104 COMTE TO BENJAMIN KIDD PART n 



is an "idiot," says Mr. Stephen. Now, sympathy is a 

 vague and ambiguous word. If you say that morality 

 rests upon sympathy you may mean almost everything 

 that the moralist can require, or you may mean hardly 

 anything at all. Mr. Stephen, like Adam Smith I take 

 it, means very little indeed. Morality rests upon a 

 rooted psychological incapacity for clearly distinguish- 

 ing between meum and tuum. It would seem perfectly 

 open to the selfish man to retort the charge of idiocy 

 against moralists of Mr. Stephen's type. "Idiot your- 

 self," the bad man might say, with great force. For 

 indeed there is nothing so incommunicable and purely 

 personal as mere pleasure or mere pain. And moral 

 .sympathy, which makes us partners with one another 

 in all things, is very far removed from automatic prompt- 

 ings or illusions as to the limits of personality ; it does 

 not fall below clear thought, but includes it and goes 

 beyond it. Love is a relation of person to person, and 

 the keen pang of love is not due to any vague appre- 

 hension, "What! there is suffering about, is there?" 

 but to the dreadful consciousness, " He is in pain ! 

 Precisely he ! Not I, but he ! That is the maddening 

 thought ! " Yes, and there too lies the ennobling 

 experience. 



The further question, "Why should I yield? why 

 care for others ? " receives the answer, " Generally in 

 the long-run it pays in pleasure to oneself to do so ; 

 but sometimes, we must admit in unfortunate cases, 

 or where there is too lavish generosity self-sacrifice 

 means a heavy nett loss." And with that the science of 

 ethics, as conceived and worked out by Mr. Stephen, 

 confesses itself bankrupt. The point has come at which 

 the question of the justification of the moral judgment 

 can no longer be thrust aside. Defined at first as social 



