One additional word, however, can still be said. As we have already indicated, these three so-called negative ethical concepts are all descriptive of behavior situations in which thwarting and inhibition are dominant symptoms. Henceforth, however, thwarting and inhibition will be understood as temporary interruptions of an outgoing reaction which would have eventuated had the environment contained the stimulus to which the organism was attuned to respond. As we say in common speech, a desire is not satisfied by being denied, and from our every-day experience we know that great aggravations produce as much scheming as do our easiest successes. He who casts his eye over the numerous significations of our two positive ethical concepts will now realize where much of the adroitness and sagacity which characterizes them originates. In these two simple facts, namely, that extensor actions bring more of the world of action within our range, and that even the thwarted man imaginatively explores the environment to find substitute stimuli to release his energy upon, we find the reason why man has more uses for the words “right” and “good” than he has for the words “bad,” “evil,” and “wrong.” And with this we achieve by a purely empirical and anti-supernaturalistic method a physiological warrant for ethical optimism. If anyone is looking for a “higher” truth, let him ponder this one. CHAPTER VII “VIRTUE” AND “VICE” AS FUNCTIONS OF THE ORGANISM “In nearly all these philosophic discussions of ethics one has somehow the haunting sense of a wrongness of direction. Virtue is somehow imposed from above, it is descending upon us. And the unfortunate part of this is that it has to descend very low indeed before it reaches us; and when there, it has lost the buoyancy wherewith to lift us up.” EDWIN HOLT, “The Freudian Wish.” In the foregoing analysis of the five most frequently used ethical concepts we have had to feel our way rather carefully, inasmuch as a completely new path was being cut through the tangle of human experience; henceforth, however, our task will be somewhat easier, since we shall now be able to apply the truth we have already discovered in the remainder of our investigations. Directly, then, we shall proceed to ask what another pair of ethical antonyms, namely, virtue and vice, signify in terms of our physiological functions.