At the outset, we distinguish the province of Reason, in which is included the calculation of the results of actions, and the devising of the best means for accomplishing a desired end without incurring pains and inconveniences. If a certain end is desired, the intellect has to forecast the outcome of different modes for effecting the desired result, and to discern that which secures the end with the fewest drawbacks. The end may be good or bad; the motives may be of the most elevated and generous character or they may be of the worst; but all the same, it must be duly considered what is the best means of securing it. What would be the result if I did this? on the other hand, would it not be better to do that? It will be seen that here there is no choice between motives, no dispute to settle between conflicting principles and passions, but only a kind of mental calculus or intellectual engineering. This state of the mind is sometimes taken to be the exercise of a choice, and it may be so; but it is of a different kind to that involved in self-rule, which we now approach. As a power of very gradual growth must we regard that cognition, (with its subsequent establishment as an object and a motive in the human organism) which recognises the Self as a whole--as a whole at any given time, and as a whole extending over seventy years, and perhaps indefinitely longer! Man's total self can become an object of thought and that object a motive, as distinguished from any of the particular motives of which it is made up. Man's future self may be an object of thought as well as the present; and man's Continuous Self may become a constant and all-predominating object of regard and interest--an all-absorbing motive. Indeed, so far may this go, that the long continuous self prospected after death may and has been so much an object of motive as to overshadow and dwarf every interest of the present. And if this Continuous Self is recognised by the Reason as the complete object, the one and chief motive--and it must be so since it includes every motive at every instant of time--then the Reason accords to it and claims for it a _ruling_ position, a claim before which every other must give way. There is no doubt that this is substantially taught, although in different terms of exposition, in all ethical books and in all verbal precepts of good counsel.