130 COMTE TO BENJAMIN KIDD PART in 



ally since Mr. Alexander goes on to maintain that 

 his own formula incorporates hedonism by insisting 

 that some pleasures ought to be aimed at, viz. the 

 pleasures of goodness. But there is no doubt that he 

 is right, from the point of view of the moral conscious- 

 ness, in holding that if pleasure enters into the end of 

 [right] action, it cannot be pleasure as such but 

 desirable pleasure, i.e. morally desirable pleasure. 

 Lastly, Vitality is examined ; and Mr. Stephen is 

 instructed that all that is true in this formula is 

 covered more exactly by the abstract formula, equili- 

 brium. 



So far as we have yet inspected this doctrine, it is 

 evidently akin to the older evolutionism of Spencer 

 or Leslie Stephen. One organism, or one set of forces, 

 falls to be considered ; goodness is a harmony in the 

 organism or among the forces ; badness is disharmony. 

 At first sight one thinks that Mr. Alexander has 

 materially improved upon Mr. Stephen's position. 

 With Mr. Stephen, the individual man and the social 

 whole fall violently asunder. But Mr. Alexander knows 

 of a twofold moral equilibrium, applying alike to man 

 and to society. Also one observes the traces of 

 Mr. Alexander's idealist schooling. For him, morality 

 is still self-realisation or self -fulfilment. Unlike in- 

 tuitionalists, he regards goodness not as something 

 added from outside to the natural motives of men, 

 but as the correct working up of the raw material of 

 character. It is true, Mr. Stephen, with his purely 

 empiricist tendencies, has caught the same truth. But 

 the truth deserves full acknowledgment wherever found. 

 Assuming, as we are led to do, that the disorders in 

 character are many, the order, only one, there seems no 

 reason why we should quarrel with Mr. Alexander for 



