goodness of an action, and the effort and intention to perform acts having this tendency as the test of the morality of the agent.  But when we enunciate the production of pleasure as our aim, or the balance of pleasure-producing over pain-producing results as the test of right action, we are not always understood to have admitted these explanations, and, consequently, there is always a danger of our being supposed to degrade morality by identifying it with the gratification, in ourselves and others, of the coarser and more material impulses of our nature.  Though, then, if due distinctions and admissions be made, the tendency to produce, in the long run, the greatest amount of happiness or misery, pleasure or pain, may be taken as the test of the goodness or badness of an action, the phraseology is so misleading, and so liable to frustrate the practical objects of the moralist, that it is desirable, if possible, to find terms not equally lending themselves to misinterpretation and perversion.  Let us now, then, consider whether we are supplied with such terms in the phrases ‘perfection’ or ‘development’ of ‘character.’  It is a noble idea of human action to suppose that its end is the perfection of individual men, or the development of their various capacities to the utmost extent that is available.  And yet, as the phrases ‘pleasure’ and ‘happiness’ are apt too exclusively to suggest material well-being and the gratification of the more animal parts of our nature, so the phrases ‘perfection’ or ‘development’ of ‘character’ are apt altogether to keep out of sight these necessary pre-suppositions of a healthy and progressive condition of humanity.  Unless there were some standard of comfortable living, and a constant effort not only to maintain but to improve it, and unless some zest were given to every-day life by the gratification of the appetites, within reasonable limits, and the endeavour to obtain the means of indulging them, men, constituted as they are, would be in danger of sinking into sloth, squalor, and indigence, and, to the great mass of mankind, the opportunity of developing and perfecting their higher nature would never occur.  We seem, therefore, to require some term which will not only suggest the highest results of moral endeavour, but also the conditions which, in the case of humanity, are essential to the attainment of those results.  Moreover, to a greater extent even than the words ‘pleasure’ and ‘happiness,’ the expressions ‘perfection’ and ‘development’ of ‘character’ are in danger of being supposed to imply an exclusive reference to self.  It is true that we cannot properly develope our characters, much less attain to all the perfection of which they are capable, without quickening the moral feeling and giving larger scope to the sympathetic emotions; but, in the mere attempt to improve their own nature, men are very apt to lose sight of their relations to others.  The phrases ought, however, to be taken, and usually are intended to be taken, to include the