all significance, when we lose sight of the nature, inborn or acquired,
of the creature haled before the bar of our judgment, and of the
environment, which on the one hand, impels him to action, and, on the
other, furnishes the stage upon which the drama of his life must be
played out to the end.

Hence, he who would not act as the creature of blind impulse or as the
unthinking slave of tradition, but would exercise a conscious and
intelligent control over his conduct, seems compelled to look at his life
and its setting in a broad way, to scrutinize with care both the nature
of man and the environment without which that nature could find no
expression. When he does this, he only does more intelligently what men
generally do instinctively and somewhat at haphazard. He seeks a rational
estimate of the significance of conduct, and a standard by which it may
be measured.

22. MAN'S NATURE.--Moralists ancient and modern have had a good deal to
say about the nature of man. To some of them it has seemed rather a
simple thing to describe it. Its constitution, as they have conceived it,
has furnished them with certain principles which should guide human
action. Aristotle, who assumed that every man seeks his own good,
conceived of his good or "well-being" as largely identical with "well-
doing." This "well-doing" meant to him "fulfilling the proper functions
of man," or in other words acting as the nature of man prescribes.
[Footnote: _Politics_, i, 2. See, further, on _Man's Nature_,
chapter xxvi.] To the Stoic man's duty was action in accordance with his
nature. [Footnote: MARCUS AURELIUS, _Thoughts_, v, 1.] Butler,
[Footnote: _Sermons on Human Nature_, ii] many centuries later,
found in man's nature a certain "constitution," with conscience naturally
supreme and the passions in a position of subordination. This