Is worthless, has opened that self to receive worth from

a good which transcends it. Morality has been driven to

allow that goodness and badness do not wholly depend on

ourselves, and, with this admission, it has now finally

passed beyond itself. We must at last have come to the

end, when it has been proclaimed a moral duty to be non-

moral.

That it is a moral duty not to be moral wears the

form of a paradox, but it is the expression of a

principle which has been active and has shown itself

throughout. Every separate aspect of the universe, if

you insist on it, goes on to demand something higher

than itself. And, like every other appearance, goodness

implies that which, when carried out, must absorb it.

Yet goodness cannot go back; for to identify itself,

once more, with the earlier stage of its development

would be, once more, to be driven forward to the point

we have reached. The problem can be solved only when the

various stages and appearances of morality are

all included and subordinated in a higher form of being.

In other words the end, sought for by morality, is above

it and is super-moral. Let us gain a general view of the

moral demands which call for satisfaction.

The first of these is the suppression of the divorce

between morality and goodness. We have seen that every

kind of human excellence, beauty, strength, and even

luck, are all undeniably good. It is idle pretence if we

assert that such gifts are not desired, and are not also

approved of. And it is a moral instinct after all for

which beauty counts as virtue. For, if we attempt to

deny this and to confine virtue to what is commonly

called moral conduct, our position is untenable. We are

at once hurried forward by our admitted principle into

further denials, and virtue recedes from the world until

it ceases to be virtue. It seeks an inward centre not

vitiated by any connection with the external, or, in

other words, as we have seen, it pursues the unmeaning.

For the excellence which barely is inner is nothing at

all. We must either allow then that physical excellences

are good, or we must be content to find virtue not

realized anywhere. Hence there will be virtues more or less

outward, and less or more inward and spiritual. We must

admit kinds and degrees and different levels of virtue.

And morality must be distinguished as a special form of

the general goodness. It will be now one excellence

among others, neither including them all, nor yet

capable of a divorced and independent existence.

Morality has proved unreal unless it stands on, and

vitally consists in, gifts naturally good. And thus we

have been forced to acknowledge that morality

is a gift; since, if the goodness of the physical

virtues is denied, there is left, at last, no goodness

at all. Morality, in short, finds it essential that

every excellence should be good, and it is destroyed by

a division between its own world and that of goodness.

It is a moral demand then that every human excellence

should genuinely be good, while at the same time a high

rank should be reserved for the inner life. And it is a

moral demand also that the good should be victorious

throughout. The defects and the contradiction in every

self must be removed, and must be succeeded by perfect

harmony. And, of course, all evil must be overruled and

so turned into goodness. But the demand of morality has

also a different side. For, if goodness as such is to

remain, the contradiction cannot quite cease, since a

discord, we saw, was essential to goodness. Thus, if

there is to be morality, there cannot altogether be an

end of evil. And, so again, the two aspects of self-

assertion and of self-sacrifice will remain. They must

be subordinated, and yet they must not have entirely

lost their distinctive characters. Morality in brief

calls for an unattainable unity of its aspects, and, in

its search for this, it naturally is led beyond itself

into a higher form of goodness. It ends in what we may

call religion.

In this higher mode of consciousness I am

not suggesting that a full solution is found. For

religion is practical, and therefore still is

dominated by the idea of the Good; and in the essence of

this idea is contained an unsolved contradiction.

Religion is still forced to maintain unreduced aspects,

which, as such, cannot be united; and it exists in short

by a kind of perpetual oscillation and compromise. Let

us however see the manner in which it rises above bare

morality.

For religion all is the perfect expression of a

supreme will, and all things

therefore are good. Everything imperfect and evil, the

conscious bad will itself, is taken up into and

subserves this absolute end. Both goodness and badness

are therefore good, just as in the end falsehood and

truth were each found to be true. They are good alike,

but on the other hand they are not good equally. That

which is evil is transmuted and, as such, is destroyed,

while the good in various degrees can still preserve its

own character. Goodness, like truth, we saw was

supplemented rather than wholly overruled. And, in

measuring degrees of goodness, we must bear in mind the

double aspect of appearance, and the ultimate identity

of intenseness and extent. But in religion, further, the

finite self does attain its perfection, and the

separation of these two aspects is superseded and

overcome. The finite self is perfect, not merely when it

is viewed as an essential organ of the perfect Whole,

but it also realizes for itself and is aware of

perfection. The belief that its evil is overruled and

its good supplemented, the identity in knowledge and in

desire with the one overmastering perfection, this for

the finite being is self-consciousness of itself as

perfect. And in the others it finds once more the same

perfection realized. For where a whole is complete in

finite beings, which know themselves to be elements and

members of its system, this is the consciousness in such

individuals of their own completeness. Their perfection

is a gift without doubt, but there is no reality outside

the giver, and the separate receiver of the gift is but

a false appearance.

But, on the other hand, religion must not pass wholly

beyond goodness, and it therefore still maintains the

opposition required for practice. Only by doing one's

best, only by the union of one's will with the Good, can

one attain to perfection. In so far as this union is

absent, the evil remains; and to remain evil is to be

overruled, and, as such, to perish utterly. Hence the

ideal perfection of the self serves to increase its

hostility towards its own imperfection and evil. The

self at once struggles to be perfect, and knows at the

same time that its consummation is already worked out.

The moral relation survives as a subordinate but an

effective aspect.

The moral duty not to be moral is, in short, the duty

to be religious. Every human excellence for religion is

good, since it is a manifestation of the reality of the

supreme Will. Only evil, as such, is not good, since in

its evil character it is absorbed; and in that character

it really is, we may say, something else. Evil assuredly

contributes to the good of the whole, but it contributes

something which in that whole is quite transformed from

its own nature. And while in badness itself

there are, in one sense, no degrees, there are, in

another sense, certainly degrees in that which is bad.

In the same way religion preserves intact degrees and

differences in goodness. Every individual, in so far as

he is good, is perfect. But he is better, first in

proportion to his contribution to existing excellence,

and he is better, again, according as more intensely he

identifies his will with all-perfecting goodness.

I have set out, baldly and in defective outline, the

claim of religion to have removed contradiction from the

Good. And we must consider now to what extent such a

claim can be justified. Religion seems to have included

and reduced to harmony every aspect of life. It appears

to be a whole which has embraced, and which pervades,

every detail. But in the end we are forced to admit that

the contradiction remains. For, if the whole is still

good, it is not harmonious; and, if it has gone beyond

goodness, it has carried us also beyond religion. The

whole is at once actually to be good, and, at the same

time, is actually to make itself good. Neither its

perfect goodness, nor yet its struggle, may be degraded

to an appearance. But, on the other hand, to unite these

two aspects consistently is impossible. And, even if the

object of religion is taken to be imperfect and finite,

the contradiction will remain. For if the end desired by

devotion were thoroughly accomplished, the need for

devotion and, therefore, its reality would have ceased.

In short, a self other than the object must, and must

not, survive, a vital discrepancy to be found again in

intense sexual love. Every form of the good is impelled

from within to pass beyond its own essence. It is an

appearance, the stability of which is maintained by

oscillation, and the acceptance of which depends largely

on compromise.

The central point of religion lies in what is called

faith. The whole and the individual are perfect

and good for faith only. Now faith is not mere holding a

general truth, which in detail is not verified; for that

attitude, of course, also belongs to theory. Faith is

practical, and it is, in short, a making believe; but,

because it is practical, it is at the same time a

making, none the less, as if one did not believe. Its

maxim is, Be sure that opposition to the good is

overcome, and nevertheless act as if it were there; or,

Because it is not really there, have more courage to

attack it. And such a maxim, most assuredly, is not

consistent with itself; for either of its sides, if

taken too seriously, is fatal to the other side. This