can, there- 

 fore, never fall under the science of the necessary. 

 Ethics deals only with ra we TTI ro TroXi), and does 

 not offer mathematical accuracy. As a practical 

 matter of fact, Aristotle holds the freedom of the 

 will, reduces to an absurdity the semi-necessita- 

 rianism which made a man irresponsible for vice, 

 and treats perfect determinism as not worth dis- 

 cussing. 



Three modern questions are here involved 

 What is the moral standard ? What is the moral 

 criterion ? What is the moral faculty ? 



(a) Of these the first was the more important for 

 Aristotle, the last the great question of modern 

 days. For we are practically agreed as to the 

 moral standard. Cynic and Cyrenaic, Stoic and 

 Epicurean lived different lives and justified the 

 difference by their moral theories. For us one 

 type of character has won its way to security, the 

 Christian type, the morality of the Gospel. So far 

 as men differ about the moral standard now, they 

 differ rather in their views of the history of morals, 



