The moral problem remains utterly insoluble as long as men regard it as an attempt to separate their good impulses from their bad ones, and to decide how much their good impulses are to be encouraged. Morality, if it is not fixed by custom and authority, becomes a mere matter of taste determined by the idiosyncrasies of the moralist. 5. _The Golden Mean and Its Difficulties_ Aristotle faced this fundamental difficulty of humanism in the _Ethics_. He had expounded the theory that happiness is due to virtue, and that virtue is a mean between two extremes. There must, he said, be neither defect nor excess of any quality. We must, in brief, go so far but no further in obedience to our impulses. Thus between rashness and cowardice the mean is courage; between prodigality and niggardliness it is liberality; between incontinence and total abstinence it is temperateness; between ostentation and meanness it is magnificence; between empty boasting and little-mindedness it is magnanimity; between [p167] flattery and moroseness it is friendliness; between bashfulness and impudence it is modesty; between arrogance and false modesty, it is truthfulness. So runs the Aristotelian catalogue, and probably no code ever described so well the ideal of a gentleman. But having laid down his general precepts, Aristotle, unlike most moralists, faced the difficulty of applying them. He recognized that it is one thing to accept the theory of a golden mean, and quite another to know where that mean lies. “For in each case it is difficult to find the mean ... thus it is easy, and in every man’s power to be angry, and to give and spend money; but to determine the person to whom, and the quantity, and the time, and the motive, and the manner, is no longer in every man’s power, nor is it easy; therefore excellence is rare, and praiseworthy and honorable.” For while the mean between excess and defect is excellent, “it is easy to miss a mark, but difficult to hit it.” If we look at the matter more closely in order to find out why moral codes are, as Aristotle says, so hit and miss, we must, I think, come to the conclusion that there is an undetected fallacy in most moral thinking which renders moral insight abortive. It is that fallacy which I now propose to examine.