thought of the law, governs his conduct by his own cultured preferences. In his intercourse with friends and acquaintances, he may still have duties that are irksome and repugnant which he fulfills from a sense of duty, and therein feels the tense bonds of obligation. His further moral growth requires the enlarging and deepening of charitable sympathies, so that his conduct may be determined more and more by love, less and less by law; doing always the right thing, not because he ought so to do, but because he wants to do just that thing rather than any other.

§ 92. We have seen that so long as one acts merely from respect for the law, he is in bondage to the law.1 He has passed perhaps with many a fierce struggle out from a degrading slavery to appetites and passions and unbridled lusts, for of what a man is overcome of the same is he also brought into bondage, into a voluntary and honorable bondage. His conduct becomes uniform, reduced to the order of facts that ought to be, regulated by principles conforming to moral law. This is a dignified attitude, a high and rare attainment. But the man is in bonds, rigid, inexorable, though honorable, bound under a law that knows no concession or relaxation. By many moralists this is called liberty. Surely it is not liberty, but strict, the strictest, bondage. It is moral necessity. Regulus said: I must return. Luther cried: I can do no otherwise. Where, then, is liberty, the perfect liberty for which man so ardently longs? 2

Evidently when one does more and more as the law requires, not by virtue of the obligation, but by virtue of his own native or cultured disposition, he is passing from 1 In § 72, supra; cf. § 86.

2 See 2 Peter, 2:19. For the several kinds of necessity, see supra, § 44, note. Christians are servants, bond-servants, slaves, doûλo. They are no longer their own; they are bought with a price. See Romans, 6:16–22; 1 Corinthians, 7: 21-23; Luke, 2: 29.

under bondage into the realm of liberty. When love takes the place of constraining duty, the law ceases to be law. Then he is no longer under law, but under grace; then, but not till then, is he perfectly free. The law commands, Thou shalt love; and when through obedience love has become the dominating impulse, confirmed and established, the law as law has disappeared. Thus perfect love is perfect liberty.1 Then all doing is righteous yet free, since it is done in free preference to any other. Here and here only is the longed for liberty to be found. In our imperfection and struggles with self, which never cease, this highest ideal is never fully realized in human life. The imperfect person is one conscious of obligation. The perfect person is one conscious of holiness. Perfect persons are not under law; so that we may truly say the holy angels and the Deity are under no obligation to do what they do, but being perfect in love, are perfect in work, and perfect in liberty. Heaven knows no law.

1 Love and liberty grow out of the same root in the reality of their meaning, as in the origin of the words which express it; both arising from the Teutonic base Lub.

The view presented is in accord with the true doctrine of antinomianism, or Christian liberty. See John, 8:32; 15: 12–15; Galatians, 5:1, 13, 14; James, 1:25.

CHAPTER XII

WELFARE

§ 93. The term welfare has been used in the foregoing discussion. The corresponding notion is of so great importance in ethical theory as to require special examination.

Many philosophers, both ancient and modern, hold that the total essence of well-being or welfare or happiness is pleasure. All activity, they say, resolves ultimately into seeking for pleasure and shrinking from pain, this being a necessary consequence of the original constitution of the animal man, fully explaining all his conduct, and determining his character in its highest development. The maximum of pleasure attained throughout life is the maximum of welfare. Pleasures are admitted to vary in quantity, and even in quality, the coarse enjoyment of brutal sensuality differing widely from the refined enjoyment of delicate sentiment. Originally, according to the hypothesis of evolution, all impulsion is brutally selfish; gradually it becomes polished by its environment, but with no change of substance. The doctrine is essentially egoistic. Benevolence, in its most generous forms, is explained by the pleasure it gives the benefactor, and a purely disinterested action is pronounced a psychological impossibility.1

1 Bentham begins his treatise on "The Principles of Morals and Legislation " as follows: "Nature has placed man under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. On the one hand the standard of right and wrong, on the other the chain of causes and effects, are fastened to their throne. They govern us in all we do, in all we say, in

Without renewing the objections to egoism, let it be here observed that pleasure and pain are qualities belonging to feeling only. They are not elements of desire or of its gratification, though indeed they accompany both. We often seek to gratify a desire utterly regardless of the attendant pleasure or pain, and hence these are not universal ends.1 Moreover, pleasure and pain have in themselves no moral quality, they are neither right nor wrong. But if pleasure were the ultimate end of human endeavor, then it were ethical in the highest degree, and the maximum of pleasure attained would be the maximum of virtue; which is absurd.2

It is freely admitted that there is a natural and hence universal desire for pleasure and aversion to pain, the reverse being psychologically impossible. But pleasure as an object of desire is only one among a large number of appetencies, and it is not the chiefest or strongest or most prevailing, for there are others that often override it. Now it is evident that the gratification of one normal desire among many that are coördinate cannot constitute entire well-being; for to this end there must be a measured, harmonized gratification of all native inclinations. Nor can desire for pleasure be, even obscurely, the constantly informing element of the other desires; for very often we desire and ardently pursue, not pain itself, but what we know to be painful; we take pains to reach a painful end, bitterly demanding satisfaction,

all we think; every effort we can make to throw off our subjection, will serve but to demonstrate and confirm it. The principle of utility, recognizes this subjection, and assumes it for the foundation of that system, the object of which is to rear the fabric of felicity by the hands of reason and of law." Cf. J. S. Mill's treatise on Utilitarianism.

1 See Elements of Psychology, §§ 228, 256; and supra, § 5.

2 "The principle of private felicity," says Kant, “which some make the supreme principle of morality, would be expressed thus: Love thyself above everything, and God and thy neighbor for thine own sake."-Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, S. 210, note.

Hence

and heartily accepting the poignant consequences. pleasure, even should it be at a continuous maximum throughout life, cannot of itself be accounted welfare, though indeed in complete welfare it is an ever-present and important factor.1

Of course one may define welfare as a maximum of pleasure and discuss it accordingly; but it is very certain that this is not the notion of welfare that prevails among men. No doubt the notion includes pleasure, but it includes much more; for men condemn, as lacking dignity, a life whose sole aim is pleasure however refined. Who enjoys more delightful pleasure, according to De Quincey, than the opium-eater? Despite his delicious dreaming, he is judged a most pitiful wretch. Even he who devotes himself to giving pleasure to others, as the professional musician, is held in slight esteem. So also the comedian. Men enjoy laughing, but the perpetually funny man is classed with the circus clown, a lineal descendant of the court jester, whose rank was low, and whose quips were regulated with whips. Still the pleasure giver has a calling, for pleasant recreation

1 "The true object of the original vital instinct in man is not pleasure, but self-conservation. Such was the doctrine of Crysippus, the Stoic. Pleasure, said he, is the natural result, éπɩyévvnμa' of successful effort to secure what is in harmony with our nature. It follows upon activity, but should never be made the end of human endeavor."- UEBERWEG, Hist. Phil., § 55. "If happiness means the absence of care and the inexperience of painful emotion," says Froude, "then the best securities for it are a hard heart and a good digestion." Carlyle dubbed this view of happiness "the pig philosophy," and also says: "Man's unhappiness, as I construe, comes of his Greatness; it is because there is an Infinite in him, which with all his cunning, he cannot quite bury under the Finite. Will the whole Finance Ministers and Upholsterers and Confectioners undertake, in joint stock company, to make one Shoeblack HAPPY? They cannot accomplish it, above an hour or two; for the Shoeblack also has a soul quite other than his stomach; and would require, if you consider it, for his permanent satisfaction and saturation, simply this allotment, no more, and no less: God's infinite universe altogether to himself, therein to enjoy infinitely, and fill every wish as fast as it rose." - Sartor Resartus, bk. ii, ch. 9.