It kept suggesting itself to us above that reasonableness could not be thoroughly explained on the basis of a distinction between means and end, because actual ends are not simple and uniform, but are obviously qualified by the so-called means, or context of circumstance. We agreed, however, that what is reasonable must be so in virtue of a positive content, whether as means or perhaps as end, and that its negative or prohibitive aspect must arise from the conflict of two such positive contents. We have in this section looked at two interpretations of moral reasonableness apparently suggested by analogies with intellectual reasonings or principles, and we could not deny that each of them had a certain appearance of truth, but one seemed to confuse the content with the form, the other to consist of a form without any content. 3. It suggests itself therefore that moral reasonableness must be a characteristic which we ascribe to purposes of action. Then we get a variety of positive content, without relying on the distinction between means and end; while the abstract principles which we feel to be reasonable fall into their right place as very general descriptions of a purpose or scheme of life which can be called reasonable. But the idea of a reasonable purpose requires explanation. First, it is irreconcilable with abstract Hedonism. You cannot have any relations within a single and uniform purpose, and reason always involves relations. Secondly, it is not the most intellectual purpose, the purpose that has most to do with reasoning. I have tried to explain this above. Thirdly, it _is_ such a life or purpose as possesses a self-consistent relation of the parts to the whole. This is the general characteristic of any reasonable totality _qua_ reasonable, and it is this which forms the general characteristic of reasonable purpose _qua_ reasonable. Then what is the meaning of the self-consistent relation of parts to the whole in the case of a human scheme of life? We cannot demand that our specific purposes should be related consciously to the purpose of the universe; because the universe as a whole is the object of theoretical knowledge only, and this does not furnish us with the idea of a concrete purpose at all. It seems then that the whole, by consistency with which human purpose is or is not reasonable, must be the whole of existing human purpose, taken of course as moving in a certain direction, owing to the modification continually introduced through the progressive realisation of purposes. I do not see that more than this can be said without entering upon the analysis of the actual structure of the moral world, of society and of history. What is important seems to me to be that we cannot construct the reasonable world of morality from a theoretical view of men in general and of nature. We have to take it as it is, and are then perhaps able to show that it is an organised movement in the direction of self-consistency of purpose.