others; every exceptional position must be justified by the demands of the general conditions of life; on the other hand, a society is the more perfect the more freely and more independently the single members move, and the larger the number of different possibilities it realizes, if, at the same time, unity is preserved and attains an ever higher character and ever increasing validity. When the ethical feeling develops, upon the basis of sympathy, to the feeling of duty and justice, the principle included in the above law becomes the standard according to which the individual judges his own actions as well as those of others, and pronounces them good or bad. The good is that which preserves and develops the welfare of conscious beings. The ethical principle now arrived at applies to the deeds of conscious beings, presupposing an end in view. Unconscious nature affects man's life, but its workings have no ethical character. The ethical judgment is itself determined by the principle on which it is pronounced, and hence it serves to produce greater welfare. This is especially to be seen where the judging and the acting individual are one and the same person; in other cases, it becomes a special problem to bring the acting individual to the recognition of the principle; this is a problem of psychologic-pedagogical nature. The word "welfare" is used in preference to utility or happiness in order to prevent misunderstanding, and may be defined as including all that serves to satisfy the needs of man's nature. Ethics must take into consideration all the gradations of life, and cannot, therefore, distinguish in the beginning between outer and inner, higher and lower, welfare. Such a distinction is already an ethical judgment, and can be made only after determination of the ethical criterion. Another mistake is the stress often laid upon momentary feelings of pain and pleasure. Pain signifies, it is true, the beginning of the disintegration of life, and pleasure its normal and harmonious development; yet each must be considered in its relation to the whole consciousness, the whole character, and the whole social state. So-called utilitarianism has injured its own cause by resolving consciousness into a sum of feelings, and society into a collection of individuals. The significance of single feelings of pain and pleasure for the welfare of society cannot be determined as if the problem were a simple arithmetical one.