These considerations naturally lead me to notice the two different ways in which the test of conduct may be, and as a fact is, applied. One mode is the conscious and intentional application of it by the reflective man. The other is the semi-conscious and almost instinctive application of it by the community at large. In morals, as in the arts, men, almost without knowing it, are constantly re-adjusting their means to their ends, feeling their way to some tentative solution of a new difficulty or a better solution of an old one, shaping their conduct with reference to the special needs of the situation in which they are placed. It is thus, for the most part, that new circumstances develope new rules, and that the simple maxims of a primitive people are gradually replaced by the multifarious code of law and morals with which we are now familiar. The guiding principle throughout the process is the conception of their own good, comprehending, as it does, not only ease, personal comfort, and gratification of the various appetites and desires, which, in the early stages of society, are the preponderating considerations, but also those higher constituents of welfare, both individual and social, which attain an ever-increasing importance as society advances, such as are the development of the moral, the intellectual, and the aesthetic faculties; the purification of the religious sentiments, the expansion of the sympathetic feelings, the diffusion of liberty and prosperity, the consolidation of national unity, the elevation of human life. This principle works throughout the community, actuating some men in its higher, others in its lower forms; but, except where the force of tradition or prejudice is too strong for it, invariably moulding conduct into accordance with the more complex requirements of advancing civilisation. Its action, of course, is not wholly advantageous. Growing needs and more complicated relations suggest to men fresh devices for compassing their selfish ends, such as the various forms of fraud, forgery, and conspiracy, as well as more enlarged or more effective schemes of beneficence, stricter or more intelligent applications of the principle of justice, and possibilities of higher and freer developments of their faculties. But, on the whole, and setting aside as exceptional certain periods of retrogression, such as the decline of the Roman Empire, the evolution of society seems to be attended by the progress of morality, and specially by the amelioration of social relations, whether between individuals, families, or states. The intelligence that apprehends the greater good re-acts upon the desire to attain it, and the result is the combination of more rational aims with a purer interest in the pursuit of them.