made to universalise it. Can I will that everybody shall evade his income-tax? I cannot, and therefore see clearly that the action is wrong.
But even such a comprehensive principle as this is inadequate to the complexity of life. For it altogether excludes exceptions. And morality is really made up of exceptional cases, in the sense that the moral life consists of particular actions, and particular actions are always performed in particular circumstances. An action that may be right under certain conditions may be quite wrong in other circumstances. There is no moral rule, however comprehensive, which may not have to be broken under certain circumstances. It is a fundamental moral principle that murder is a sin. But who would say that the man who in the Indian Mutiny killed his wife to prevent her falling into the hands of the mutinous sepoys did wrong? Again, it is a sin to tell a lie. But under certain circumstances, it may be quite right to speak falsely with the intention of deceiving. In war it is right for a captured soldier to give false information to his captors. Perhaps ordinary morality may exclaim, "Oh, but I don't call that a lie." It is a lie. But the duty always to tell the truth has been overborne by a higher duty.
Are we then to conclude that moral rules are simply made to be broken? Hardly so. Moral rules, as we have seen, do have a certain value. They do hold true on the whole. They are like rules in medicine, which are true in most cases, and are helpful in dealing with most instances of the diseases to which they apply. But they are always liable to
