ETHICS AND ITS HISTORY 237
what you do only for duty's sake." Both are unworldly; both, to devise a word free from any invidious distinctions, are extra- natural. 2
Nor is the extra-naturalism the only thing to be said here of rigorism and hedonism. Their ideals, besides being other-world visitors, are also bound to be formal and empty. Perhaps other- world visitors must always have this ghostly character; but duty and pleasure as ideals are unavoidably possessed with it. Duty may, indeed, be the appropriate exhortation of the conservative, but just in being made an ideal it becomes generalized. Can a man teach or preach patriotism to the American people without making patriotism apparent to them as something broader and deeper than devotion to their own country; without, perhaps, illustrating his theme by the history of other peoples; in short, without making the Americans cosmopolitan even while he would make them patriotic? Can a man urge loyalty to a particular creed without raising loyalty itself, say loyalty to any creed what- soever, higher than the creed in question ? Can a man, then, bid his fellows to do their duty, even though he has in mind very definite things that he wishes done, without extolling duty in the abstract above the particular things? Again, pleasure may be the appropriate ideal of radicalism; but just in being made an ideal it, too, becomes generalized. A man may be a con- stant devotee of pleasure, as reckless and lawless and unconven- tional as you please; but let someone come to him and say: "Now be just what you are; make this pleasure-life your ideal life; raise your very appropriate standard where it can be seen of men and live under it;" and at once, if he takes heed, he is thrown quite off his feet. From having the form of something good to eat, or an interesting novel, or a visit to the theater, his pleasure has suddenly flown from the present things of this world and become an ideal without any determinable character.
2 Thus " extra-natural " is a generic term intended to include " supernatural " and " infra-natural." As to the invidious distinction involved in the application of these opposed terms, for my part I do not care whether duty or pleasure is called supernatural. According to Paley, Christianity would view pleasure so ; and, in any case, the opposition of the two, of the super- and the infra-natural, is the only significant factor.
