The motives and the conscience are elusive elements of little use in any attempt to value human conduct. We have to fall back on the consequences of action. Now it is easy to show that the social instinct often leads to action which is not good. It frequently happens that men, acting with the highest and best intentions, do much harm. Schopenhauer long ago pointed out that morality based on sentiment is a mere caricature of real morality. Impelled by the altruistic wish to do good, men often lavish unreflecting charity and do harm to others and to themselves. In _Timon of Athens_ Shakespeare depicted A most incomparable man; breathed, as it were, To an untirable and continuate goodness, and who gave away to the right and the left, creating around him a cloud of parasites. He finally ruined himself and became a hopeless misanthrope. Shakespeare put his verdict in the mouth of Flavius:— Undone by goodness. Strange, unusual blood, When man’s worst sin is, he does too much good. Morality, founded purely on sentiment, has inspired the attacks on vivisectors which in all confidence spread evil amongst men. It is a surprising result of the great complexity of human affairs, that society is sometimes better served by wicked acts than by acts inspired by the most generous feelings. Thus extremely rigorous measures of repression are often more successful than the half-measures employed by humane and charitable administrators. The intuitive theory of morality has had no greater success than utilitarianism. Even if the sentiment of society were a true basis of moral conduct, it fails in actual practice. On the other hand, although utility is the object of all morality, it is in most cases so difficult to determine what is really useful, that utilitarianism breaks down as the foundation of morality. We must look elsewhere for principles which can guide us towards right conduct. II MORALITY AND HUMAN NATURE Attempts to found morality on the laws of human nature—Kant’s theory of moral obligation—Some criticisms of the Kantian theory—Moral conduct must be guided by reason Even in antiquity, there were efforts to find a basis for morality other than the precepts of religion based on revelation, but the failure of such attempts has long been admitted. In the first chapter of _The Nature of Man_, I described such efforts to find a basis for morality in human nature itself. The Epicureans and the Stoics, although their doctrines were opposed, each claimed to set out from human nature. The principle is too vague for practical use, as human nature can be interpreted in very different fashions.