§ 3. Here, however, a remark is necessary, which to some extent qualifies what was said in the preceding chapter, where I characterised the common notions of particular virtues--justice, etc.--as too vague to furnish exact determinations of the actions enjoined under them. I there assumed that rules of duty ought to admit of precise definition in a universal form: and this assumption naturally belongs to the ordinary or jural view of Ethics as concerned with a moral code: since we should agree that if obligations are imposed on any one he ought at least to know what they are, and that a law indefinitely drawn must be a bad law. But so far as we contemplate virtue as something that goes beyond strict duty and is not always capable of being realised at will, this assumption is not so clearly appropriate: since from this point of view we naturally compare excellence of conduct with beauty in the products of the Fine Arts. Of such products we commonly say, that though rules and definite prescriptions may do much, they can never do all; that the highest excellence is always due to an instinct or tact that cannot be reduced to definite formulæ. We can describe the beautiful products when they are produced, and to some extent classify their beauties, giving names to each; but we cannot prescribe any certain method for producing each kind of beauty. So, it may be said, stands the case with virtues: and hence the attempt to state an explicit maxim, by applying which we may be sure of producing virtuous acts of any kind, must fail: we can only give a general account of the virtue--a description, not a definition--and leave it to trained insight to find in any particular circumstances the act that will best realise it. On this view, which I may distinguish as Æsthetic Intuitionism, I shall have something to say hereafter.[182] But I conceive that our primary business is to examine the larger claims of those Rational or Jural Intuitionists, who maintain that Ethics admits of exact and scientific treatment, having for its first principles the general rules of which we have spoken, or the most fundamental of them: and who thus hold out to us a hope of getting rid of the fluctuations and discrepancies of opinion, in which we acquiesce in æsthetic discussions, but which tend to endanger seriously the authority of ethical beliefs. And we cannot, I think, decide on the validity of such claims without examining in detail the propositions which have been put forward as ethical axioms, and seeing how far they prove to be clear and explicit, or how far others may be suggested presenting these qualities. For it would not be maintained, at least by the more judicious thinkers of this school, that such axioms are always to be found with proper exactness of form by mere observation of the common moral reasonings of men; but rather that they are at least implied in these reasonings, and that when made explicit their truth