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 THE NORMAL SKLK, IK. .~>07 trinsically less adjustable than mere views. Meanwhih. if the man we are considering be forced to depend more or on the guidance of Feeling the necessary pis-aller of the aTratStuTos let hirn at least submit himself to the tench ing of what I claim to be a sounder philosophy than that which identifies Conscience with the primarily ' tribal ' or social impulse. Let him, in short, refrain from giving himself up wholly to a bare half of his Moral Sense, and pay due atten- tion likewise to its complementary half, in other words, to his sense of self-justice, as it may be roughly termed, in order that the latter may balance and correct what he will other- wise be bound to accept as the voice of Conscience urging him to abnormal, and therefore actually immoral, self-sacrifice. Such a duality in unity, becoming ever less of a duality and more of a unity as the Moral Reason develops, is the true Conscience or Normal Self, by obeying whose dictates a man can alone make certain of fulfilling ' under normal circum- stances,' as we say, his duty as moral subject and member of society. But circumstances never are normal, it may perhaps be retorted. In order to meet this objection, let us remind our- selves of our assumption that there is always an actually possible Best for man at any point that we choose to take in the line of his moral evolution. Now ideally, no doubt, it is the function of Ethics in its capacity of Art to keep pace, as it were, with this temporary Best by anticipatorily describ- ing the full character that it will be liable to assume if the capacities and opportunities of each and all concerned be utilised to their utmost. In practice, however, some rough method of averaging has to serve in place of an exact forecast. Thus the actual concrete Norm that Ethics prescribes at any moment can never be fully adequate to the circumstances that it is designed to meet. On the other hand, since humanly speaking we can have nothing better than this Norm to look to for guidance, we are naturally disposed to fortify our faith in the highest promptings of our nature by attributing the inadequacy, the want of perfect ' normality,' to the circumstances rather than to the Norm itself. Mean- while the Science that lies at the back of the Art of Ethics is less immediately relative to the practical needs of the hour, and has a right to try to look at things, so to speak, sub specie diuturnitatis. Most notably does it aspire to do this when it is at its Formal or Dennitory stage. From this its most widely speculative point of view, the Norm it considers is the abstract of the many norms that have actually been prescribed at one time or another. For Science as such has