But what has a natural ethics to put in the place of pleasure as the goal of right action? The question is answered when we ask, What does Nature herself put? Nature is said to have no morals, yet a mother bird will imperil and often lose its life for the sake of its young. Is it seeking pleasure then? Certainly not—it is protecting and fostering life, the life of the race. And here, as we have insisted so often, is the master-impulse of nature. We are taking a false and contracted view when we assume that a living thing can have no other goal of action except pleasure. Far earlier than the appearance of man in the world is the appearance of the social instinct which prompts the individual to live, and if necessary to die, for the larger life of the race. What really begins in man is the power to think of himself, to choose, to analyze, the power to say, Why? To this question the science of ethics must provide an answer if it can—that, in fact, is its origin and function. But if it binds itself to provide an answer in terms of pleasure, it is entering the lists with naked Egotism at a fatal disadvantage. On that ground, it seems to me, Egotism must always win. But it is not the only ground. Nature knows a whole world of impulse and effort which has nothing to do with pleasure. _Nature does not directly want pleasure at all, but is resolved, at the cost of pleasure and everything else, to have life._ Now life is maintained at its highest point by _harmony_—a harmony of the faculties with each other and, as a whole, with the mighty life outside them. And, as Santayana admirably says, “harmony when made to rule in life gives reason a noble satisfaction which we call happiness. Happiness is impossible and even inconceivable to a mind without scope and without pause, a mind driven by craving, pleasure, and fear.”[146] In this sense we may say that happiness is organically connected with right action.[147] But right action in itself is simply the action which best subserves the central purpose of nature. If that purpose is summed up in the one word Life, we must think of the moral sense, if we would not go astray and be bewildered, in terms of living and not in terms of enjoying. To take the greatest of exemplars, who can venture to affirm that Christ had more pleasure living as he did and uttering to the last syllable the message that was given him to deliver, than if he had prudently restrained himself and led the life of a decent and respectable artisan in his Syrian village? Indeed, even if we take very long views, who can affirm that, on the whole, he has by his life and death increased the sum of pleasure in the world? I doubt it very much. No one can deny that it is most questionable. To think of the matter in terms of pleasure seems to lead to nothing but perplexity and doubt. But there can be no doubt whatever that he lived to the full the life that it was in him to live, and that he immensely deepened and enriched