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purpose for which a new Act is devised and the circumstances under which it works.

One or two difficulties raised by the above contention remain to be considered. After the example just quoted, it may suggest itself to some that my indictment is, after all, not against these particular extremes of tendency alone, but against all party or sectional action whatsoever. For is not every party and every opinion that has a name at all marked with the same one-sidedness? Do not all the names by which leading schools of moralists and reformers are known conceal such abstractions as we have been speaking of? Are not one set of abstractions indicated by individualist, conservative, moderate; another by socialist, liberal, progressive? One set by realist, utilitarian, naturalist; another by idealist, mystic, supernaturalist? And if this is so, will it not be safer for us to keep clear of them altogether, and refuse to call ourselves by any of them ?

The fact is undoubtedly true. These names strictly taken do conceal abstractions. But it is to be noted that the defect in question attaches not to names of schools of moralists and politicians alone, but to names of any kind. Logic, as we know, divides names into concrete names and abstract names, but the truth is that all names are abstract. It is of the nature of names to be abstract, for they all indicate only one side or aspect of the thing they denote. If, therefore, we are going to wait till we can find a name which will express everything we are before we consent to call ourselves anything, we shall have to be content to remain nameless. The one-sidedness of a name is in reality no reason why we should refuse to call ourselves by it, if we find ourselves in general sympathy with

the party which adopts it. It is, on the other hand, a very good reason why we should be on our guard against the one-sidedness of thought which the name suggests. The penalty that attaches to the neglect of this precaution illustrates a peculiar attribute of abstractions which has often been pointed out. I have already said that abstract ideas are impractical ideas. Circumstances are sure to defeat them. But this is not all. It requires to be added that they defeat themselves. For abstractions are a kind of extreme, and like extremes, they tend to meet. It is impossible for me at this stage in my paper to illustrate this property of abstractions with any fulness. I may, however, in passing, refer to a familiar example of it. We shall all admit that there is such a thing as extreme individualism. One of the marks of it is that it is chiefly effective in promoting socialism. The extreme individualist stands in practice and theory by the rights of property in the most exclusive sense. But the effect of this on the general public is merely to undermine the respect for property, on which all the so-called rights must ultimately rest, and so to play into the hands of the socialist. And the same is true in another way of extreme socialism. What is more common than to see ardent socialists advocating, as a cure for starvation-wages, communistic palliatives, which, if widely applied, could only have the effect of weakening the general movement in the direction of better pay, and so playing into the hands of the individualist?

This paper will not have been addressed to an English audience if it has not suggested to some, as a final objection to the contention it urges, that it is after all the merest commonplace. "You are only

elaborating with a great deal of unnecessary flourish the truism that we must look at both sides of the shield, and consider all questions that come before us from every available point of view. In life and politics, especially, we have to remember that we have to do with all sorts and conditions of men, and with all varieties of taste. We must be prepared, then, for a little of everything—a little realism and a little idealism, a little socialism and a little individualism, a touch of optimism to give dignity, and a touch of pessimism and of the devil to give a relish to our opinions. We are to go a certain way with the advocates of all these doctrines, but not too far."" Well, perhaps I do mean partly this, but I mean a good deal more. For it is possible to look at both sides of the shield without seeing them both as sides of the same shield, and it is possible to see many aspects of a question, and to see how people might differ upon it, without seeing how the different aspects. complement one another in the whole that is broken. up between them. It is this comprehensive view for which I have been putting in a plea. In this view we not only see the various sides, we unite them. In order to do so we must not merely go round and round, we must take our stand at the centre, and this centre, in morals and politics, as I have tried to show, is nothing else than human character itself.

In advocating the importance of taking such a stand with a view to effective practice, I must not, of course, be understood to be requiring that all would-be reformers should leave the platform and the committeeroom and devote themselves to an arduous course of philosophy. In reform, as elsewhere, we must have division of labour, and those who are the best thinkers

may likely enough be unfitted for effective action. My contention is that if they are, it will be for other reasons than the nature of their ideas, and that those whose profession it is to carry ideas into practice will not be the worse, but in every way the better for possessing themselves by every means in their power of the results of the best thinking on the ends and ideals of human life.

ness.

Ethical societies aim, as I understand them, at bringing these results within the reach of busy people, so that he who runs may read. In pursuing this aim they may require to have recourse to propositions of a high degree of generality-if you like, of abstractIn this respect their teaching will be colourless and forbidding. "Philosophy," says Hegel, "paints her grey in grey," and this is not less true of ethical philosophy than of philosophy in general. But in stating its formulæ, and calling upon thinking people to understand them, ethics is not forsaking reality and losing touch with practice. On the contrary, its most recent formulæ represent the attempt to rise above the half-truths of current reflection, to embrace more of reality, and so by setting man's life in a truer perspective to give it greater significance. So far from its being a matter of indifference to practice with what ideas we approach the problems of individual and social life, it is this that makes all the difference. "Conception," says Walter Pater, "fundamental brainwork, that is what makes all the difference in art." And what is true of fine art in general is, I venture to think, equally true of that finest of all the arts, the art of life.

V.

WHAT IMPERIALISM MEANS.1

TORE than any event in the memory of the present

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generation-more than the American War of the sixties, more even than the Home Rule proposals of the eighties-the present war has come with a sword into our midst. It has searched the hearts and tried the reins not only of the great political parties of the State, but of more homogeneous groups of politicians, which we have hitherto been accustomed to think of as bound together in "solid simplicity." At first the controversy was chiefly confined to the circumstances out of which the war arose, but as it has gone on it has come more and more to turn upon the meaning and justification of the whole policy that goes by the name of Imperialism. This is as it should be. No. question can be conceived which more vitally concerns the future well-being of the nation, and we might say of the world. The sooner, therefore, we can get away from the heated atmosphere of current controversy, and turn to the wider issues that have been brought to the front by it with the sincere desire to understand them, the better for us as a nation. The present article is an attempt to consider, without reference to South African politics, or party politics of any kind, two questions which everyone will admit are fundamental. First, what is the meaning of the thing we 1 Fortnightly Review, August, 1900.

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