DEONTOLOGY. 293 
corrupted and defiled in mind through the injurious operation 
of a privilege abused, it vindicates the goodness and the 
wisdom which bestowed that privilege, it justifies the evolu- 
tion of man’s conscience ; and, moreover, in the eyes of those 
who doubt not that it has been realised on earth; and in the 
person of a man, the sacrifice of self inseparable from this 
needful revelation, this comprehensive agency for the fulfil- 
ment of a work transcending the conceptions and the strength 
of guilty men, is of necessity vicarious. 
In reference to this last remark, I would remind you that 
the realization of the ideal is, relatively to my line of argu- 
ment, no more than a possibility which it was proper for me 
to take account of, Not, indeed, that I can help perceiving 
strictly philosophical and luminous congruity between such 
relevant considerations as, in my opinion, it suggests, and 
the conclusions which, as I believe, I have established. Still, 
although I take for granted nothmg more than the concep- 
tion of a character that cannot be conceived except as 
morally ideal, namely one in which the spirit of self-sacrificing 
zeal in doing good, and thereby overcoming: evil, rules in 
steadfast singleness of purpose, what I now affirm is, that to 
apprehend it morally is to discern in it a standard which 
discovers to us what we ought to be. Two kinds ofmovement, 
then, distinguishable without difficulty, and bearing witness 
to the action of a directing Providence, may be observed 
along the course of moral evolution. The beginning of the 
earlier leaves to be inferred a simple intimation of something 
men ought not to do ; the later, in disclosing what they are 
required to be, has opened up immeasurably the scope of 
duty and the evidences of shortcoming. Deontology, it thus 
appears, should take account of everything which is involved 
in this most comprehensive and complete requirement ; and 
as not a single duty can, apart from it, be thoroughly and 
radically understood, the principles which guide us nghtly 
in determining the conditions of objective duty must needs 
presuppose that the condition of the subject, the created 
spirit whom it binds, has been investigated relatively to the 
fundamental obligation. 
Ethical philosophy, so far as it knows nothing of responsi- 
bility to an all-ruling and absolutely righteous Spirit, is, and 
cannot but be, in the main objective ; and accor dingly, 
among the thinkers of pre-Christian heathendom, however 
keen, ‘Inquisitive, and serious, none succeeded in being other- 
wise than superficial 1 in their efforts to reduce to system and 
expound man’s various duties, none had power to free their 
