Page:Ethics, Descriptive and Explanatory (1901).djvu/215

190 the time when morality first began to claim attention, men have declared that there is some one thing that is of supreme worth, and they have tried to discover what this is. The more thoughtful observers at least have been convinced that conscientious men do not work at haphazard and at cross-purposes, some tearing down what others build up. They have been convinced that all moral men have, in the last analysis, the same purpose, or, at all events, that they could be brought to agree on a common purpose to be cooperatively achieved. This conviction it is that has given birth to teleological theories of conscience, which in part attempt merely to describe what the supreme aim of conscience in fact is, and in part undertake to decide what is the wisest and most reasonable supreme end for conscientious men to accept.

Neglecting for the present the distinction of the last sentence, these theories of the end fall roughly into two classes, eudemonistic theories (from, the Greek word for welfare) and perfectionistic theories, the former maintaining that the purpose of moral men, as such, is to achieve welfare, the latter that their purpose is to achieve perfection. Moreover, from the time of Socrates downward, there has been no time when either theory lacked representatives to urge it. Indeed, not alone in theory, but in practice as well, there have always been eudemonists, and there have always been perfectionists. This is an important fact to note. And another important fact to note is, that the greatest moralists, Socrates, Plato, and especially Aristotle, Kant, and Butler, have maintained that the good is complex, being a combination of welfare and perfection.

These facts are important to note because they fall in with and support the conclusions reached in the last chap-