120 THE REV. H. J. CLARKE ON THE 
actions by considerations which simply take account of profit 
and loss. On this supposition, if the discovery that our con- 
science had mistaken advice administered by ourselves for 
authoritative commands from the highest souree conceivable 
should give a shock to our minds, and if the effort to substi- 
tute for the future in our searching of heart the hope of 
pleasure or the fear of pain for the sense of duty should cost 
us a struggle, we could assign no better reason for our 
lingering reluctance to endeavour to bring our sentiments 
into conformity with truth and fact than the strangeness of 
the repellent doctrine, obviously an indefensible reason for 
fondly clinging to detected error, and virtually ascribing 
reality to a species of obligation which has been discovered 
to have no existence, save in the imagination of the inade- 
quately cultured and informed. 
But before we can assure ourselves that we are actually 
applying the elementary principles of the Science of Expe- 
dience to such a concept as right or duty, and may thereby 
expect to discover whether it be true that in their presence 
every such concept undergoes decomposition and disappears, 
we have to ascertain what that science is. Expedience pre- 
supposes an end in view, for the attainment of which means 
or instruments are used, or methods adopted. Whatsoever 
conduces (cuudéper) to the desired end is in respect to it ex- 
pedient, and, simply regarded as having this tendency, may 
be termed useful or profitable. Llustrations of expedience 
may thus be found in the contriving of means for the de- 
struction of life and property, as in the application of scientific 
skill and mechanical ingenuity to the construction of rifled 
cannon and armour-plated ships, and the invention of explo- 
sive compounds, and the improvement of weapons of pre- 
cision. ‘Those persons who even make it their business to 
break into houses and safes take care to provide themselves 
with implements scientifically adapted to effect their purpose, 
and it would be difficult to imagine what further advance 
could be made, relatively to this one object, in doing what is 
expedient. A word then, which, it is plain, has no distine- 
tively ethical significance, is obviously without meaning if 
employed for the purpose of characterising a system of 
ethics, thus forbidding us, indeed, to look for any recognition 
of a fundamental difference between right and wrong, but 
in all other respects leaving us in the dark as to the funda- 
mental principles of the system. Neither alone, nor in con- 
nection with the word Science, does Expedience shed upon 
them the faintest gleam of light. 
