CHAP, xin DARWINISM IN ETHICS: ALEXANDER 141 



traces of Mr. Alexander's idealist schooling. For 

 him, morality is still self-realisation or self -fulfilment. 

 Unlike intuitionalists, he regards goodness, not as 

 something added from outside to the natural motives 

 of men, but as the correct working up of the raw 

 material of character. It is true, Mr. Stephen, with 

 his purely empiricist tendencies, has caught the same 

 truth. But the truth deserves full acknowledgment 

 wherever found. Assuming, as we are led to do, that 

 the disorders in character are many, the order, only 

 one, there seems no reason why we should quarrel 

 with Mr. Alexander for speaking of equilibrium as 

 the moral end, if he likes to do so. Following his 

 own lead we might hint that a different formula did 

 fuller justice to the real contents of the moral end ; 

 but we should not condemn his formula as false. 



A very different light, however, is thrown back 

 upon this definition from the second part of Mr. 

 Alexander's treatise. In it we learn that there are 

 many competing and successive types of morality 

 endlessly many. Goodness is not one, in contrast to 

 the multitudinousness of evil and disorder. Goodness 

 itself is no less protean. We must not hold that 

 morality is the equilibrium of conduct ; each type of 

 morality is an equilibrium. Without forestalling our 

 discussion of the theory of moral progress, we notice 

 now the bearing of this assertion, not simply on the 

 theory of moral order, but on the very definition of 

 morality. It had been proposed that we should de- 

 fine morality as equilibrium. That definition is now 

 robbed of its meaning. Is there any conduct at all 

 which may not be said to seek an " equilibrium " if 

 only that of the simple equation, " Let me be on the 



