THE PRINCIPLES OF CONDUCT 



plctc living,&quot; the &quot;fuller life,&quot; as Tennyson has it. 

 One must insist upon the undesirableness of inter 

 preting this definition in the vulgar and mean sense, 

 because certain critics are not above doing so. In 

 his essay &quot;What was Shakespeare s Religion?&quot; 1 

 Mr. W. S. Lilly actually permits himself to write 

 thus of &quot;Measure for Measure&quot;: 



&quot;And it must be confessed that if judged by the latest, 

 and presumably the most perfect, system of Protestant 

 morals, Isabella s virginal constancy is indefensible. To 

 tality of life in self, in offspring, and in fellow -men, is 

 Mr. Herbert Spencer s criterion of most highly evolved 

 conduct, of conduct superlatively ethical. Such totality 

 Isabella would certainly have achieved by compliance 

 with Angelo s desire; and therefore, I suppose, her non- 

 compliance stands condemned by the Spencerian rule 

 of right and wrong.&quot; 



Would it were possible to say that Mr. Lilly docs 

 himself less than justice in this outrageous pas 

 sage. 



Leaving this luminous definition of the most 

 highly evolved conduct, 3 since its fitness is almost 

 self-evident, and since every reader is at least as 



1 We may recall the aphorism in the world-famous Educa 

 tion : &quot;To prepare us for complete living is the function which 

 education has to discharge.&quot; 



2 Studies -in Religion and Literature, Chapman & Hall, 1904, 



p. 22. 



3 Spencer defines conduct as &quot;the adjustment of acts to ends,&quot; 

 a definition which consorts with Matthew Arnold s familiar 

 dictum (in Literature and Dogma) that conduct is three parts 

 of life. 



265 



