CHAPTER X 

 THE WILL IN DEVELOPMENT 



ONE source of confusion in Ethical theory has been the 

 close relation of distinct aspects of ethical life. Happiness, 

 self-realisation, personality, the common good, virtue, duty, 

 conscience, moral sense are all distinct conceptions, but they 

 are not so readily to be assumed as independent factors in 

 the life of man in society. They are terms expressing 

 certain distinguishable elements in an ethical experience 

 which is, after all, at bottom a unity. And in this unity 

 all the relevant elements are closely interconnected. It is 

 possible, accordingly, to start from any one of these con- 

 ceptions and make it the centre of ethical theory, but in its 

 further development such a theory has before it one of two 

 alternatives, either to fall into hopeless one-sidedness or to 

 take up into itself in bulk the content of theories that start 

 from the remaining elements. Hence, while different in 

 form, ethical theories tend, as they fill out, to cover very 

 nearly the same ground. On the theory of development 

 this result is very readily intelligible. For, in the first 

 place, the function of ethical theory is to harmonise a 

 number of functions that have grown up in unconscious 

 and incomplete, but nevertheless in real and fundamental 

 relation to one another. In the second place, as ethical 

 development consists in an evolving harmony of feeling 

 and experience, the problem of theory is essentially to 

 reconcile and not to exclude. It will, accordingly, now 

 appear that each of the main types of ethical theory has its 

 place in the evolutionary scheme. Happiness, for example, 

 is the harmony of feeling with feeling and of feeling with 



