THE PRINCIPLES OF CONDUCT 



plete living," 1 the "fuller life," 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 "What was Shakespeare's Religion?" 2 

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

 thus of "Measure for Measure": 



"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." 



Would it were possible to say that Mr. Lilly does 

 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 : "To prepare us for complete living is the function which 

 education has to discharge." 



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

 p. 22. 



3 Spencer defines conduct as ' ' the adjustment of acts to ends , ' ' 

 a definition which consorts with Matthew Arnold's familiar 

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

 of life. 



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