Nowadays the word “conscience” has an old-fashioned, obsolete air. I shall try to guess at the reasons, and then I shall consider whether they are good reasons.

I Take it that my part in this series is not to set forward some particular world outlook, or even to describe different kinds of world outlook. That will have been done already much more adequately by the lecturers who precede me. My part is to discuss what in general is meant by world outlooks, why it is so difficult to arrive at agreement on them, and what kind of considerations should be taken into account in deciding for one rather than another.

In the Platonic dialogue that bears his name Protagoras,1 in a myth (320c–324d) and in a logos (324d–328b) positively affirms the absolute character of universal moral values, such as force themselves upon all men; this makes one think that the famous man-measure dictum was subservient to the ends that the sophist had in view as a teacher of areté. Indeed, his condemnation in that dialogue of the sophists who, like Hippias, included in their teaching mathematical and naturalistic studies (318d-e), must be connected with the criticism of mathematics reported by an Aristotelian text.2 These studies, that is to say purely theoretic disciplines, were considered by Protagoras not only useless for the spiritual formation of men and citizens, but also void of any certitude and objectivity whatever.3 We feel therefore allowed to suggest that also the man-measure principle had to perform an office of the same kind: to show that natural philosophy (which then comprehended all theoretical knowledge) could not yield an objective knowledge of φ?σις which formed its object, because such knowledge is denied to man. Mistrust of the general conceptions of the cosmology of physiologists was widely spread at that time, and the authors of some medical treatises of the Hippocratean corpus used it to justify the construction of a discipline founded on the study of empirical materials interpreted rationally and not with the general hypotheses void of certainty

The phrase ‘evaluative inference’ was used by Toulmin (Reason in Ethics, p. 38) for ‘that form of inference by which we pass from factual reasons to an ethical conclusion’; and the phrase has been attacked by Hare in his review of Toulmin (Philosophical Quarterly, 1951) and in his book (The Language of Morals, pp. 45 ff.). I shall try to dig out some of the questions at issue in that discussion, but to do so without the help of this technical term, or of any other that I can avoid.

The generally accepted interpretation of Kant's formula “act only on that maxim which thou canst at the same time will to be a universal law,” is roughly as follows:—

Our moral experience is fundamentally a consciousness of the difference between Duty and Inclination, between "doing what we ought to whether we like to or not, and doing merely what we like whether we ought to or not."1 When we have open to our choice different acts, there are some which we would like to do, others we would not like to do, and perhaps others towards which we are indifferent; or we like to do any one of them, or we may dislike all, or we may be indifferent to all. But we must ignore our inclinations, our aversions, our attractions, and our indifferences. We must ask ourselves which of the acts open to our choice ought we to do, no matter what our feelings in the matter may be.

I am reluctant to add to the many definitionsof modernity, or to encourage the belief that definitions matter. Nevertheless, a changecameintothe worldwhenpeoplebegantodefinethemselves as modern—as in some way 'apart from'their predecessors, standing to them in some new and self-conscious relationship. And this couldserve as a definitionof modernity:as the conditionin which people provide definitions of modernity. For there is a great differencebetween living in history—which, for rational beings, is unavoidable—andlivingaccordingtoan idea ofhistory, and of one's own place within it.