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that ethical philosophy and ethical science seem generally to be supposed to 
be the same thing. The words are used clumsily. Now I suspect that 
Aristotle had no moral philosophy at all — he said merely, “ I will write of the 
ethics of that state of things in which we exist ” — and he had a very accurate 
ethical science. That will explain the difficulty which lies in the sixth 
book of Ethics. The intellectual virtues there are misplaced ; their relation 
to pure ethics seems to have been misapprehended by Aristotle, as Mr. Row 
has pointed out. Virtue, according to Aristotle, is a mean between two 
extremes. He defines Happiness in connection with it, — ^ v\ tic ivtpyeia 
tiq Kar aptrtjv cipioTr}v iv 'up reXeiip — that is to say, an energy of the soul 
according to perfect virtue in a perfect life. That leads him necessarily to a 
discussion of what perfect virtue is, and that could not be carried out without 
an analysis of the intellectual as well as of the moral virtues. Thus the 
whole is made to lead up to that perfect life we believe to be developed in 
Christianity. Christianity adopts the same definition of happiness ; but we 
must bear in mind that we have a perfect life set before us, and a polity of 
an exact kind in our Revelation, of which Aristotle was wholly ignorant. 
And I agree with Mr. Row in his view that nothing will impress our 
religion properly upon the conscience of the world but pointing out in this 
nineteenth century that ethics and Christianity are really inseparable, and 
are both parts of the same system of our Christian polity. Another defect 
which I have to point out in the paper of Mr. English is that he has fallen 
into the usual error of almost all moral and metaphysical writers, in 
making minute subdivisions and classifications of human faculties rnd 
powers, using words in peculiar senses of his own, and endeavouring to 
impose those senses upon other people. When men will begin moral 
and metaphysical science with arbitrary definitions, they will never con- 
vince the world of their conclusions. They must really use language in its 
ordinary common-sense meaning, and endeavour to show people the truth 
without teaching them a nomenclature to begin with. But there is one 
point on which I must express a very different opinion from the author, 
and that is concerning the freedom of the will. I am quite sure that this is 
the one point on which Christianity will, in our day, have to fight its battle. 
The whole tendency of the day is to turn men’s minds from the will to a 
kind of inert action, which they call force. I say “ inert action,” for I really 
think that nothing short of that contradictory term will express my meaning. 
They deny that which is the real cause of all action, and yet seeing constant 
motion and action in the universe, they attribute it to an abstract idea. 
We shall have to fight the battle of Christianity on that question of the will 
of man. But though I must not be understood as even here acquiescing 
in the obiter dicta of Mr. English, yet I must thank him very heartily for the 
fearless way in which he has combated the infidelity of Mr. Mill and others. 
I think too he is quite right in confronting the dicta of Mr. Mill with those of 
the author of Ecce Homo in one point. It required no little assurance on the 
part of a public man in England in this nineteenth century to speak of 
Christianity as Mr. Mill has spoken of it ; and I am not myself surprised 
