OF THE GOOD. 151 



of disapproval and displeasure. This correspondence or 

 parallelism between the beautiful and the good fails, 

 however, when we recognise that the contemplation of 

 the good brings with it the sense of obligation, when 

 the terms good and bad are changed into right and 

 wrong, duty and neglect ; in fact the morally beautiful 

 does not remain merely a thing of disinterested pleasure, 

 but becomes an obligation presenting itself in the form 

 of duties which we have to perform. If the first 

 question be answered, if we have arrived at a definition 

 of what is good, or, in the highest sense, of the Good, 

 we have only solved one half of the ethical problem ; 

 we have still to show that, and how, this highest good 

 becomes or is to become a motive in our actions, how 

 and why it attains a controlling power over our Will. 

 Practical moralists, those interested mainly in the study 

 of existing moral and social relations, in the maintenance 

 or reform of the existing order of things, have usually 

 started with the first problem and have solved the 

 second by the appeal to some existing natural, moral, 

 social or divine law or system of laws. Metaphysicians, 

 on the other hand, have usually started with an analysis 

 of the psychological fact that all men as rational beings 

 experience, in a greater or lesser degree, a sense of 

 obligation, a feeling of duty, that they listen to the 

 voice of conscience, that they are possessed of a moral 

 sense. The difficulty then has been to define more 

 closely and for practical purposes what this sense of 

 duty really means, to evolve a code of morality which 

 may become of practical use and guidance. 



At the beginning of the nineteenth century Bentham 



