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ULTIMATE MORAL STANDARD [CHAP.

righteousness or holiness with mere innocence, i.e., ignorance of evil. An intrinsic part of goodness lies in the rejection of evil. It is the fundamental characteristic of goodness in the universe which is the expression of the Divine Will and Activity, and must consequently be the conscious characteristic of goodness in every personal individual. Such an one cannot fill his own place to the Father of his spirit unless he chooses good and rejects evil. This is part of the Divine Ideal for him, of the Divine Intention in his existence; and the deliberate, conscious choice of good and rejection of evil is the ultimate test of ethical success and failure. It is the eternal standard of right and wrong.

This explains to us how in the world of human experience there comes to be such a multiplicity and variety of standards. The uniqueness which is characteristic of the whole universe of being, and which is so extraordinarily enhanced by personality, reaches its highest known degree in man whether we regard him collectively in tribes, classes, and nations, or individually each man by himself. The ultimate Standardthe consistent choice of good and rejection

IV.] OF INEXHAUSTIBLE APPLICATION

85

of evil, is the same for all, but it is one of inexhaustible applicability, it adapts itself to every phase of human life and culture, to every different nationality, to every different age, to every rank in society, to every peculiarity of individual mental and spiritual constitution. Its demands are not uniformity of apprehension, but the determined and persistent endeavour to attain to what is apprehended. In words that are almost tritely familiar, it requires of each man that he shall live up to the highest he perceives, and it may safely be asserted that in no two human individuals is that highest identically the same. This in no way derogates from

the obvious fact to which reference has already been made above, that there exist collective as well as individual ideals. We all recognise the existence of ethical ideals shared in by whole bodies of human beings. But our immediate concern is with the individual, and largely as each man's ethical standard is affected, in many instances actually inspired by that of his social environment, it nevertheless remains true in every case that there is an adaptation to individual idiosyncrasies which is unique. Moreover, in ethical

86

INDIVIDUAL INITIATIVE

[CHAP.

as in religious reform, the initiative is given by individuals. The way has to be prepared, indeed, by a growing though vague popular sense of the inadequacy of accepted standards and ideals; but the new start is almost invariably made by one man possessed of insufficient insight to perceive not only what ought not, but what ought to be, and sufficient character and self-devotion to give the requisite impulse in the right direction.

We are now in a position to consider the import to each individual man: (1) of the fact that he recognises an ethical standard of his own to which he may be true or false, and (2) of the existence of a unique Divine Ideal of his Individuality.

In the first place it must be acknowledged that no man is originally responsible for his ethical standard. He does not himself choose the age, nation, social rank into which he is born, nor the ancestral influences which the laws of heredity so strongly bring to bear upon him. Yet he is not wholly bound by any of these things, as the written history of earth's recognised greatest men abundantly shows, and the unwritten history of countless numbers, whose record is in the heart and

Iv.]

AND RESPONSIBILITY

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lives they have influenced through the power of their own individuality. The internal and external conditions of a man's life, as through childhood, youth, and manhood he gradually becomes aware of them, are the raw material out of which he fashions his individuality. Its possibilities, whether great or small, are limited; but they exist, and the realisation of some among them inevitably precludes the realisation of others. Man participates in the Divine prerogative of self-limitation, and the aim which he sets before himself, the ideal, bad or good, towards which he strives, is the result of its exercise. determines to realise certain possibilities and renounce others. For this determination, from the ethical point of view, he is responsible in the degree to which he understands, or could, if he chose, understand, whether it is in consonance with and in furtherance of, not what he wishes to be, but what he recognises ought to be. If his determination leads him consistently to reject what he recognises as evil, and follow what he recognises as good, he is, however unconsciously, fulfilling the ethical purpose of his existence.

He

Here, however, we are brought face to

88

CONSCIENTIOUS ERROR

[CHAP.

face with one of the greatest practical and theoretical perplexities of human life, one which seems hopelessly to confound all attempts to disentangle its intricate mesh. It is that to our eyes such fatal mistakes are often made by those who, according to what is said above, are fulfilling the Divine ethical demand on them, in whom the sense of moral obligation is most profound and most faithfully obeyed. It is not necessary to insist on this fact. There is no one who has not witnessed, too often experienced, heartrending proofs of its truth- and the tear-stained and blood-stained pages of history are as indelible a record of the errors and injustices of the good, as of the deliberate cruelties and greed of the bad. What are we to say of these things? If individual human life is limited to earth, they spell ethical failure for all those men and women who err from conscientious motives, failure not only for themselves, but for the multitudes they lead astray. Error, even when recognised, is mostly irretrievable on earth. But what if human life be not limited to earth? If each one of these men and women who have seemed to do harm where they