which do adopt the idealising form of expression is itself a fact of no small interest to the sociologist. As against the view which I am rather hinting at than working out in a way adequate to the problem, it would doubtless be urged that, after all, morality is not and cannot be merely the residuum from the past; that we cannot accept, and do not accept, the decisions of the past except on grounds of reason. True, but not to the point. The past is never merely received, passively taken in. We who receive it are constituted as our predecessors were, and actively remould what is passed on to us. Not the most impersonal of the heritages of the past, not language itself, is merely taken in. And reason, which we drag into the argument, is not other than historical: that is to say, the term reason' indicates no abstract power or process remaining always the same, but a living function which grows and develops in and by the material provided for it. A theory of morality, however constructed, must always give occasion to a certain feeling of despondency; not because human practice falls so often short of its own ideals, but because of the insuperable difficulty we experience in determining the real laws of interdependence among the facts of conduct. A single action, a general rule of conduct, a permanent institution of the moral life,-what moral philosopher will assume that he knows completely how in each case they have affected the agents directly or indirectly concerned, how far the consequences are such as further or impede what he has gathered from experience and reflexion as constituting progress in morality? It is in this field that there lie the true problems of ethics, problems only to be solved by methods which, when we think over them, almost bring us back to an old position of Greek speculation, that evil is ignorance, and that the secret of all excellence of practice and of character is knowledge. Morality, then, as I conceive it, is a product or a manifestation of human nature, exhibiting in its history, like every other such product or manifestation, traces of the constant interaction between individual minds and the forms in which it may have been embodied. There is no method of explaining it save that which is applicable in all similar cases: knowledge of its history and of the structure which represents its stationary condition at any moment. We cannot explain it from without. Just as little can we work out a theory of it from above downwards. Our constructive explanations must advance from below upwards. 117 VII. THE REGENERATION OF GERMANY.1 I. THE disasters of the year 1806 made the leading statesmen of Prussia, however they might differ in other respects, agree that comprehensive reforms in the State were necessary. The 1 [The following pages contain the second and third of a series of three lectures delivered to popular audiences at the Owens College, Manchester, in the Lent Term of 1891. series had been preceded by one, given by a colleague, on the decline of Prussia after Frederick the Great; and Professor Adamson's first lecture, which is not printed here, began with a summary account, connecting the two series, of the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire, and of the collapse, in the terrible year 1806, of the Prussian military power. The lecturer proceeded to point out how "the two events, though closely enough connected-for the determining conditions of both were woven together in the same web of circumstance may yet be regarded separately, for they exercised no direct influence on one another. Each, moreover, may well be contemplated from a twofold point of view. Each has an external aspect and history and an internal. The external, as in all other cases, is the more directly perceptible; it presents to the imagination a picture more easily grasped and apparently more complete in itself, and it tends to keep in the background its less obtrusive, less demonstrative counterpart. Yet, without desiring to rob the pomp and circumstance of outward political history of its immense significance, for it is in outer act that the character of man is exhibited, one would insist that only in the slower, more secret movements of the life of a people is its history to be truly read. A State as it exists at any moment may be a noble product of human effort, potent for good in innumerable ways, but never is it to be regarded as final, as an end in itself, as other than a way in which the general spirit of humanity has expressed itself under particular conditions. And the changes of a State or system of States seem to me to have significance only when regarded in relation to the movements of human thinking and feeling from The dramatic interest of the events that had forced on them this conviction is reflected in their plans, which were conceived and received in an enthusiastic spirit that perhaps hardly corresponded to any widespread change in the general habit of thought. At the same time, it was quite inevitable that many distinct trains of thought, many distinct purposes and aspirations, should come together in the most varied proportions and impress their shifting character on the schemes projected. Hence there is a certain difficulty, a certain risk of misrepresentation, in any over-definite statement of these inchoate plans, just as there is such in any description of a historic event, which must perforce isolate it from its natural surroundings and give a fictitious stability to what is in itself but a momentary appearance in the ever-changing. In order, then, to arrive at a tolerably fair idea of these. reforms in the public life of Germany, such as will enable us to judge their character and relative importance, it is necessary to follow them for a brief space from the first airy stage of conceived idea through the conflict with surrounding realities, into which they were inevitably thrown, down to the relatively final appearance of institution. Only so can we determine the measure of vital energy which each possessed, the contribution which each succeeded in making to the total end contemplated. For it is in the life of a State as in the life of the individual. Many a one steps forth from the abstract period of youth, confronting the future with long thoughts and high ideals, looking forward with joyous confidence to rich and fruitful realisation, and learns soon, consciously or unconsciously, which they spring and to which in turn they communicate impulse and direction." The remainder of the lecture was devoted to sketching the great re forms in the Prussian State achieved after what had seemed its catastrophe, the defects which they were designed to remedy, and the purposes which they were intended to fulfil.] the bitter lesson of experience. The details of practice, each in itself apparently the weakest of ties, have a combined force sufficient to bind the strongest will. Rigorous counsels of perfection yield little by little under the constant pressure of the innumerable complaisances which common life seems to render necessary. The high purpose of youth becomes the conventional morality of middle age, with which one sleepily rests content, or which, alas, may be accompanied by memories that are a ceaseless source of pain rather than of satisfaction. The shock of disaster had opened the eyes of Prussia's statesmen to the inner discord in the Prussian State. The collapse of the material power of the older governmental system seemed to demonstrate the need for such a change as should enlist in the active life of the State the best energies of all her members. How this should be achieved floated vaguely enough before the minds of many; in one mind, that of Stein, it took clear, definite, and systematic form. His ultimate aim was to create anew in Germany those invisible links of common political feeling and life through which alone a mere collection of individuals is formed into a State or nation, and which had dimly and imperfectly entered in the past into the old idea of the empire. Thoroughly familiar, by training and experience, with the actual conditions of the German States, and particularly of Prussia, he was able to lay his finger with unerring precision on the circumstances which had prevented the realisation of that idea. It was on this account mainly, only in a secondary way from reference to what may be called international considerations, that he urged the unification of Germany, a conception which, arrived at from a wholly different point of view, was finding eloquent expression in Fichte's patriotic addresses. Small States, with government based on absolute sovereignty, seemed to him a mechanism simply designed to |