In the foregoing pages the moral incentive (Compassion) has been established as a fact, and I have shown that from it alone can proceed unselfish justice and genuine loving-kindness, and that on these two cardinal virtues all the rest depend. Now, for the purpose of supplying Ethics with a foundation, this is sufficient, in a certain sense; that is, in so far as Moral Science necessarily requires to be supported by some actual and demonstrable basis, whether existing in the external world, or in the consciousness. The only alternative is to tread in the footsteps that so many of my predecessors have left, in other words, to choose arbitrarily some proposition or other,--some bare and abstract formula--and make it the source of all that morality prescribes; or, like Kant, to sublimate a mere idea, that of =law=, into the key-stone of the ethical arch. But, dismissing this method for the reasons discussed above, in the Second Part, the investigation proposed by the Royal Society appears to me now completed. For their question, as it stands, deals only with the foundation of Ethics; as to a possible metaphysical explanation of this foundation nothing whatever is asked. Nevertheless, at the point we have reached, I am very sensible that the human spirit can find no abiding satisfaction, no real repose. As in all branches of practical research, so also in Ethical Science, when all is said, man is inevitably confronted with an ultimate phaenomenon, which while it renders an account of everything that it includes, and everything deducible from it, remains itself an unexplained riddle. So that here, as elsewhere, the want is felt of a final interpretation (which, obviously, cannot but be =metaphysical=) of the ultimate data, as such, and through these,--if they be taken in their entirety--of the world. And here, too, this want finds utterance in the question: How is it that, what is present to our senses, and grasped by our intellect, is as it is, and not otherwise? And how does the character of the phaenomenon, as manifest to us, shape itself out of the essential nature of things? Indeed, in Moral Science the need of a metaphysical basis is more urgent than in any other, because all systems, philosophical no less than religious, are at one in persistently attaching to =conduct= not only an ethical, but also a metaphysical significance, which, passing beyond the mere appearance of things, transcends every possibility of experience, and therefore stands in the closest connection with human destiny and with the whole cosmic process. For if life (it is averred) have a meaning, then the supreme goal to which it points is undoubtedly ethical. Nor is this view a bare unsupported theory; it is sufficiently established by the undeniable fact that, as death draws nigh, the thoughts of each individual assume a moral trend, equally whether he be credulous of religious dogmas, or not; he is manifestly anxious to wind up the affairs of his life, now