I have attempted to cut out a clear path through an ethical jungle overgrown with the exuberance of human life. I have not succeeded, and it is probably impossible to succeed. In the subject itself there is paradox. Conflicting elements enter into the very constitution of a person. To trace them even imperfectly one must be patient of refinements, accessible to qualifications, and ever ready to admit the opposite of what has been laboriously established. We all desire through study to win a swift simplicity. But nature abhors simplicity: she complicates; she forces those who would know to take pains, to proceed cautiously, and to feel their way along from point to point. This I have tried to do; and I believe that the inquiry, though intricate, primarily scientific, and only partially successful, need not altogether lack practical consequence. Our age is bewildered between heroism and greed. To each it is drawn more powerfully than any age preceding. Neither of the two does it quite comprehend. If we can render the nobler somewhat more intelligible, we may increase the confidence of those who now, half-ashamed, follow its glorious but blindly compulsive call. REFERENCES ON SELF-SACRIFICE Spencer's Principles of Ethics, pt. i. ch. xi., xii. Bradley's Appearance and Reality, p. 414-429. Paulsen's Ethics, bk. ii. ch. 6. Wundt's Facts of the Moral Life, ch. iii., Section 4 (g). Sidgwick's Methods, concluding chapter. Kidd's Social Evolution, ch. 5. S. Bryant in Journal of Ethics, Apr. 1893. Bradley in Journal of Ethics, Oct. 1894. Mackenzie, in Journal of Ethics, Apr. 1895. VII NATURE AND SPIRIT I At this culmination of our long discussion, a discussion much confused by its necessary mass of details, it may be well to pause a moment, to fix attention on the great lines along which we have been moving, and to mark the points on which they appear to converge. We have regarded goodness as divided into two very unequal parts. The first two chapters treated of goodness in general, a species which being shared alike by persons and things is in no sense distinctive of persons. The last four chapters have been given to the more complex task of exploring the goodness of persons.