Page:Ferrier Works vol 2 1888 LECTURES IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY.pdf/349

294 duty. That is an intelligible position, more so than the ground occupied by the anti-utilitarians. We feel, nevertheless, that there is something defective in the scheme which sets aside virtue as the good, and enthrones happiness in its place. So far as we can see, there is a flaw somewhere in the system of the utilitarians, and also in the system of their opponents. We are not willing to throw virtue overboard, and join the utilitarians in setting up happiness alone as the supreme good for man; nor are we willing to join their opponents in throwing happiness overboard, and in setting up virtue alone as the ultimate object of his pursuit. We must try whether we cannot fall on some method by which the two, virtue and happiness, may be conciliated, conciliated on scientific grounds.

28. It was as a step towards this conciliation that I drew your attention, in my last lecture, to a distinction which may be of service to us in our attempt to adjust and to resolve this difficult moral question as to the supreme good: I mean the distinction between man considered as man simply, and man considered as susceptible of happiness and of misery. I stated what was meant by man simply, and what his qualities were, and also what man was in his more complex condition as the subject of happiness or the reverse. I stated that a different system of morals would apply to him in the simple state from what would apply to him in the complex state; in