What we need is not to abandon but to steadily improve our code; and whereas any one can pick flaws, only the man of trained mind and controlled desire can discover feasible lines of advance.  “When all is said, there is nothing as yet to be changed in our old Aryan ideal of justice, conscientiousness, courage, kindness, and honor.  We have only to draw nearer to it, to clasp it more closely, to realize it more effectively; and, before going beyond it, we have still a long and noble road to travel beneath the stars.” [Footnote:  Maeterlinck, “Our Anxious Morality,” in The Measure of the Hours.] The conception of morality as the organization of interests will be found in Plato’s Republic and Aristotle’s Ethics, and in many recent ethical books and papers.  Among them are R. B. Perry’s Moral Economy, G. Santayana’s Reason in Science (chap.  IX); William James, “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life” (in the Will to Believe and Other Essays).

A discussion of whether morality really makes for happiness will be found in Leslie Stephen, System of Ethics, chap.  X; W. L. Sheldon, An Ethical Movement, chap.  VIII.  For Nietzsche’s theory, see his Beyond Good and Evil.  There are many excellent replies; a brief but adequate one will be found in Perry, op. cit, chap.  I.

PART III

PERSONAL MORALITY

CHAPTER XV

HEALTH AND EFFICIENCY

With the general nature and justification of morality in our minds, we may now seek to apply our criteria of conduct to the concrete problems that confront us, first taking up those problems which, however important their social bearings, are primarily problems of private life, problems for the individual to settle, and then turning to those wider problems which the community as a whole must grapple with and solve by public action.

Bodily health is the foundation of personal morality; to act at all there must be physical energy available; and, other things equal, the man with the greatest store of vitality will live the happiest and most useful life.  Christianity has too often forgotten this fundamental truth, which needs emphasis at the very outset of our concrete studies in morality.

What is the moral importance of health?

(1) Health is in itself a great contribution to the intrinsic worth of life.  To awake in the morning with red blood stirring in the veins, to come to the table with hearty appetite, to go about the day’s work with the springing step of abounding energy, and to reach the close of day with that healthy fatigue that quiets restless desire and betokens the blessed boon of sound and dreamless sleep-this is to be a long way on the road to contentment.  Health cannot in itself guarantee happiness if other evils obtrude; but it removes many of the commonest impediments thereto, and normally produces an increase in all other values.