56 FROM COMTE TO BENJAMIN KIDD PARTI 



drinking immoderately, that is highly altruistic be- 

 haviour, but it is not virtuous. Indulgence may be as 

 altruistic as any conduct whatever, yet indulgence is 

 as vicious as any conduct whatever. 



We need not wonder, therefore, if a further step is 

 taken in criticism of such positions as Comte's. Those 

 who have discovered that we may sometimes do wrong 

 in fostering the pleasure of others naturally go on to 

 ask whether it may not be wrong to drop some of our 

 own pleasures, or, at any rate, to drop some of our 

 own rights ? Thus, in place of Comte's one-sided 

 commendation of the service of others, we are asked 

 to accept, as the true ethical ideal, a doctrine of 

 balance between the claims of others and personal 

 claims. This conception alternating, it is true, with 

 other conceptions is found as far back as Bishop 

 Butler. Butler has no very clear doctrine of the con- 

 tents of the moral ideal. That was not the question 

 which mainly interested him. When he had said 

 "Obey conscience," he thought he had given the 

 main instruction required of him as a moralist. Still, 

 the other question cannot be suppressed. Reason- 

 able men must ask, " Granted that we are to obey 

 conscience, what is the general line of its commands ? 

 What is the unifying principle of its various utter- 

 ances ? Surely it is incredible that such a principle 

 should be entirely lacking, and scarcely less so that 

 the principle of goodness should be inscrutable to a 

 reverent human inquiry ! " Butler deals with this 

 further question, but he does so informally in a series 

 of not easily reconcilable obiter dicta. 1 Sometimes 



1 Cf. Dr. T. B. Kilpatrick's Introduction to Butler's Three Sermons 

 on Human Nature. 



