Always and everywhere, a straight line appears to be the shortest distance between two points. What is meant by shortness hardly seems to be legitimate matter for dispute. But the man convinced that he ought to pay his workman a fair wage, and that he ought to do his duty by his son, may be in no little perplexity when he attempts to define that fair wage or that parental duty. If he turns for advice to others, he will find that history and tradition, time, place and circumstance, very perceptibly color the advice they offer. The application of the general rule is, hence, quite as important as the rule. There is no such thing as conduct in the abstract. Let us admit that benevolence is morally obligatory. How shall we be benevolent? Shall we follow Cicero, and give only that which costs us nothing? or shall we emulate St. Francis? The general rule may be a faultless skeleton, but it is, after all, only a skeleton, and it cannot walk of itself. Again. The dogmatic intuitionist has quite a collection of rules by which he must judge of his actions. They are severally independent and authoritative. Suppose an act appears to be commanded by one rule and forbidden by another? Who shall decide between them? Prudence and benevolence may urge him in opposite directions. Benevolence and justice may not obviously be in harmony. The rule of veracity may seem, at times, to prescribe conduct which will entail much suffering on the part of the innocent. To what court of appeal can we refer the conflicts which may arise when ultimate authorities disagree? He who, in war time, can conscientiously shoot a sentry, but cannot conscientiously lie to him, may, later, have his misgivings, when the Golden Rule knocks at the gate of his mind. (4) Nor does he leave all difficulties behind him, who abandons Dogmatic Intuitionism and takes refuge in Philosophical. Kant's maxim needs a vast amount of interpretation. As it stands, it is little more than an empty formula. What I can wish to be the law of the universe must depend very much upon what I am. The lion and the lamb do not thirst for the same law. To the quarrelsome heroes of Walhalla a world of perpetual fighting and feasting must seem a very good world, in spite of knocks received as well as given. Kant's fundamental maxim scarcely appears to be a moral rule at all, unless we make it read: "Act on a maxim which a _wise and good man_ can will to be a universal law." But how decide who is the wise and good man?