will at once be seen that this principle is not put forth as anything new; its truth rather consists in its antiquity, and in the deep-rooted experience of all human individuals and all human associations. It is a principle which forms part of the proverbial wisdom of all peoples; and the Greeks especially from the oldest times were strong on this point. Μηδὲν ἄγαν--μέτρον ἄριστον--παντὶ μέσω τὸ κράτος θεὸς ὤπασεν--were maxims familiar to every Greek ear long before Aristotle; and in the realm of speculation, the ἀριθμός, or _number_ of Pythagoras, when applied to morals, really meant nothing else. So in the Proverbs of Solomon we find the well-known utterances--“_Hast thou found honey? eat so much as is sufficient for thee, lest thou be filled therewith and vomit it_.” And again: “_Be not righteous overmuch, neither make thyself overwise; why shouldst thou destroy thyself? Be not overmuch wicked, neither be thou foolish: why shouldst thou die before thy {155} time?_” And our Shakespeare, whose plays are a grand equestrian march of all wisdom, says to the same effect in his own admirable style-- “These violent delights have violent ends, And in their triumph die: like fire and powder Which, as they kiss, consume. The sweetest honey Is loathsome in his own deliciousness, And in the taste confounds the appetite: Therefore love moderately; long love doth so; Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow.” What Aristotle enunciated therefore was merely the most commonplace wisdom; and so much the better. Commonplace wisdom is the best kind of wisdom for common needs and every-day occasions. It is too late in the day now, and was too late in Aristotle’s time certainly, to be discovering altogether new rules for keeping the consciences and the stomachs of the human millions in good order. Things absolutely necessary to healthy existence were necessarily known from the earliest ages, unless indeed we imagine that the primeval man was created in a state of physical and moral disease, that he might grope and blunder his way into health, as some theorists assert that he groped and blundered his way from a tiger into a moral being, and from a monkey into a man. So far unquestionably, Henry Thomas Buckle was right: there are no discoveries to be made in morals. We do not discover the sun; we only recognise it when the clouds are blown and the rain has exhausted itself. So it is in morals--in the light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. We do not discover moral principles by a fingering induction, or in any other way; we merely remove obstructions; we can apply the {156} bellows also and blow the small spark into a mighty flame. Our endeavours therefore as preachers, and as philosophers, like Aristotle, are not in vain. We have much to do, if not in the way of discovering absolutely new principles, certainly in a thousand and one ways of applying those principles. A burning-glass when first invented did not discover the