(1) Our impulses are often deceptive.  What promises keen pleasure turns flat in the tasting; what threatens pain may prove our greatest joy.  Most men are led astray at one time or other by some delusory good, some ignis fatuus-whoring, money-making, fame are among the commonest which has fascinated them, from the thought of which they cannot tear themselves away, but which brings no proportionate pleasure in realization, or an evanescent pleasure followed by lasting regret.  “Pleasures are like poppies spread, You seize the flow’r, its bloom is shed”.

All sorts of insidious consequences follow secretly in the train of innocent-seeming acts; the value of following a given impulse is complicated in many ways of which the impulse itself does not inform us.  We are the frequent victims of a sort of inward mirage, and have to learn to discount our hopes and fears.  Morality is the corrector of these false valuatiens; it discriminates for us between real and counterfeit goods, teaches us to discount the pictures of our imagination and see the gnawed bones on the beach where the sirens sing.

(2) Our impulses often clash.  And since, as we have just said, the relative worth to us of the acts is not always accurately represented by the impulses, we need to stand off and compare them impartially.  No single passion must be allowed to run amuck; the opposing voices, however feeble, must be heard.  When desires are at loggerheads, when a deadlock of interests arises-an almost daily occurrence when life’ is kept at a white heat-there must be some moderator, some governing power.  Morality is the principle of coordination, the harmonizer, the arbitrator of conflicting claims.

(3) We often lack impulses which would add much to the worth of our lives; we are blind to all sorts of opportunities for rich and joyous living.  We need to develop our latent needs, to expand our natures to their full potentiality, to learn to love many things we have not cared for.  In general we ignore the joys that we have not ourselves experienced or imagined, and those which belong to a different realm from that of our temporary enthusiasms.  A lovesick swain, an opium fiend, are utterly unable to respond to the lure of outdoor sport or the joy of the well-doing of work; these joys, though perhaps acknowledged as real possibilities for them, fail to attract their wills, touch no chord in them, have no influence on their choices.  Morality is the great eye-opener and insistent reminder of ignored goods.

(4) We often have perverted impulses.  We inherit disharmonies from other conditions of life, like the vermiform appendix and the many other vestigial organs which have come down to us only for harm.  In general we inherit bodies and brains fairly well organized for our welfare; but there are still atavisms to be ruthlessly stamped out.  The craving for stimulants or drugs, sexual perversions, kleptomania, pyromania, and the other manias, bad temper, jealousy- there is a good deal of the old Adam in us which is just wholly bad and to be utterly done away with; rebellious impulses that are hopelessly at war with our own good and must go the way of cannibalism and polygamy.  Morality is the stern exterminator of all such enemies of human welfare.