ii8 THE MORAL ASPECT OF 



to make the people religious, without both travelling 

 beyond its province and defeating its own aims. For 

 morality and religion cannot come by constraint. The 

 role of the state stops short of the inner life of its citizens, 

 and ends in securing for them a free field and favourable 

 circumstances for the practice of the virtues. 



Owing to these opinions, the practical man is very 

 reluctant to subject political projects to moral criteria. 

 Ethical considerations, weighty as they are in their own 

 proper province, are deemed to be somewhat remote from 

 the ordinary business of Parliament. It is not thought 

 desirable that our statesmen should complicate their task 

 by raising moral problems. If they are contemplating a 

 change of our fiscal policy, for instance, their duty is simply 

 to discover- the system which conduces most to the indus- 

 trial and commercial prosperity of the country. Morality 

 will take care of itself; and, in any case, it is a concern of 

 the people themselves rather than of their political repre- 

 sentatives. The national character is lost or won on the 

 broad arena of public life, and not on the floors of the 

 Houses of Parliament. 



Nor is the task of the politician the only one that is 

 held to be pursued without raising moral questions. 

 " Business is business everywhere," we say meaning 

 by this, not that the business man recognises no moral 

 restraints, but that business has its own province, maxims, 

 and methods, which, though they must not be immoral, have 

 nevertheless no moral purpose. Artists say something 

 similar regarding art, and the scientific man or the philo- 

 sopher regarding knowledge. Moral considerations are 

 thought to be irrelevant to these provinces. A work of 

 art must be judged by the canons of beauty and not by 



