Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/407

 HIXTOX'S LATER THOUGHT. 395 brought before us as representative of the ethical aim we fail at first to realise that it may connote conceptions which are unfamiliar. We have no thought that it may imply a disintegration of old ideals. But Hinton by asking of every- thing : Does it serve ? made service involve nothing less than a complete revision of the old conceptions of virtue. Moral problems were placed on a new foundation, although Hinton claimed it as substantially that laid by Christ. Selfishness, the great deterrent from right action, is simply the absence of true regard. A true morals, like a true science, is only an. accurate response to fact. Morality is not a matter of goodness but of true relation to facts a relation which must be fluent, which cannot be rigid. " If two persons are hungry, another and I, and my feeling only responds to the hunger of one, it may, or it may not, be wrong, but assuredly it is untrue as untrue as there being four of anything and my thinking there are but three." It has very generally been held that service (or some similar conception) represents the true law of morals, but it is said that the law of service is embodied in certain rigid rules and institutions. The thought must be on good and also the action must be according to the rule ; that is to say, there is both an internal right and an external right. It is at this point that Hinton separates himself from those who (as they believe, at least) accept the Christian theory of morals. It was, he said, a waste of energy. Two things were to be thought of when one was sufficient. And, as we see, practically it is not done ; either the internal law is sacrificed, or the external, or both. The highest goodness of the accepted type becomes the luxury of the few. View- ing morals thus as a force to be treated dynamically, Hinton found that the natural moral law was really an easy one, and that if truly taught it might be followed by those who are now thrust outside the pale of virtue ; it permitted that tendency to impulse and the free play of passion which is so largely engaged on the side of evil. For the throwing off of the external right is the liberation of a great new force ; it means nothing less than the freedom of pleasure, of impulse. When the restraint is placed on the feeling the action becomes free. " There is nothing in restraint ; no reason any pleasure, any impulse, should not be ; and so the whole freedom of all joy. Only one thing must be, and always, Hinton's conception the entire ethical aim was covered by service. Happi- cannot be attained by pursuit, said Mill. Or goodness either, added Hinton. Let your impulses respond to fact, and you attain both happi- ness and goodness.