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MR. W. L. COURTNEY ON BISHOP BUTLER. 559 analysed the conception of good and risen to the idea of a higher good of the individual, which is attained by the sacrifice of mere pleasure. He might have written more clearly and more con- vincingly had he entered upon the question of differences of kind in pleasure, or (what conies to the same thing) differences in intrinsic value between the objects of different desires. But after all his position is fundamentally identical with Kant's. There are two rational ends-in-themselves Duty and Happiness the ultimate reconciliation of which demands the postulate of im- mortality. In the one very important point in which Butler approaches much more nearly to the position of the modern Hegelians than Kant, no justice is done him by Mr. Courtney. Kant held that all motives except the "interest" of Reason in the Moral Law are desires for pleasure. Butler held that a multitude of desires, good, bad and indifferent, were alike in being dis- interested : desires for objects are not desires for pleasure. Mr. Courtney writes as if Butler grounded the authority of virtue on its being "disinterested" (p. 113). " If benevolence is a merely natural affection, it must rest on the same basis as those natural passions and appetites, which have their own par- ticular ends, like hunger or resentment, and which Butler calls 'propensions'. In that case it cannot be in any sense a supreme principle in man's nature, unless each of such natural ' propensions ' be in turn supreme. Therefore, too, if Benevolence be not a principle, Butler cannot insist on the dis- interested character of the main principle of action. If, on the other hand, Benevolence is a principle of virtue, it must be reflected on, it must be a sort of reflective desire for good in the world. As merely a simple propension it might be disinterested, but as reflected on it must become interested." Mr. Courtney is here seeking to prove against Butler the very thing which Butler did his best to establish against the Senti- mentalists, with whom he has been preposterously classed by Mr. Courtney. " Disinterestedness is so far from being in itself com- mendable that the utmost possible depravity which we can in imagination conceive is that of disinterested cruelty" (Preface). He is at the utmost pains to show that, qua " disinterested affec- tion," Benevolence rests, as Mr. Courtney says, " on the same basis as those natural passions and appetites which have their own particular ends ". " Every appetite of sense, and every par- ticular affection of the heart, are equally interested or dis- interested, because the objects of them all are equally self or somewhat else " (Sermon xi.). Butler nowhere, as Mr. Courtney insinuates, makes Benevolence " a supreme principle in man's nature ". Conscience or Reflection is " the supreme principle," and it is only because that general good of society, which is the object of Benevolence, is the object whose pursuit that supreme principle approves that Benevolence becomes to Butler though I do not think that Butler uses the expression " a principle of virtue : '. To conclude this part of my criticism, I must strongly demur to the assertion that according to Butler " the balance