DR. ROYCE'S LECTURE.

The lecture, after a brief review of the previous discussions, passed to the special question of the evening, a comparison of the Socialistic and Utilitarian moral ideals. The moral ideal of socialism views society as an organism, to be labored for as a whole, as a "body fitly framed together." The moral ideal of utilitarianism views society as a mass of individuals, whose happiness is to be treated as a mere aggregate or sum, this sum being rendered as large as possible. Which of these ideals is the right one?

The lecturer began the comparison of the two, by saying that if the emotion of sympathy be, as many have thought, the true basis of moral action, then the utilitarian view would appear to be the only right one. Sympathy with suffering would increase with the suffering that was the object of sympathy, and would estimate it as a mass. But is sympathy the real basis of moral conduct? One of the best arguments in favor of mere sympathy as the principle of morals is Schopenhauer's. He insists that sympathy or pity is unselfish, is in fact the only non-egoistic impulse, and so is the only possible moral principle. Is this, however, true? Is pity or sympathy necessarily unselfish at all? The lecturer pointed out at some length the selfish elements that may be involved in or indissolubly united with the mere emotion of sympathy in any particular case; and so he maintained against Schopenhauer that the emotion of sympathy, not being trustworthy in any sense, or necessary unselfish at all, cannot be the basis of moral conduct.

The real basis of morals is insight into the reality of human life as life. This insight implies the determination to treat human life as real. And this insight is not mere emotion, but calm determination.

But how is one to realize human life? As a mass of single separate experiences, as a heap of happiness or misery, to be estimated by addition? No; for in this fashion life would not be rationally realized at all. To determine to treat the whole of life as real, implies for a rational being the determination to treat it as having organic unity, or at all events to try to bring it into such unity-to exemplify. When we estimate our own lives, or any part of them, we do so by treating the experiences in question, not as a sum, but as an organic whole. A walk for pleasure is judged, not as a sum of pleasant steps, but with reference to the reaching of some place to which one has determined to go. A melody is not a sum of pleasant notes, but an organism, to be judged as such. In general, the experiences of life, if arranged in a different order, without in anywise changing their qualitative character as separate pleasures or pains, would at once alter their value. A single moment in a hour's or day's experiences if it has an organic connection with our previous life, has a value that may outweigh the dullness of all the rest of the hour or day. So we estimate our own lives not at all as aggregates, but as organisms. Even so with other men's lives. We must value human life as a whole, not through addition of happy and miserable men, but with respect to the unity of the whole of life. This is the reason why tragic experiences may have far more worth than experiences of mere placid contentment; for tragic situations often give a unity, an organism to life, that is missed in times of joyous contentment. This last point the lecturer illustrated from the Prometheus of Shelley, comparing the grandeur of the world of struggle in the early part of the play, with the comparative emptiness of the world after the triumph of Prometheus reduces, at the end of the third act, the whole of life to a mass of disconnected joys. This Shelley felt, and tried in the fourth act, to reintroduce organic unity into the world.

So the lecture closed with acceptance, its most general form of the moral ideal of the socialistic movements; but postponed any more concrete practical application until the next time. The final lecture of the course will be given on Monday, on "Practical Consequences of the Moral Ideal of Socialism."