denotes an organization of life in which as yet no interest has risen above the rest; it bespeaks the common populace of interests, disciplined, but not moved to any eminent achievement. The fact that the validity of the principle of prudence is so readily granted is significant of this. Prudence requires no interest to be other than itself, but meets it on its own ground. There is no elevation of motive.

But prudence is the first and most instructive lesson in morality. It has a peculiar impressiveness, not only because it is so promptly and unmistakably verified, but because it is so close to life. Its meaning is unlikely to be obscured through being abstracted from the real interests whose saving is the proof of its virtue. Furthermore, although prudence is not the highest principle in life, it is a mistake to suppose that it is therefore unnecessary in the highest spheres of life. There is a problem of prudence that underlies every practical problem whatsoever. If interests are to be organized they must be not only subordinated but also co-ordinated, that is, adjusted within every medium in which they meet. Without moderation, caution, self-control, thrift, and tact there is no serving man or God. As life increases in complexity it is easy to forget these basal precepts. Nature has provided a model, both simple and fundamental, in physical health.

"The body," says Burke, “is wiser in its own plain way, and attends its own business more directly than the mind with all its boasted subtilty."

The prudential organization of life furnishes the first type of formalism. Prudence requires that the interest shall be limited in order that it may not antagonize other interests and thus indirectly defeat itself. Discipline is justified, in other words, by its fruits. But discipline involves an initial moment of negation, in which the movement of the interest is resisted. It must be checked, and its headway overcome, if it is to be redirected. The exaggeration of this moment of negation, or a steady persistence in it, is asceticism. Its fault lies in its emptiness, in its destruction or perversion of that, which it was designed only to protect against itself.

Asceticism appears most frequently as a subordinate motive in some general condemnation of the world on religious grounds, and must receive further consideration in that connection. Its proper meaning as a purely prudential formalism is best exhibited in the Greek Cynics. These philosophers were moved to mortify the flesh, and to deny their social interests, by extreme caution. They discovered that the safest method of adjustment was simplification. If one permits one's self no desires, one need not suffer

from their conflict, nor need one treat with the desires of others. Now this would be a very perfect solution of the problem of adjustment, if only there were something left to adjust. If a Cynic can attain to a state of renunciation in which he wants nothing, he will be sure of having what he wants; only, unfortunately, it will be nothing. Epictetus has thus represented the Cynic's boast:

Look at me, who am without a city, without a house, without possessions, without a slave; I sleep on the ground; I have no wife, no children, no prætorium, but only the earth and heavens, and one poor cloak. And what do I want? am I not without sorrow? Am I not without fear? Am I not free? Now it is clear that the sum of the Cynics' attainments is not large. It consists, indeed, almost wholly in a certain hardened complacency, and a freedom to make faces at the world. the onlooker, whose comment Epictetus also records, their aspect is mean:

To

No: but their characteristic is the little wallet, and staff, and great jaws; the devouring of all that you give them, or storing it up, or the abusing unseasonably all whom they meet, or displaying their shoulder as a fine thing.10

In other words, since the Cynic continues to live after having rejected the proper instruments and forms of life, he must make a living out of the charitable curiosity excited by his very unfitness.

And asceticism of this prudential type tends always to be both empty and monstrous; empty because it denies life, and monstrous because life is not really denied, but only perverted and awkwardly obstructed.

There is a materialistic evil corresponding to the prudential organization of life which is known as meanness, vulgarity, or sordidness. It denotes a failure to recognize anything better than the fulfilment of the simple interests in their severalty. Although guarded and adjusted these still determine the general tone of life. The controlling motive, the standard of attainment, is never anything higher than the elementary desire with its attendant satisfaction. In its negative aspect this is termed aimlessness, and is identical with the Christian vice of idleness, so graphically described by Jeremy Taylor:

Idleness is called the sin of Sodom and her daughters, and indeed is the burial of a living man, an idle person being so useless to any purposes of God and man, that he is like one that is dead, unconcerned in the changes and necessities of the world; and he only lives to spend his time, and eat the fruits of the earth: like a vermin or a wolf, when their time comes they die and perish, and in the meantime do no good; they neither plough nor carry burdens; all they do is either unprofitable or mischievous."

Thus aimlessness denotes a failure to attain anything of worth; a lack of consecutiveness and

unity. The correction of this fault lies in a new principle of organization.

IV

This new principle of organization consists in the incorporation o interests, that is, their subordination to a purpose that embraces them, unifies them, and carries the whole to a successful issue. The incorporation of interests is peculiarly an intellectual process. It is this to which Socrates refers when he says that knowledge is virtue. Purpose requires, in the first place, that one should define and foresee the end, and in the second place, that one should be sagacious and watchful in the service of it. Purpose is the virtue of the understanding, of a mind which is adventurous enough to project an enterprise, but has enough of home-keeping wit to judge nicely of cause and effect or of part and whole.

There are many virtues which contribute to purpose, and of these none is more indispensable than patience, or the capacity to labor without hire for a prize deferred. "Better is the end of a thing," says the Preacher, "than the beginning thereof: and the patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit." Steadiness of purpose under adverse or confusing circumstances is called persistence, courage, loyalty, or zeal, with