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 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 THE STUDY OF ETHICS 
 
 A SYLLABUS 
 
 BY TJOHN DEWE1Y 
 
 GEORGE WAHR, 
 
 PUBLISHER AND BOOKSELLER 
 
 ANN ARBOR, MICH. , 1897.
 
 COPYRIGHT 
 
 JOHN DEWEY 
 
 1894 
 
 THB INLAND PRESS, PRINTERS 
 ANN ARBOR
 
 Education 
 Library 
 
 PREFATORY NOTE. 
 
 The edition of my Outlines of Ethics having been exhausted, 
 I have prepared the following pages, primarily for the use 
 and guidance of my own students. The demand for the for- 
 mer book seems, however, to justify the belief that, amid the 
 prevalence of pathological and moralistic ethics, there is room 
 for a theory which conceives of conduct as the normal and free 
 living of life as it is. The present pages, it may be added, 
 are in no sense a second edition of the previous book. On the 
 contrary, they undertake a thorough psychological examination 
 of the process of active experience, and a derivation from this 
 analysis of the chief ethical types and crises a task, so far as 
 I know, not previously attempted. 
 
 ERRATA. Page 91, for 'Chapter VI,' read 'Chapter VII.' 
 
 973941
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 Chapter I. The Nature of Ethical Theory 1 
 
 Chapter II. The Factors of Moral Conduct 5 
 
 Chapter III. A General Analysis of Conduct 13 
 
 Chapter IV. The Moral Consciousness 17 
 
 Chapter V. Moral Approbation 24 
 
 Chapter VI. Reflective Approbation, Conscience 71 
 
 Chapter VII. Nature of Obligation 91 
 
 Chapter VIII. Freedom and Responsibility 118 
 
 Chapter IX. Virtue and the Virtues 132
 
 SYLLABUS-ETHICAL THEORY. 
 
 CHAPTER I. NATURE OF ETHICAL THEORY. 
 
 SECTION I. SUBJECT-MATTER OF ETHICS. 
 
 Subject-matter of ethical theory is judgment concerning 
 the value of conduct. Three stages. (1) Practical encour- 
 agement and discouragement of - certain acts. Reward, and 
 punishment primary forms of such judgments. (Next stage, 
 
 urging and restraint through speech. (See Plato, Protagoras, 
 
 325-26.) (Third stage,) reflective judgment as to reason for 
 
 V . S 
 
 such acts. 
 
 Ethical theory is simply (I) a systematic judgment of value. 
 The way is prepared for this through the fact that primitive 
 judgments relate not to isolated acts, but to habits of action, 
 and to the types of character which are disposed to induce 
 those habits. Necessary spontaneous generalizations. Codes, 
 "cTHfom"ary and legislative. 
 
 Demand for more systematic generalization arises when, 
 thiough an extension of the area of life, former habits begin 
 to conflict with each other. Illustrated by Athenian life; by 
 Roman; by modern since the Renascence. Ethical theory is 
 thus (2) a critical judgment upon conduct. Not systematic 
 in the sense that it simply catalogues previous judgments, but 
 in the sense that it attempts to reconstruct them 011 the basis 
 of a deeper principle. (See Sec. 2.) 
 
 It is a matter of indifference whether we say ethical theory 
 attempts to systematize (in the above sense ) judgments about 
 the value of conduct, or attempts to systematize conduct itself. 
 Every act (consciously performed) is a judgment of value: 
 tin; act dene is done because it is thought to be worth while, or 
 valuable. Thus a man's real (as distinct frjm his nominal or
 
 2 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 
 
 symbolic) theory of conduct can be told only from his acts. 
 Conversely, every judgment about conduct is itself an act; it 
 marks a practical and not simply a theoretical attitude. That 
 is, it does not lie outside of the matter judged (conduct), but 
 constitutes a part of its development; conduct is different 
 after, and because of the judgment. 111. in education, where 
 the main point is not so much to get certain acts done, as to 
 induce in the child certain ways of valuing acts, from which 
 the performance of the specific deeds will naturally follow. 
 That is, the best education aims to train conscience. Ethical 
 theory is only a more conscious and more generalized phase of 
 conduct. Analogy with place of theory in modern (experi- 
 mental) science. A theory not a fixed or abstract truth, but a 
 standpoint and method for some activity. It is in this (the 
 activity as directed by theory) that the value of the theory 
 comes out and is tested. (See Sec. 3.) 
 
 References: Definitions of ethics will be found in Murray, 
 Introduction to Ethics, pp. 1-7; Porter, Elements of Moral 
 Science, Introductory; Muirhead, Elements of Ethics, chs. 
 1 and 2; Mackenzie, Manual of Ethics, Introduction; Bowne, 
 Principles of Ethics, Introduction. 
 
 SECTION II. RISE OF ETHICAL THEORY. 
 
 Origin of reflective jnorality was in Greece. Other ethical 
 codes were either customary or else conceived to be absolute 
 
 emanations from a divine will. The Greek was in the habit oF 
 "discussing questions regarding ends and means of life. This 
 strengthened by growth of democracy. Also by methods of 
 education, which (in Athens) relied upon appeal to individual's 
 own intelligence rather than upon conformity to fixed rule. 
 (Davidson, Aristotle and Greek Education, pp. 11, 70, 86-87.) 
 Development of commerce, and more general social intercourse 
 among the Greeks, with growth of science and art, resulted in 
 Sophist, who undertook to teach virtue and methods and aims 
 of political influence; he also discussed the moral standard, 
 some denying any moral criterion whatever, holding it possible
 
 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 3 
 
 to prove arbitrarily an act either right or wrong; others hold- 
 ing the source of moral law to be the superior power of the 
 ruler. Thus they raised, the question whether moral distinc- 
 tionsPexist iij^the nature of things, or simply^-by arbitrary 
 enactment, osS/for convenience find expediency. While the 
 Sophists themselves tended to uus\ver the question in one of the 
 two latter senses, the dramatists (yEschylus and Sophocles) had, 
 amid the disintegration of the lower religious beliefs, attempted 
 to maintain an eternal and intrinsic moral law and ideal. Soc- 
 rates took the latter position, and attempted to uphold it by 
 means of the weapons of the Sophists themselves, i. e., by 
 inquiry and reflection. He attacked the ideas that morality is 
 based upon the will of the stronger, that it rests upon custom, 
 and that it is adequately expressed in the more or less hap- 
 hazard and external conclusions of the poets and ordinary 
 moral teachers of the times. (See Plato, Republic, Books 
 1-3.) He insisted that the only adequate and sure basis for 
 morality is knowledge of the Good, i. e., true end of life, and 
 
 * "^*^^^fc^ ~ """ - m J**~ f 
 
 ability to refer the value of particular acts and aims to this < -"x_, 
 
 / ^^"^""^i 
 supreme end. He thus became the founder of conscious eth- fa_ 
 
 ical theory. 
 
 See Sidgwick, History of Ethics, esp. ch. 2; Grant, Ethics 
 of Aristotle, ch. 2; Paulsen, Ethik, bk. 1, ch. 1; Grote, His- 
 tory of Greece, chs. 57 and 58; Hegel, History of Philosophy 
 (trans, by Haldane), vol. 1; Fairbanks, on Sophocle's Ethics, 
 International Journal of Ethics, vol. 2, 77; and Butcher, As- 
 pects of Greek Genius; Hellenica, essays by Myers and Ab- 
 bott. Consult also histories of philosophy by Erdmaun, Win- 
 del band, and Ueberweg, portions treating of Sophists and 
 Socrates. 
 
 SECTION III. RELATION OF MORAL THEORY TO PRACTICE. 
 As already said, ethical theory arises from practical needs, 
 and is not simply a judgment about conduct, but a part of con- 
 duct, a practical fact. (See Aristotle, Ethics, Book L, chs. 2 
 and 3; ch. 6; Book X., ch. 9.) The inference sometimes
 
 4 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 
 
 drawn from this is that ethics is not a science but an art. (For 
 two strong statements of this view, see Mill, Logic, Book 6, 
 ch. 12, and Martineau, Essays, vol. 2, pp. 6-9; strong state- 
 ment of contrary view, see Bradley, Logic, pp. 247-249.) We 
 have to ask, therefore, whether ethics is practical in value, 
 because it is, or is not, a science. The former position will be 
 taken . 
 
 1. Moral value not equivalent to preaching or moralizing. 
 Truth has its own moral value, all the greater because not 
 deflected to serve some immediate end of exhortation. 
 
 2. Current antithesis between science and art not tenable. 
 Science does not teach us to know; it is the knowing; art does 
 not teach us to do, it is the doing. Art of morality is practice 
 of it, not rules laid down. Same of art of dyeing, of mensura- 
 tion, etc. Rules give basis for mechanical routine, not for art. 
 Art is based upon insight into truth, or relations involved. 
 
 3. Question whether word 'science' or word 'art' is to be 
 applied to ethics is of very little account. But question is as to 
 whether ethics is to be regarded as helpful to morals because 
 of scientific insight into truth afforded, or because of its formu- 
 lation of precepts for action. In the latter case, it "helps" 
 the moral life, only by depriving it of its freedom. 111. by 
 physiology and hygiene. In former case, helps by freeing it: 
 by making it more significant and effective as knowledge of 
 mechanics helps a bridge builder. Importance of distinction 
 illustrated by moral value of teachings of Jesus: Did he lay 
 down rules for life, or did he give insight into nature of life? 
 That is, is "salvation" conformity to some scheme laid down, 
 or is it the freeing of life reached through knowledge of its 
 real nature and relations? 
 
 Summary. So far as agent needs rules, or fixed precepts, 
 he does not perform his deeds from full personal preference, 
 and hence is only imperfectly moral: so far as he understands 
 and is personally interested in the acts demanded, he needs no 
 rules. Hence the absurdity of defining ethical theory from 
 the standpoint of rules. Casuistry. Difference between a
 
 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 5 
 
 principle aud a rule; former a method for action, latter a pre- 
 scription for it; former experimental, latter fixed; former 
 orders in sense of setting ib order, latter in sense of command- 
 ing. 
 
 Practical value of moral theory is both destructive and 
 constructive. Negative side always visible first. In ideal, 
 destruction is only the reaction of the construction. So far as 
 two are separated, reform becomes merely sentimental, or else 
 mere fault finding. 
 
 On practical value of moral theory, see Muirhead, Ele- 
 ments, ch. 3; Lotze, Practical Philosophy, Introduction. 
 Bradley, Ethical Studies, pp. 174-175. Green, Prolegomena 
 t> Ethics, pp. 338-360; Hoeffdiug, Ethik, pp. 1-9; Interna- 
 tional Journal of Ethics, vol. I., No. 2, Art. by Dewey, on 
 Moral Theory and Moral Practice; p. 335, by James on The 
 Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life (a very strong state- 
 ment of the practical character of the moral judgment); vol. 
 4, p. 160, by Mackenzie, on Moral Science and Moral Life. 
 
 CHAPTER II. THE FACTORS OF MORAL CONDUCT. 
 THE AGENT AND HIS SPHERE OF ACTION. 
 
 s SECTION IV. CONDUCT AS REFERRED TO THE AGENT. 
 
 /No act is a part of conduct except as it is a part of a sys- 
 tem of plans (purposes) and interests. Theory arose (as 
 already seen) when these plans and interests were reflected 
 upon with a view to their unification. Thus (for all European 
 peoples since Socrates) an act must express character if it is to 
 have moral meaning; it must be considered as the outcome of 
 some aim aud interest on -the part of a conscious agent. (Spen- 
 cer, Data of Ethics, ch. I.) 
 
 The elements involved in such reference of an aet to an 
 agent are: 1. Some knowledge of what he is about; that is, 
 some end in view in doing the act. 2. Some interest in the 
 act; the act is chosen or preferred. The agent not only knows
 
 A A ^^^^^^^ 7' 
 
 / P. L~ . A A ^ 
 
 ^^\^j^ji^L\. 
 
 6 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 
 
 vliat he is about as a reasoning automaton might, but the act 
 appeals to him, has value for him. 
 
 3. The insight and the interest must be more than momen- 
 tary they must express some stability. The act must proceed 
 from a disposition, an established tendency, to act thus and so. 
 
 This analysis was begun by Socrates and practically com- 
 pleted by Aristotle. See Xenophon, Memorabilia, III., ch. 9; 
 Plato, Protagoras, esp. pp. 352-359; Apol. 25; and Aristotle, 
 Ethics, Book II., ch. 4. See also Green, Prolegomena, pp. 
 268-72. 
 
 The contact of Greek thought with Semitic conceptions" 
 (particularly through Christianity) emphasized the necessary 
 reference of conduct to the agent. It made holiness of will 
 (character, dominating idea and interest) the ideal, rather than 
 the performance of certain acts: (compare idea of justification 
 by faith) and proclaimed the criterion of moral worth to be 
 in the personal attitude, rather than in the particular act. 
 (See, e. g., I. Corinthians, ch. 13.) In its extreme forms, this 
 emphasis made the act almost, indifferent; it was regarded as 
 somehow "external," the ideal and attitude being all-sufficient 
 per se. 
 
 The contact with the Germanic peoples, with their strong 
 Romanticism, emphasized also the other factor in the analysis 
 namely the insistence upon the agent's own interest in his 
 acts. It asserted the right of the individual to choose his own 
 ends, and the worthlessnesS'(the slavery) of all acts not per- 
 formed because of this personal preference. In its extreme 
 form, this spirit became the demand for unlimited personal 
 enjoyment- not mere sensuous enjoyment, but the right of the 
 individual to realize to the uttermost the emotional value of 
 his own acts. 
 
 See Green, Works, Vol. III., p. 92; Carlyle, Sartor Resar- 
 tus, Book II., ch. 9 (on the happiness of the shoe-black); 
 Royce, Religious Aspect of Philosophy, pp. 110-126. Seth 
 (editor) Essays in Philosophic Criticism^ Kilpatrick, on Pessi- 
 mism and the religious Consciousness.
 
 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 7 
 
 SECTION V. REFERENCE OF CONDUCT TO THE SPHERE OF 
 
 ACTION. 
 
 la analyzing conduct, it is just as important to consider 
 the situation as the agent. While conduct proceeds from an 
 agent, the agent himself act with reference to the conditions 
 as they present themselves. Conditions (environment) con- 
 stitute action in the following ways: 
 
 1. The agent is moulded through education, unconscious I 
 and conscious, into certain habits of thinking and 'feeling as I 
 well as acting. His act, therefore, partakes of the aims and / 
 disposition of his race and time. (See Grote, Plato, vol. I., p./ 
 249, for a strong statement of this influence). 
 
 2. Our acts are controlled by the demands made upon us. 
 These demands include not simply the express requirements of 
 other persons, but the Customary expectations of the family, 
 social circle, trade or profession; the stimuli of surrounding 
 objects, tools, books, &c. ; the range and quality of opportuni- 
 ties afforded. 
 
 3. No idea, plan, wish whatever, can pass into action save 
 through the forces of the environment. Unless, then, we mean 
 to confine our definition of conduct entirely lo inner states of 
 consciousness, we must include the scene of action within the 
 definition. But the situation does more than execute the plan; 
 through its acceptance or rejection of it, partial or complete, it 
 p':icts into consciousness, and strengthens or modifies the 
 |)luu. All existing ideals of all practical (i. e., non-senti- 
 mental) agents are the outcome of such a struggle for realiza- 
 tion. 
 
 HISTORIC. At the outset of reflection, equal emphasis was 
 put into the reference both to the agent and to the situation. 
 Ethics, dealing with conduct in its individual reference, and 
 politics, dealing with it in reference to the scene of action, were 
 not separated. Plato, Republic, II. pp. 368-9, IV. pp. 427-445; 
 Aristotle, Ethics, X., ch. 9; Politics, I., chs. 1 and 2; III., eh. 
 12. The term ethos meant the disposition or prevailing habit 
 of the community (compare Lat. mos, mores), and it only grad-
 
 8 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 
 
 ually shaded over iuto the idea of individual character. The 
 exclusive reference of conduct to the individual came later, 
 and was due, partly, to the influence of Christianity already 
 referred to, and partly to the general disintegration of local 
 customs and interests, consequent upon the growth of the 
 Roman Empire. (See Renan, Hibbert Lectures, 1880.) The 
 result was that the individual was thrown back into himself, 
 the conditions of action seeming indifferent and even hostile to 
 the realization of moral aims. Stoic, Epicurean, and Sceptic 
 all agreed in setting up as their ideal the individual, self- 
 8ufficient,_tohimself, independent of everything beyond bim- 
 self that is, every thmg beyond his own consciousness 
 (Sedgwick, History of Ethics, pp. 70-73; Windelband, His- 
 tory of Philosophy, pp. 164-170). The identification of the 
 highest ideal with a good capable of realization only through 
 supernatural assistance, and, as to content, only in another 
 world, led in the Middle Ages to considering the present con- 
 ditions of action as indifferent or profane, the state as the 
 realm of force, not moral aims; and there was a corresponding 
 exclusion of objective factors from the theory of conduct. 
 Since the Reformation, however, the tendency has been stead- 
 ily the other way. It has culminated in the present genera- 
 tion through the development of the idea of evolution and of 
 the historical method, on the scientific side; and through the 
 growth of reforming and philanthropic interest on the practical 
 side. The former have shown the immense part played by 
 historic antecedents and by environment, physical and social, 
 in shaping conduct. The latter has revealed that one of the 
 chief obstacles to general and permanent moral reforms is 
 x unfavorable institutions and habits of living. 
 
 Herder, Philosophy of History Book IX., and Comte, Posi- 
 tive Philosophy Book VI., are important references in the his- 
 torical development of the present point of view. For various 
 ideas on the social nature of ethics, see Alexander, Moral Order 
 and Progress, pp. 5-15, 81-96; Yale Review, vol. L, pp. 301 
 and 354, Hadley, Ethics as Political Science; Mind, vol. II.,
 
 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 9 
 
 p. 453, Barratt, Ethics and Politics; vol. VIII., p. 222, Wal- 
 lace, Ethics and Sociology; International Journal of Ethics, 
 vol. III., p. 281, Mackenzie, Ethics and Economics; vol. IV., 
 p. 133, Hibben, Ethics and Jurisprudence; Journal Specu- 
 lative Philosophy, vol. XXII., p. 322, Patten, Economics and 
 Morality. The necessity of including social conditions and 
 relations in the idea of conduct is brought out, from different 
 points of view, in Spencer, Data, ch. 8; Stephen, Science of 
 Ethics, ch. 3; Green, Prolegomena, pp. 191-201; Bradley, 
 Ethical Studies, pp. 148-156. 
 
 SEC. VI. TWOFOLD FORMULA FOR CONDUCT. 
 
 We may sum up the foregoing, on its practical side, by 1 
 saying that in order to secure right conduct we find ourselves I 
 under the necessity of paying equal attention to the agent and 
 to the conditions with reference to which he acts. No amount 
 of external pressure or influence can secure right conduct of 
 an agent, except in so far as it ceases to be external; except, that 
 is, as it is taken up into the purpose and interests of the agent 
 himself. But, on the other hand, there is no way to develop 
 within the individual right plans, and to attach right values to 
 ends, save as these plans reflect the requirements of the situa- 
 tion in which he finds himself. 
 
 A business situation gives an illustration. The agent, to 
 be successful, must form his plans with reference to his condi- 
 tions state of raw material, transportation facilities, demand 
 in market, and others competing to supply this demand. His 
 purposes, so far as rightly formed, are a synthesis or co-ordi- 
 nation of the prevailing conditions of his scene of action. But 
 this situation is not something hard and fixed, outside of the 
 agent. What the situation is to him depends upon his own 
 capacities his resources, skill, etc. He himself is a part of 
 the conditions to be taken into account. Inferior raw material 
 will yield to an invention which enables him to get more out 
 of it, remoteness from market to his ability to contrive new 
 methods of transportation, &c. In other words, the situation
 
 10 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 
 
 is nothing but the complete co-ordiiiation of allhis powers 
 ( abilities) and relations. 
 
 Thus it is with that larger success in conduct, termed mo- 
 rality. From the standpoint of the individual agent, 
 
 Conduct is the co-ordinating, or bringing to a unity of aim 
 and interest, the different elements of a complex situation. 
 
 From the standpoint of the scene of action, 
 
 Conduct is co-ordinating, in an organized way, the concrete 
 powers, the impulses and habits, of an individual agent. 
 
 (See Alexander, Moral Order, pp. 97-130.) 
 
 SEC. VII. MORAL FUNCTIONS. 
 
 Conduct may be considered as the same consciously that a 
 biological function is unconsciously. It is the nature of every 
 function to include within itself both organ and environment. 
 The act of respiration is a co-ordination of lungs as organ and 
 air as environment. So digestion, locomotion, etc. We are 
 apt at first to identify function with the organ alone, and con- 
 ceive of environment as if it bore a more external relation to 
 it. But the reference to environment is absolute and intrinsic. 
 The organ is the point of initiation for the function, and is 
 more permanent than any particular portion of the environ 
 ment. It is thus of more immediate importance. But it is 
 the environment, comprehended in the exercise of the function, 
 that finally fixes the organ (as food builds up the organism), 
 and thus, indirectly or mediately, the environment is of the 
 most importance. (Compare the mutual dependence of 
 "appreciation^' and " retention." Psychology, p. 149.) 
 
 It is equally an error then to consider either organ or 
 environment as fixed in itself. Function is not the exercise of 
 a predetermined organ upon an external environment, nor is it 
 the adjustment of an organ to a predetermined environment. 
 The nature of the function determines both the organ and the 
 environment. Two animals in whom the function of nutrition 
 is differently performed have, in virtue of that fact, different 
 environments as well as different organs. Spencer, (Biology,
 
 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 11 
 
 Part I., eh. 4; Psychology, Part Il; Ethics, pp. 75-76) has 
 defined life, mind, and conduct as adjustment of inner rela- 
 tions to outer; but the separation involved in calling one 
 "inner" and the other "outer" marks the failure to recognize 
 that function is not a parallelism between organ and environ- 
 ment, but includes and determines both. 
 
 SEC. VIII. ETHICAL POSTULATE. 
 
 Interpreted In moral terms, the foregoing means that moral 
 conduct cannot be adequately conceived as the property or per- 
 formance of the agent alone. The agent corresponds to the 
 organ biologically, and is thus, in itself, simply an instrument 
 for exercising certain functions. Its structure, its aims, its 
 interests, are controlled by the ends to be reached, and these 
 ends include the conditions of action as well as the instrument. 
 In other words, we cannot take the agent as final in defining 
 conduct, because we demand a certain structure of the agent. 
 
 Conversely, we require that the conditions of action be 
 modified so as to permit the exercise of functions, so as to 
 become the means of the realization of ends. The exercise of 
 function itself tends to this transformation of environment. 
 (Illustrated by nutrition, by industry, by valor, etc.) 
 
 Defining conduct from the standpoint of the action, which 
 includes both agent and his scene of action, we see that 
 
 The conduct required truly to express an agent is, at the same 
 time, the conduct required to maintain the situation in which he 
 is placed; while, conversely, the conduct that truly meets the 
 situation is that which furthers the agent. 
 
 The word "truly" in this statement means with reference 
 to the exercise of function. 
 
 This statement may be termed the ethical postulate. Its 
 analogy with the scientific postulate uuiforruity of nature, 
 reign of law, etc. That is. we demand order in our expfirip.m'p 
 The only proof ot its existence is in the results reached by 
 making the demand. The postulate is verified by being acted 
 upon. The proof is experimental.
 
 12 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 
 
 The ethical postulate, iu other words, expresses the fact 
 that moral experience continually demands of every agent that 
 he shape his plans and interests so that they meet the needs of 
 the situation, while it also requires that, through the agent, the 
 situation be so modified as to enable the agent to express him- 
 self freely. 
 
 See Dewey, Outlines of Ethical Theory, p. 131. 
 
 The discussion of conduct in relation to the agent consti- 
 tutes psychological ethics: in relation to the conditions of 
 action, social ethics. It must be borne in mind, however, that 
 this distinction is one of point of view taken, not of material 
 involved: the agent, that is, is a social fact as well as a psy- 
 chical fact, and the conditions of action have a psychical as 
 well as a social meaning. 
 
 It should also be borne in mind throughout the whole dis- 
 cussion that the aim is not to discover the ideal at which all 
 conduct aims, nor the law which it should follow; the aim, 
 once more, is not to find precepts or rules, but to analyze con- 
 duct. The question is concerning the nature of any ideal and 
 the part which it plays in conduct; the conditions which must 
 be met to entitle any fact to the name of law, etc.
 
 PAKT II. PSYCHOLOGICAL ETHICS. 
 
 CHAPTER III. A GENERAL ANALYSIS OF CON- 
 DUCT. 
 
 SECTION IX. THE NATURE OF IMPULSE. 
 
 All conduct is at first impulsive. It has no end consciously 
 in view. The self is constantly performing certain acts more 
 or less determined in results, but without distinct consciousness 
 of their significance. The food impulse; following light with 
 eyes; handling; reaching; locomotion; the talking impulse. All 
 activity is impulsive so far as containing new elements so far, 
 that is, as it is not purely habitual. Impulse is not used as 
 synonymous with instinct. The latter is a defined or limited 
 impulse; the physical mechanism for the act is pretty definitely 
 prearranged. In man, there are very few instincts pure and 
 simple, but rather the loose beginnings and ends of very many 
 instincts. Hence the range and variety of human, as compared 
 with animal, actions. Hence also the impossibility of a syste- 
 matic classification of fundamental impulses to action. (Such 
 classifications were frequent in the older psychologies: see also 
 Martineau, Types of Ethical Theory, vol. II., pp. 120-256, 
 esp. p. 246). While the acts which have proved themselves 
 necessary in the previous life of the race have become so 
 organized into the structure of the individual that they now 
 assert themselves spontaneously as appetites and aversions, 
 each of these is so modified by the experiences and circum- 
 stances of the agent that it is meaningless when separated. 
 Such impulses as love of gain, love of fame, etc., are either 
 pure abstractions, there being in the normal man no such 
 thing as love of gain in general, (that is, unmodified by the 
 make-up of his entire experience) or else they represent an
 
 14 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 
 
 abstract classification of the various ends to which impulses 
 may be directed. 
 
 SECTION X. THE EXPRESSION OF IMPULSE AND ITS CON- 
 SEQUENCES. 
 
 The various impulses of the individual are not a loose bun- 
 dle of tendencies existing side by side. Because they have 
 \ been evolved in relation to the one more inclusive activity of 
 (\inaintaiuing life, they are interconnected. One impulse in its 
 c utterance tends to call up others, and this excitation or stimu- 
 lation is not wholly dependent upon the circumstances of the 
 moment, but follows (within widely variable limits) certain 
 lines. Thus the movement of the eye in following light and 
 of the hand in grasping an object tend to co ordinate, etc. 
 The difference again between the lower animals and man is 
 ^ that in the former this co-ordination is predetermined quite 
 specifically, while in man onrjLJthevery general lines are laid 
 down, thus leaving room for great variation and experimenta- 
 tion implying possibility of new combinations, and thus the 
 performance of new acts almost without limit. The acts, 
 which to the animals are well defined ends, are, in the human 
 structure, freed from their adjustment to predefined ends and 
 made flexible instruments for a large number of different and 
 much more complex ends. The definite co-ordination of acts 
 is thus, with man, not a datum but a, problem. 
 
 Each impulse in its expression tends to call up other 
 impulses; and it brings into consciousness .other experiences. 
 A child puts forth, by natural impulse, hjs hand towards a 
 bright color; his hand touches it and he gets new experiences 
 feelings of contact; these, in turn, are stimulus to a further 
 act; he puts the thing in his mouth, and gets a taste, etc. In 
 other words, the expression of every impulse stimulates other 
 experiences and these react into the original impulse and modify 
 it This reaction of the induced experiences into the inducing 
 impulse is the psychological basis of moral conduct. In the ani- 
 mals, so far as we can judge, the stimulus and the response
 
 THE STUDY OP ETHICS. 15 
 
 seem to assume purely serial order, one impulse calling forth 
 its appropriate act, this its proper sequence and so on. The 
 latter acts or experiences do not return into the earlier; they 
 are not referred or reflected back. The animal life is one of 
 association, not of thought or reflection. 
 
 SECTION XI. WILL, OR THE MEDIATION OF IMPULSE. 
 
 ^ ** i " 
 This back-reference of an experience to the impulse which 
 
 induces it, we may term the mediation of impulse. If we sup- 
 pose that the series of experiences used in the previous illus- 
 tration give the experience of an orange, then the next time 
 the same impulse of following light occurs it is modified by 
 all the experiences in which it previously resulted. It is 
 qualitatively different; the image or idea of the pleasant con- 
 tacts and tastes is now a part of the impulse. A child follows 
 a purely natural impulse in making more or less articulate 
 sounds; these sounds, through the response which others make 
 to them (a response as natural as the sequence of contacts 
 upon the following of light with the eye) set up other ex- 
 periences of the child, and these induced experiences mediate 
 the original babbling impulses. He finds that, expressing one 
 impulse, he gets attention when he falls down; by another, 
 food when he is hungry, etc. It is not simply that these 
 results do follow, but that the child becomes conscious that 
 they follow; that is, the results are referred back to the 
 original impulse and enter into its structure in consciousness. 
 It is evident that these mediations, or conscious baclt-refer- 
 ences, constitute the meaning of the impulse they are its 
 significance, its import. The impulse is idealized. The im- 
 pulse mediated, that is given conscious value through the 
 reference into it of the other experiences which will result 
 from its expression, constitutes volition proper. 
 
 SECTION XII. THE ETHICAL INTERPRETATION OK THIS PRO- 
 CESS. 
 
 As the primary point to understand, in ethical psychology, 
 is the return of induced experiences into the stimulating im-
 
 16 THE STUDY OP ETHICS. 
 
 pulse, so the fundamental fallacy to avoid is the separation of 
 impulse and induced experiences. It is too common an error 
 to think of the expression of the impulse as an independent 
 act and of the induced experiences as simply certain external 
 consequences which follow upon the act, but which have 
 nothing intrinsically to do with it which in themselves are 
 indifferent to the act. (See Martineau, Types, vol. II., p. 24.) 
 So we hear of the act and its consequences. In fact, the con- 
 sequences, so far as they refer back, are the act as a moral or 
 conscious (not simply physical) act. Differences of moral 
 value (as we shall see later) depend simply upon the range 
 and thoroughness of this mediation the completeness with 
 which the "consequences" of an act are returned into the 
 structure of the natural impulse. We thus see again the mis- 
 take of the systems which attempt like Martiueau'e to build 
 up ethical theory on the basis of separate natural impulses. 
 Their moral value is in their interactions, not in themselves as 
 independent. (Bentham, Principles of Morals and Legisla- 
 tion, vol. I. of Works, pp. 49-55, brings out this truth very 
 clearly; he uses, however, the term ' motive' to deuote what I 
 call natural impulse, while I shall use the term motive to de- 
 signate the mediated impulse.) 
 
 The mediation of the impulse through the experiences it 
 excites, may be comparatively organic or comparatively exter- 
 nal. That is, some ' results ' are almost entirely conditioned 
 upon the relation of the impulse expressed to other organs of 
 action as satisfaction from food when hungry, ^burning hand 
 from putting it in fire, etc., while others are due more to cir- 
 cumstances which accompany the act at the time, but which 
 may be absent as a rule as poison may be found in a food 
 usually healthy. But this distinction is not rigid (that is, 
 they are no 'results' absolutely internal and none absolutely 
 external to the act) and does not afford a natural basis for 
 separation of acts into those truly moral, and those morally in- 
 different. A large part of our moral discipline consists pre- 
 cisely in learning how to estimate probabilities to distinguish
 
 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 17 
 
 between relatively necessary and relatively accidental results 
 and to mediate the impulse accordingly. 
 
 Psychologically, the mediation of impulse (a) idealizes the 
 impulse, gives it its value, its significance or place in the whole 
 system of action, and (b) controls, or directs it. The funda- 
 mental ethical categories result from this distinction. The 
 worth of an impulse is, psychologically, the whole set of expe- 
 riences which, presumably, (that is, upon the best judgment 
 available) it will call into being. This, ethically, constitutes 
 the goodness (or badness) of the impulse the satisfaction (or 
 dissatisfaction) which it carries. But the thought of the con- 
 sequences which will follow, their conscious return back into 
 the impulse, modify it check it, increase it, alter it. The 
 impulse to reach, otherwise immediately expressed, is arrested 
 by the nascent consciousness of the paiii of the burn, it is rein- 
 forced by the nascent consciousness of the satisfaction of food 
 the impulse to see is profoundly modified by the response of 
 other experiences when the child learns to read, etc. In this 
 modification, through reaction of anticipated experiences, we 
 have the basis of what, ethically, we term obligation the 
 necessity of modifying any particular expression cTTmpulse by 
 the whole system of which it is one part. 
 
 Thus we have, on one side, the moral categories of Satis- 
 faction, Good (Summum bonum) Value, and, on the other, 
 those of Duty, Law, Control, Standard, etc. Every concrete 
 act, unites, of course, the two phases; in its complete charac- 
 ter, as affording satisfaction and, at the same time, fulfilling its 
 organic interactions, it is right and the agent which it expresses 
 is free. Thus we have three main sets of ethical ideas; those 
 centering, respectively, about (a) the Value, (b) the Control^ 
 (c) the Freedom of conch 
 
 CHAPTER IV. THE MORAL CONSCIOUSNESS. 
 SECTION XIII. THE SUBJECT OF THE MORAL JUDGMENT. 
 
 What is the subject, and what the predicate of the moral 
 judgment? That is, to what do we attach the ideas of good,
 
 18 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 
 
 bad, right, wrong, etc., and what is the meaning of these pre- 
 dicates when attached? We begin by asking what it is that 
 has moral meaning; what conditions must be met in order that 
 ethical notions may be applied to any experience? We may 
 sum up what we have already learned as follows: only an act 
 i (and a conscious act) has moral significance; every conscious 
 act, in its lowest terms, is a mediated impulse "mediation" 
 being the reference back to an impulse of the experiences 
 which it is likely to occasion. In this process, as we have 
 seen, the consequences of the impulse cease to be mere external 
 results and come to form the content of the act. 
 
 We may recognize three degrees of completeness of this 
 mediation. In the most complete reaction, the original or 
 natural impulse is completely transformed; it no longer exists 
 in its first condition; our impulse to locomotion, for example, 
 is entirely made over when the reaction of other experiences 
 into it is completed when we learn to walk; the first babbling 
 impulse is wholly transformed when we learn to talk, etc. 
 This also means that the mediating experiences are completely 
 absorbed into the initiating impulse; the two sides, the imme- 
 diate and the mediate, no longer have any separate existence. 
 This complete reaction we call habit. When the reaction is 
 less organized into the impulse, arid yet is closely connected 
 with it, we have general lines or plans of action; the larger, 
 more continuous and permanent expectations which form the 
 framework, as it were, of our conduct one's occupation, the 
 daily round of acts which, without being fixed habits, yet form 
 the limits within which one's other acts fall. And finally, we 
 have the particular variable acts, where the experiences which 
 express an impulse are so numerous and complex as to be 
 uncertain. In this case, the "consequences" do not organic- 
 ally react of themselves, but we have to " think it over" and 
 calculate as best we may the probable meaning of an act. 
 
 If acts all came under the first principle, we should be 
 slaves of routine; if they all came under the last, our whole 
 time would be taken up with minute and anxious reflection
 
 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 19 
 
 and our deeds would have no effectiveness. As it is, habits 
 are the tools which put at our immediate disposal the results 
 of our former experiences, thus economizing force; our general 
 plans hold us within certain limits and thus keep us from being 
 at the mercy of caprice or the flux of circumstance; while the 
 play of the relatively uncertain elements keeps our life from 
 petrifying and forms an unceasing call to the exercise of the 
 best forethought at command. " Probability is the guide of \ 
 life." It is the tension between the habitual and the more 
 variable factors that constitutes the significance of our conduct 
 morally. Habits, second nature, give us consistency and force; 
 the reflective element keeps us thoughtful. All of the ten- 
 dencies to action, taken together, constitute "capacity" the 
 power of action, whether impulsive, or habitual, or reflective, 
 which an agent has at disposal. 
 
 If the view so far presented be correct, we may assert that 
 either conduct or character in the subject to which we attach 
 moral predicates. The terms "character" and "conduct" 
 do not refer to different subjects, but to slightly different 
 aspects of the same subject. We say character when we are 
 thinking of the mediated impulses as the source from which 
 all particular acts issue. It does not refer to the bald un- 
 mediated impulses, nor does it refer to fixed unchangeable 
 habits. It designates the way in which impulses (varying of ^ 
 course, in every person) are directed and controlled that is, 
 mediated. The impulses are still there, and just so far as, in 
 their expression, they give rise to new experiences, character v 
 is modified. There is accordingly no force in the objection 
 sometimes made, that to make character the subject to which 
 the adjectives, good and bad, apply, does not allow freedom or 
 the possibility of change. The reaction of the experiences, 
 which the expression of character effects, is sufficient ground 
 for change. Nor is there more force in the objection that to 
 make character the subject of moral predication is to afford an 
 excuse for acts which are bad on the ground of the " good " 
 feeling or disposition from which they proceeded. Character
 
 20 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 
 
 includes the style and nature of the ends, the objects by which 
 the individual mediates his impulses, and thus affords suffi- 
 cient basis for taking into account the objective results of acts. 
 We cannot excuse, for example, an act of unregulated benevo- 
 lence on the ground that it proceeds from a good heart or good 
 feeling, when we judge on the basis of character, any more 
 than when we judge on the basis of the results of the act. On 
 the contrary we are only enabled the better to locate the de- 
 fect; the person's character is such that he does not properly 
 mediate his impulses; he is defective on the reflective side; or, 
 again, the nature of the end which that character sets up 
 the following of the immediate impulse of the moment is not 
 such as to be an object of approval. 
 
 On the other hand, by conduct we do not mean a mere 
 aggregate of particular acts. Conduct is the expression of the 
 mediated impulses. Character, according to its definition (the 
 way of mediating impulses), has no reality apart from the acts 
 in which such impulses must sooner or later issue. It is be- 
 cause acts proceed from character that they are not a mere 
 series of separate things, one after another, but form the or- 
 ganized whole: conduct. In a word, character is the unity. 
 tbjBjijiirit, the idea of conduct,while conduct is the reality, the 
 realized or objective expression of character. The objection 
 sometimes made to taking conduct as the subject of the moral 
 judgment, that conduct is something outward and therefore 
 indifferent, thus has no place. As character is a way of act- 
 ing, conduct is the executed way. 
 
 We can now deal shortly with a pair of antitheses which 
 are sometimes set up as the proper object of moral judgment, 
 viz. : motive on one side, consequences on the other. Motive 
 is only character in a given instance. Motive is never a bare 
 natural impulse, but is impulse in the light of the conse- 
 quences which may reasonably be supposed to result from act- 
 ing upon it. A mere impulse to anger is not a motive, and in 
 itself is neither good nor bad. It becomes good or bad accord- 
 ing to the nature of the end to which it is attached. Conse-
 
 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 21 
 
 quences, on the other hand, are no more a part of conduct than 
 they are of character, save as they are foreseen; save, that is, 
 as there is reason to believe that they will follow a given 
 impulse. But, if there is such reason, the consequences become 
 a part of the conditions which enter into the mediation of 
 impulse a part of character. 
 
 For theories denying the necessity of mediation by conse- 
 quences see reference previously made to Martineau, and Kant, 
 Theory of Ethics, (translated by Abbotts), p. 28, 44-46, 107- 
 114, 123. For theories holding to consequences see Bentham, 
 Principles of Morals, and Mill, Autobiography, pp. 49-50, and 
 Utilitarianism, ch. II., (where, however, the doctrine refers not 
 to the consequences alone, but to the exclusion of motive). 
 For a criticism of Martineau, seeSidgwick, Methods of Ethics, 
 Bk. III., ch. 12. For a discussion of the subject, Muirhead, 
 Elements, pp. 55-62, Mackenzie, Manual of Ethics, pp. 4046, 
 Alexander, Moral Order, pp. 36-46, Green, Prolegomena, Bk. 
 IV., ch. 1. 
 
 SECTION XIV. THE PREDICATE OF THE MORAL JUDGMENT. 
 When shall we call the character, or conduct, good or bad? 
 An impulse, it must be remembered, is a native or spontaneous 
 way in which the self acts. The experiences which are re- 
 ferred back to the impulse are experiences which the self 
 undergoes because of its own nature. The mediation of the 
 impulse thus means a process of self-development. It is the^ 
 process by which the self becomes aware of the meaning, in 
 terms of its own experiences, of one of its own impulses. The 
 impulse, by itself, or in isolation, is a partial or abstract ex- 
 pression of the self. The child who reaches for a light may 
 want the light, but he does not want the burn which is none 
 the less a part of himself, an organic portion of his experience, 
 under the circumstances. So the child may want to talk, but 
 he can hardly be said to want the introduction into new social 
 relations, and into a world of science and literature, which the 
 expression of that impulse brings about. And yet all this is 
 involved in the original impulse. The expression of impulse
 
 22 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 
 
 is thus a process of self-realization. The first meaning of an 
 impulse of anger is simply blind reaction, but this reaction has 
 consequences (relations to others, habits established, etc.), 
 which are, from that time on, part of the impulse. This ten- 
 dency to act without thought, to set up hostile relations to 
 others, is now the meaning which the impulse has for the self. 
 Or the blind reaction of anger is against some meanness; it 
 serves to do away with that meanness and to brace the self. 
 >1 These relations differentiate the impulse and bring the self to 
 consciousness in this direction. The completest possible inter- 
 action of an impulse with all other experiences, or the completett 
 possible relation of an impulse to the whole self constitutes the 
 predicate, or moral value, of an act. The -predicate is, there- 
 fore, identical in kind with the subject.* That is, the subject, 
 'this act,' in the judgment ' this act is right,' is an act medi- 
 ated by reference to the other experiences it occasions its 
 effect upon the self. The predicate 'is right' simply traces 
 out such effects more completely, taking into account, so far as 
 possible, the reaction into the future character of the self, and, 
 in virtue of this reaction, judging>the act. 
 
 The basis for discriminating bet.wepn "ri^hf," anrj 
 in the judgment is found in the fact that ^sprne acts tend to 
 narrow the self, to introduce friction into it, to weaken its 
 power, amf in various ways to disintegrate it, while oil 
 tend to expand, "invigorate, harmonize, and in general organize 
 the sel The angry act, for example, in the first case given, is 
 bad, because it brings division, friction ? weakness into the self; 
 in the second case, "good," because it unifies the self and 
 gives power. 
 
 The first effect of every mediation of an impulse is to check 
 or. arrest that impulse. Reflections means postponement; it is 
 delayed action. Through this delay the impulse is brought 
 into connection with other impulses, habits and experiences. 
 
 *This has important bearings upon the subject of the criterion as we shall see 
 hereafter. Because the predicate and subject are identical in principle, both being 
 the mediation of the impulse, the criterion always lies within, not without, the 
 act. The criterion is nothing but the completest possible view of the act.
 
 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 23 
 
 Now if a due balance is kept, the result is that the original 
 impulse is harmonized with the self, and, when expressed, it 
 realizes not only its own partial nature but that of the whole 
 self; it becomes the organ through which the whole self finds 
 outlet. The moral criterion for an act proceeding from anger 
 or from benevolence is whether only a part of u the self or the 
 whole character moves outward in the act. The bad act is 
 
 partial^, the good organic. The good man "eats to live," that 
 is, the satisfaction even of the appetite of hunger is functional 
 to the whole self or life; if we say the man who "lives to eat" 
 is bad, it is because he is sacrificing much of- himself to one 
 partial expression of himself. 
 
 We see again the impossibility of classifying the impulses 
 into a hierarchy of higher and lower. When an act is right, 
 there is no higher or lower as to the impulse from which it ^T^^w 
 proceeds. The satisfaction of hunger in its place (that is, one 
 which unifies the whole self) is as imperious in its rightness as 
 the noblest act of heroism or the subumesf act\)f self-devotion. 
 
 The good man, in a word, is his whole self _ in each of his />v-a-j 
 acts; the bad man is a partial (and hence a different) self in *^-*^ 
 his conduct. He is not one person, for he has no unifying 
 principle. (Compare the expressions "dissipated, gone to t^>&^i 
 pieces, shaky, unstable, lacking in integrity, duplicity, devious, 
 indirect, snaky," etc.) 
 
 This conception of the organic mediation of an impulse as 
 equivalent to Tightness may be expressed in other ways. Aris- 
 totle seems to have meant this by his principle of the "golden 
 mean." (Aristotle, Ethics, Bk. II., chap. 6-9.) While he 
 states it as an arithmetical mean, it is easy to translate what 
 he says into the conception of an active balance in which due 
 regard is had both to the immediate impulse and to the medi- 
 ating consequences; e. g., courage as the mean between fool- 
 hardiness and cowardice, foolhardiuess being undue preponder- 
 ance of impulse, cowardice lack of proper assertion of impulse; 
 moderation is the balance between extravagance (preponder- 
 ance of immediate impulse) and miserliness (preponderance of 
 reflection), and so on.
 
 24 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 
 
 Alexander conveys the same idea by calling Tightness a 
 "moving equilibrium." (Moral Order and Progress, pp. 97- 
 111.) 
 
 The same idea is also expressed in the conception of " self- 
 realization ," provided this is understood in the sense of ex- 
 pressing the concrete capacity of an individual agent, and not 
 in the sense of filling in the blank scheme of some undefined, 
 purely general self. (Green, Prolegomena to Ethics, pp. 178- 
 207; Mackenzie, Manual of Ethics, pp. 136-138, and Bradley, 
 Ethical Studies, chap. 6, tend to use the idea in the latter 
 sense. For further criticism see Philosophical Review, vol. 
 II., p. 652, on Self- Realization as Moral Ideal.) 
 
 CHAPTER V. MORAL APPROBATION, VALUE AND 
 STANDARD. 
 
 SECTION XV. NATURAL GOOD. 
 
 The satisfaction which any impulse affords in its expres- 
 sion may be termed its natural value. It is equivalent to 
 what the economists term "value in use" value which is 
 directly enjoyed, but not measured. Such is the satisfaction 
 which accompanies the fulfillment of the appetite of hunger 
 or of thirst, in itself or apart from any consideration of its 
 further bearings. But, as we have seen, the expression of an 
 impulse is always referred back to it, and comes to constitute 
 its meaning or the content of the act. Purely natural good is 
 found therefore only in the original primitive satisfactions of 
 early childhood: it is the state of animal innocence the state 
 of knowing neither good or evil, but simply enjoying suffering 
 good or suffering evil as they come. 
 
 SECTION XVI. MORAL GOOD. 
 
 The mediation of the impulse evidently prevents the im- 
 mediate satisfaction of the impulse, and thus replaces natural 
 good by a good which is presented to consciousness. This sat- 
 isfaction mediated in thought, that is, by reflection upon the 
 nature of an impulse in its relation to the self (or the whole 
 system of impulses) is moral satisfaction or moral value.
 
 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 25 
 
 This process of reflection evidently sets up a standard or 
 criterion for the value of the original impulse. It no longer 
 has worth in itself but simply in its relation to the whole set of 
 desirable experiences which it will occasion. And this means, 
 of course, its tendency to further the other impulses in its in- 
 teraction with them, or to express the self. It may be com- 
 pared with the measured or defined value of the economists, 
 the measurement here also being through interaction or rela- 
 tion (namely, exchange) creating a tension of various impulses 
 against each other, which makes it necessary to estimate the 
 relative importance of each. 
 
 The mediating process evidently has two sides; there are 
 two standpoints from which it may be considered, and in terms 
 of which it may be stated. As in the operation of exchange 
 there is but one reality, one process, and yet that process will 
 be differently described according as it is the buyer or seller 
 who reports it, so in measurement of moral value, or the refer- 
 ence of an impulse to the whole experience of the self. The 
 process of mediation or measurement is one, and yet our mode 
 of stating it will be different according as we look at it from 
 the standpoint of the inducing impulse or of the impulses and 
 experiences induced. The process, as a whole, is one of ad- 
 justment, of balancing, of co-ordination. But if we identify 
 ourselves in imagination with the impulse, we have first the 
 checking of the impulse, and then, as dammed up, its gradual 
 transformation and reinforcement the condition of desire and 
 its struggle for fulfillment. The impulse, being the thing 
 which makes itself directly felt in consciousness, is taken to be 
 reality: it is the present factor. 
 
 But as the other impulses stimulated (redintegrated) and 
 their results begin to be present in consciousness, we may 
 identify ourselves with them and tell the story from their side. 
 As induced and derivative, not immediately present (present 
 only as results of the original impulse), they are ideas; yet, as 
 induced, their reflective character is not equivalent to unreal- 
 ity; they make themselves felt by checking the very impulse
 
 26 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 
 
 which aroused them. In this aspect, .they are the law, the 
 controlling power of that impulse. They determine in what 
 form, under what conditions of time, place and quality, if may 
 be satisfied. Thus they determine or measure its value; they 
 say to it: You are not what you are alone or in yourself, but 
 your value is what it is in relation to us. In this aspect, the 
 induced experiences (reason, for short) are the standard of 
 measurement for the natural impulse. 
 
 But the experiences thus reflectively brought forward while 
 they may transform the original impulse, they also reinforce 
 it. They have their own impulsive quality, or urging for ex- 
 pression. Thus they constitute the ideal; what is desired; 
 the reflective good. The gradual self-assertion of desire up to 
 choice or preference, and the gradual formation of an ideal up 
 to resolution or decision, are one and the same process of 
 mediation of impulse described from the two standpoints, un- 
 til they gradually merge in a complete unity the overt act. 
 The whole process is one of discovering and applying the cri- 
 terion, a process of estimating value. In other words, it is a 
 process of testing, of proving, until, in the act, there is ap- 
 probation. 
 
 SECTION XVII. DEVELOPMENT OF VOLITION FROM SIDE OF 
 IDEA. 
 
 We begin with a consideration of the process by which the 
 end becomes developed into an act. This end is at first intel- 
 lectual that is, it exists in thought only. It is & proposed 
 end, not an actualized one. It is an aim, a plan, an intention, 
 a purpose all terms expressing its unrealized condition. In 
 its own content it does not differ from any image which may 
 come before the mind. Its relation to the impulse which calls 
 it into being tends, however, to unite its destiny with that of 
 the impulse, and thus confer upon it a practical value. Con- 
 sider a person who has an artistic impulse one towards paint- 
 ing. This impulse cannot find its immediate expression; it 
 calls before the mind (by association or redintegration) images 
 of all circumstances which are relevant to it which seem to be
 
 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 27 
 
 involved in its execution.- According to the strength (the 
 insistence and persistence) of the original impulse, the ideas 
 thus aroused will be mere fleeting fancies, vague schemes to be 
 carried out if circumstances favor, or a defined (determined) 
 project. In abnormal cases, hypnotism, "compulsory ideas," 
 etc., we find that every idea suggested to the mind tends to 
 execute itself, or that some idea becomes so dominant that 
 there is no co-ordination between it and others and hence no 
 control. These abnormal cases reveal the normal principle, 
 covered up by complexity of ordinary life the connection of 
 every idea with an impulse. In childhood we see precisely the 
 same thing, save that here the idea is hardly distinguished in 
 consciousness from the impulse. Attention reveals the same 
 principle in its normal and matured form. Attention is an 
 idea or set of ideas so completely bound up with an impulse 
 that they demand realization. The sole difference from the 
 abnormal "compulsory idea" is that in attention the induced 
 ideas are organically connected with the impulse. That is to 
 say, the distinguishing trait of attention is that it arouses the 
 whole set of ideas which are relevant to the impulse, and only 
 those, other ideas as they arise dying out because of their 
 indifference to the realization of the impulse, while all relevant 
 suggestions are maintained. 
 
 The full development of an ideal, an end, is, then, the same 
 thing on the ethical side that we term reflective attention on 
 the psychological side just as the direct satisfaction of an 
 impulse is equivalent to non-voluntary, or direct, attention. 
 ( See Dewey, Psychology, pp. 121-129, on natural and acquired 
 value; James, Psy., vol. I., pp. 416-124, on passive and volun- 
 tary attention.) Interest is, by general confession 'bound up 
 with attention; we may, therefore, expect to find a similar 
 close connection between ideal and interest in the process of 
 volition. 
 
 In the discussion of this development, it is convenient to 
 consider separately two phases which are always, as matters of 
 fact, found together. One of these is the formation of the
 
 28 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 
 
 intellectual content, the end (what is aimed at, the rational 
 structure of the plan); the other, the connection of this intel- 
 lectual content with the impulse the interest or practical 
 value which attaches to the aim as thought. Before consider- 
 ing them separately, it must again be remarked that while the 
 content of the plan is purely intellectual or rational (abstract, 
 or objective to the self), the fact that it is found worth while 
 to develop the plan (that attention remains fixed) shows that 
 this rational content is not, for a moment, freed from its prac- 
 tical or dynamic value its connection with impulse as the 
 immediately acting self. 
 
 SECTION XVIII. DEVELOPMENT OF INTENTION OR THE RA- 
 TIONAL CONTENT. 
 
 An intention is what an agent means to do. It is thus the 
 primary differentia of a volitional from a purely impulse act, 
 showing that the impulsive is mediated. It constitutes reflec- 
 tion, or the control of the impulse by reason. The thought, or 
 what one intends, may be a mere image which passes listlessly 
 through the mind as in the state of buildiug castles in the 
 air; it may be a vague undefined thought of something or 
 other in general a sentiment, what is sometimes termed 
 " meaning well " or having "good intentions," and yet not 
 meaning the particular end which alone is right. When eth- 
 ically justifiable, it signifies giving attention to all the bearings 
 which could be foreseen by an agent who had a proper interest 
 in knowing what he is about. 
 
 So far, we have unduly simplified the account by ignoring 
 the conflict of aims or the difficulty of coming to a conclu- 
 sion in many cases. The natural satisfaction, that is, the 
 thought of the course which the original impulse would take if 
 left to itself, and the rational, or mediated, satisfaction con- 
 tend in the mind. This is, as we shall see, the basis of the 
 moral struggle, the conflict of desire and duty. Or, the various 
 suggested ends do not harmonize; it is necessary either to bar 
 out some, or else to discover a still more comprehensive aim in 
 which the claims of the conflicting intentions shall be adjusted.
 
 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 29 
 
 Thus we are brought to deliberation, the more conscious 
 weighing and balancing of values consideration. We are apt 
 to describe this process as if it were a coldly intellectual one. 
 As matter of fact, it is a process of tentative action; we " try 
 on " one or other of the ends, imagining ourselves actually do- 
 ing them, going, indeed, in this make-believe action just as far 
 as we can without actually doing them. In fact, we often find 
 ourselves carried over the line here; the hold which a given 
 impulse gets upon us while we are " trying it on " passes into 
 overt act without our having consciously intended it. Par- 
 ticularly is this the case so far as our character is immature ; 
 there is a temporary relapse into a " compulsory idea." 
 
 Decision, resolution, the definitely formed plan, is the 
 proper outcome of consideration. This expresses the conclu- 
 sion of the process of conflict among ends, and the emergence 
 of a purpose which, whether through suppression or compre- 
 hension of other ends, now expresses the self. It is the com- 
 pleted self under the given circumstances. The appearance of 
 an ideal in the mind and the final selection, or determination, 
 are simply the beginning and the end of one and the same pro- 
 cess there is no thrusting in of an outside power, of will or 
 attention. The process we are describing is the process of 
 will or attention. This brings us expressly to a statement of 
 the connection of the intention or aim with the self urging on 
 to action impulse. 
 
 SECTION XIX. DEVELOPMENT OF MOTIVE. 
 
 The reaction of the intended content into impulse renders 
 the former itself an impulse; the original impulse, now 
 enlarged, goes on to express itself. This identification of the 
 aim with impulse is motive, the rational spring to action. 
 
 As attention cannot be separated from interest, the forma- 
 tion of a plan cannot be separated from the reaction of that 
 plan into the self. Every end that occurs to the mind awakens 
 a certain amount of interest, or has a certain value attached to 
 it. It is this reaction, the extent to which the thought tends
 
 30 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 
 
 to stir the self, to call it out, that measures the motive power 
 of the thought. Abstractly we may distinguish between the 
 conception of the end, which is rational or reflective, and the 
 motive power of this end; actually, we cannot. Whether or 
 not the conceived end remains in consciousness, even as a con- 
 ception, expresses its value to the self. This identity of the 
 evolution of the ideal, on the intellectual side, with the evolu- 
 tion of a determining motive power, on the emotional, both 
 being forms of self-expression, is the key to an understanding 
 of the ethics of motive. The ideal, or end, is the abstract, 
 objective expression, of the self; the acting, or real, self tem- 
 porarily checked as to its overt expression (immediate activ- 
 ity) but deepened and widened in its consciousness of what it is 
 doing in its appreciation of value. The motive is this abstract 
 self completely related, having its value felt, and thus no 
 longer merely objective but subjective as well, and hence pass- 
 ing into act. (See Dewey, Psy., pp. 15-23, and p. 347). 
 
 If we take the reaction of the content into the other im- 
 pulses of the self, and consider it apart from the reason or 
 purpose of the act, we get the conflict of emotions the stress 
 and strain of feelings, the play of hope and fear, of doubt and 
 expectation, of suspense and adjustment, of tension and grow- 
 ing ease, which is the subjective counterpart of the objective 
 conflict and resolution of ideals already spoken of. (See 
 Dewey, Psychology, XII. The " formal feelings" there de- 
 scribed are the consciousness of the process of mediation of 
 impulse, apart from its content). One of these emotions is so 
 important that it is often identified with volition itself; it 
 therefore demands special attention. It is the consciousness of 
 effort. Effort is the same process, stated in terms of emotion, 
 that we call consideration, or reflection, when stated in terms 
 of rational content. It is the feeling of the division of activity 
 a necessary accompaniment of the period of suspense within 
 which the original activity is arrested, while the iuduced im- 
 pulses which arrest have not yet gained sufficient force to 
 determine the act. It is a period when the impulses are striv-
 
 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 31 
 
 ing towards co-ordination and yet, not having reached it, are 
 in tension against each other temporarily oppose each other. 
 Such temporary opposition is evidently necessary in order to 
 secure a balance which will utilize each set to the full, or 
 secure the maximum of energy. It is obvious that if the 
 opposition of one set to the other is imperfect, one or the other 
 will get the preponderance too soon. The result will be an 
 undue suppression of the other set, loss of efficiency and ulti- 
 mate friction. This conflict of impulses which oppose each 
 other in order to reinforce each other is reported in conscious- 
 ness as the feeling of effort, whose distinguishing trait is pre- 
 cisely a peculiar combination of feelings of power and impo- 
 tence, of activity and resistance to activity. 
 
 SECTION XX. NATURE OF EFFORT ou TENSION. 
 
 According to this statement, effort is simply the conscious- 
 ness of the critical moment in the development of will; it is 
 not to be identified with the putting forth of will itself. And 
 yet effort is often considered to be will asserting its own power 
 against some resistance outside of itself. What is the origin 
 of this fallacy ? What are its ethical consequences ? 
 
 According to the theory given in the text, neither one or. , 
 the other of the contending forces is to be identified by itself 
 with will; each represents a normal and a necessary phase of 
 will the mediate and the immediate, the original and the 
 induced, to repeat once more. Moreover their temporary sep- 
 aration and the resistance which one phase of the activity 
 offers to the other is itself a factor of great positive import- 
 ance in the evolution of a truly rational practical conclu- 
 sion, or act. Now, if will proper is not this whole process, but 
 is some one distinct power, some force standing outside the 
 other factors, if therefore these other factors are resistance not 
 in will, but to it, both our psychological statement, and our 
 ethical theory must be radically changed. 
 
 It is not difficult to detect the source of the error. We 
 necessarily tend, during the struggle, to identify ourselves 
 especially with that phase of the process which is prominent in
 
 32 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 
 
 consciousness, and to regard the other phase (although equally 
 an expression of ourselves) as indifferent or even as hostile to 
 ourselves. The more interesting, the more important, is, for 
 the time being, the self; it absorbs consciousness. .Then we 
 fail to notice that the final act, the complete expression of self, 
 is by no means this side alone, but is colored throughout, and 
 is given value, by the other phase of the self. Take a poor 
 person tempted to steal; suppose he has habits, of honesty. 
 Here the self is identified with the thoughts of decency, of 
 self-respect, of reputation, which arise and assert themselves 
 against the direct impulse to take the loaf of bread. The 
 mediating self is the self, and the impulse is a mere intruder, 
 something outside the will, outside the self, and yet somehow 
 coming in to tempt it. Yet the very fact that this impulse is 
 presented as an end, that it becomes the thought of stealing, 
 shows that that end also, so far as entertained, is self. And if 
 the final determination is not to take the bread, this conclusion 
 the completed self, has by no means the significance which the 
 same conclusion (the same outwardly) would have when not 
 the outcome of such a struggle; the self has not simply re- 
 turned to its normal state after having got rid of an intruder. 
 The impulse to steal has become an integral part of the final 
 act not, of course, in its own isolated state, but in its medi- 
 ated relationship.* 
 
 And if the statement as thus formulated seems strange, 
 stated in another way, namely, that the meeting and overcom- 
 ing of temptation develops character, it seems a mere com- 
 monplace. 
 
 In other instances, the thought of the original, natural im- 
 pulse will seem the real self, and the induced experiences the 
 invading force; as, for example, when a man starts to fulfill a 
 natural office of friendliness and then is checked by the 
 
 * The bearing of this upon the question of the relation of good 
 and evil, and the possibility of an absorption of evil into good 
 character, or vice-versa (corruptio optimi, pessima), will come up 
 later.
 
 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 33 
 
 thought of the unpopularity of the object as likely to affect 
 him if he does the act. In this case, the very fact that these 
 reasons have weight with the man, that the thought of the 
 obloquy holds his mind, shows that that end expresses himself 
 in its measure. And yet, the man feels that his ""true" 
 self demands the negation of this temptation, and so this end 
 is thought of as external, and the final conclusion (which in 
 reality involves the co-operation of both partial selves) is taken 
 as simply the victory of one over the other. So it may be as 
 to the thing physically done, but in meaning, in its moral (or 
 character) value, it involves both. The same apparent dual- 
 ism is found in any exhibition of attention. In one aspect, 
 the self as attending, the group of impulses and habits, which 
 are endeavoring to assert themselves, seems to be the self, and 
 the content attended to, the object, seems to be outside the 
 self. Yet the fact that the content arouses such interest as to 
 maintain the tendency to assimilate the attending "subject" 
 and the "object " attended to, shows that the integrity of the 
 self, its complete assertion, is neither side separately but the 
 co-ordination of the two phases. Of this co-ordination, the 
 very struggle, or tension, is an integral phase necessary in 
 bringing out the full bearing, or importance of both factors. 
 Every one would admit that we do not get adequate conscious- 
 ness of the object of attention until attention has worked itself 
 out; it is just as true that the impulses and habits which press 
 forward to the object have their significance and value brought 
 to consciousness at the same time. 
 
 The fact that sometimes the self seems to be inducing 
 experience and sometimes the induced, shows the absurdity of 
 setting up & fixed will or self. When the attraction is towards 
 the conceived end, that seems to be self; when that end repels, 
 upon the whole, so that the movement is towards reduction of 
 its value, the self is located in the primary experience. A 
 man's true self in temperance is in the induced experiences; ia 
 courage in the inducing, etc.
 
 84 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 
 
 SECTION XXL THEORIES OF ABSTRACT IDEALS. 
 
 The ethical consequences of identifying will with a power 
 which puts forth effort against or towards something outside 
 of will flow from the interruption thus abruptly introduced 
 into the moral process. 
 
 The existence of the ideal is rendered inexplicable. It ia 
 reduced (A) to a supernatural visitor from a world above that 
 of ordinary experience. The very word ' ' ideal " suggests to 
 a sophisticated mind something which is remote and unattain- 
 able outside of the natural course of life. If not defined as 
 introduced into the mind from without by a divine power, it is 
 thought of after the analogy of this concept. (See Martineau, 
 Types, vol. II, pp. 73-74; 97-99; 217-218; and Study of 
 Religion, vol. II, pp. 2640, for assertions of the transcendent 
 character of the ideal. ) 
 
 (B) Recent moralists -have seen the objections -which'attach 
 to putting the origin and formation of the ideal outside of the 
 self. Yet instead of showing^the point, in the normal process 
 of volition (the appearance of the induced experiences which 
 mediate the original tendency to action) at which the distinc- 
 tion arises, they split the self into two selves and attribute 
 the impulses and [appetites to one, the actual urgent self, 
 and the ideal to another self, a " higher" or " rational " or 
 " spiritual " self in general. 
 
 (1) Kant presents one type of this view. According to 
 him, there is a sensuous, "phenomenal" self, constituted by 
 appetites and impulses; this furnishes the actual material for 
 our volition. Besides this, there is a rational " noumenal " 
 self, which sets up the ideal or goal of effort. (Theory of 
 Ethics, trans, by Abbott, pp. 105-124; 144-147.) 
 
 (2) Green recognizes the objection to splitting the self so 
 completely, and falls back on the notion of the moral ideal as 
 meaning the-end of the self as a whole, while natural satisfac- 
 tion means the satisfaction of a particular impulse. This 
 might be interpreted in a sense analogous with the theory I 
 have previously advanced, but as matter of fact, Green makes
 
 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 35 
 
 the whole self not the complete definition of the natural im- 
 pulse, under the conditions, but something quite distinct from 
 any possible development of the particular impulse as such. 
 See Green, Prolegomena, pp. 160-162, 178-188, 202-204; 
 Works, vol. II., 136-148; 308-309; 329; 336-338. Compare 
 with the following criticisms my article in Philosophical Re- 
 view, vol. I., No. 6. 
 
 Objections to the absolute or separate ideal may be stated 
 as follows: 
 
 (a) It makes a dualism, practically unbridgeable, between 
 the moral and the scientific phases of our experience. If any 
 account of the ideal can be given meeting the needs of the 
 case, we should certainly hesitate before accepting a mode of 
 statement introducing ideas which not only do not lie within 
 the scope of scientific method as usually presented, but which 
 emphasize their complete transcendence of scientific categories 
 and results. All the above theories (any theories which set up 
 an independent, fixed ideal) are necessarily metaphysical in a 
 sense which separates metaphysics from science, instead of 
 making it a more complete recognition of scientific methods 
 and data. 
 
 That moral science introduces a set of ideas which are not 
 brought explicitly to the front in the physical or even the bio- 
 logical sciences, there can be no doubt. But the account which 
 I have given recognizes this distinction without changing it 
 into a break. Physical science deals wholly with the rational, 
 abstract or objective content. That is, it leaves out of account 
 (i) the fact that every object, or law (relation of objects) 
 arises, in actual experience from an inducing impulse, an 
 action of self; (ii) the fact that sooner or later it reacts back 
 into the impulse, and thus has its final meaning in the new 
 significance which it gives to action. In other words, physical 
 science deals simply with the content of mediation, leaving one 
 side the whole process of mediation. In considering, for exam- 
 ple, a flower, it takes account neither of the impulses of seeing, 
 of reaching, touching, smelling, etc., which make the flower
 
 36 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 
 
 into an object in consciousness nor yet the additional value, 
 aesthetic and moral, as well as intellectual, which our activity 
 (our character) will have as result of the study. It omits, in 
 a word, both the reason for and the nature of the value which 
 objects have in our experience in relation to the self. 
 
 While biology is compelled to assume the fact of value as 
 possessed by objects in relation to life (most generally their 
 value in either maintaining or hindering the life of the genus 
 in question), it does not consider^this value as present to the 
 consciousness of the agent. It will describe, for example, the 
 interaction, both favorable and unfavorable, of a race of men 
 and their environment, but it confines itself to results actually 
 accomplished. It puts one side this value as realized in the 
 conscious life of that race, as affording motive and assimilated 
 into character. 
 
 Yet science, as science, does not deny the fact of further 
 conscious value. It simply concentrates itself upon other 
 aspects of reality the content which gives value independent 
 of why or how it gives it. Neglect is not denial of value; and 
 recognition of value is not denial of science. Ethics com- 
 pletes the analysis of reality experience begun by physical 
 and biological science. It does not introduce a new and 
 opposed set of ideas. (Royce, Spirit of Modern Philosophy, 
 ch. XII., distinguishes between the world of description and 
 the world of appreciation, this distinction being identical in 
 statement with the distinction just made; but he seems to con- 
 ceive of the " physical " world as a fixed thing, as, indeed, a 
 limitation, due to our ''finite nature," instead of the inter- 
 mediate stage in the development of an act: the definition of 
 the conditions of action). 
 
 The fixed, or absolute ideal, is not only inexplicable, but 
 is presupposed or ready~made. Against such ideals, we may 
 urge: 
 
 (b) No moral value attaches to their working-out, or for- 
 mation. It may belong to the attitude taken towards them, to 
 their choice or rejection, but nothing more. But, in our actual
 
 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 37 
 
 experience, no such separation exists between forming and 
 choosing an end of action. Our moral discipline consists even 
 more in the responsibility put upon us to develop ideals, than 
 in choosing between them when made. The making of plans, 
 working them out into their bearings, etc., is at once a test of 
 character and a factor in building it up. But this is an 
 impossibility if the ideal is something given towards which 
 will is to be directed if it lies outside the normal process of 
 volition. (Thus, Martineau is logical in holding that only 
 intellectual or prudential value attaches to the consideration 
 of consequences. Types, vol. II., pp. 255-256. With a fixed 
 ideal, they must lie outside, be mere means, and moral mean- 
 ing is found simply in the selection of one or other of the ends 
 given ready-made. Deliberation has no intrinsic moral signi- 
 ficance. So Green has to draw a decided line between the 
 estimation of acts, and of character, the former being decided 
 by a consideration of consequences, the latter by a considera- 
 tion of the disposition from which the act proceeds. Moreover 
 the consideration of character, or conscientiousness, he has 
 logically to reduce to a subjective introspection on the part of 
 the agent as to whether " he has been as good as he should 
 have been," not an objective examination of whether his in- 
 terest, or attention, is rightly distributed. Prolegomena, pp. 
 317-325. On p. 259, Green takes another view of the ideal), 
 (c) The process of choice, of selection between competing 
 ideals, is rendered arbitrary and meaningless. Why should 
 there be two competing ideals at all, one good, the other bad? 
 And, supposing there are, on what grounds do we prefer one 
 to the other ? As to the first question, there appears to be no 
 alternative between saying (with Kant) that there is a fixed 
 dualism in our nature, sense, as inducing to evil, being on one 
 side, reason, as good, on the other; with Green, that the par- 
 ticular impulse* is always and fixedly opposed in its realization, 
 to the demand of our entire nature (Prol. pp. 180-183 ;]206-207; 
 233-234); or (with Martineau) that there is an original fixed 
 scale of higher and lower in our impulses. But experience
 
 38 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 
 
 does not testify to a conflict between ends one labelled, from 
 the start and unalterably, good and the other labelled bad. 
 On the contrary, one becomes good, the other bad, in the pro- 
 cess of competition and deliberation. Moreover our theory 
 accounts for the presence of the two competitors and the relative 
 conflict between them; it is the old story of th,e immediate and 
 the mediating phases of action. It gives positive meaning to 
 the opposition the deepening of consciousness. (See Alex- 
 ander, Moral Order, pp. 297-316, also Int. Journ. Eth., vol. 
 II., p. 409, for an adequate recognition of the fact that the 
 competing ends are made good and bad, by the very process of 
 deliberation and choice; or, as I have previously put it, the 
 process of action is itself one of estimating and constituting 
 value, of proving and approving.) 
 
 As to the second question, on what grounds does the self 
 choose between the two fixed ideals, there appears no answer 
 save an appeal to arbitrary free-will, the power of choosing 
 between alternatives without any reason for the choice. The 
 problem of freedom will meet us hereafter; at this point, it is 
 sufficient to note that the sole occasion for bringing in a free- 
 dom of the kind just referred to, is that the alternative ends to 
 be chosen are taken as lying outside the development of will. 
 On our theory, the emergence of the ends and the final choice 
 are facts of exactly the same order, being only an earlier and a 
 latter stage, in time, of the definition of an impulse in its re- 
 lation to the self. It may also be noticed, at this point, that 
 the theory opposed to freedom, namely, that of necessitation 
 has its origin in exactly the same assumption that the origin 
 and development of the ends lie outside the self; being con- 
 ceived as foreign forces, it is natural to draw the inference that 
 the strongest force determines the will overlooking the fact 
 that ends have motive power, great or small, only so far as 
 they interest, hold attention that is, express the direction in 
 which the self is already moving. 
 
 There is still another difficulty as to choice. If one side 
 comes thus labelled bad from the start, why should it ever be
 
 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 39 
 
 chosen? Why should the bad recognized as such, offering 
 itself as such, have superior value? The doctrine of original 
 sin is the only logical answer, and Kant is perfectly logical in 
 trying to introduce a philosophical statement of that doctrine. 
 Theory, pp. 339-352. ( Abbott's trans. "Religion within the 
 Bounds simply of Reason.") 
 
 (d) No basis is afforded for development of moral ideals 
 for positive progress. The ideal is there once for all and it is 
 only a question of greater or less distance from it. The logical 
 conclusion (not that these writers have been logical enough to 
 draw it) is the Pharisaical one since there has been progress, 
 how much better morally must we be than savages, or our 
 primitive ancestors, or " the lower classes," or than any one 
 else whose acts do not rank objectively as high as ours ! On 
 our theory, it is the ideal, as recognition of the objective mean- 
 ing of action, which has progressed; so that there is only addi- 
 tional capacity, and thus additional demand, for mediation. 
 One class of persons, as a class, is, then, morally no better than 
 any other; one period no more virtuous than another. Re- 
 sponsibilities not virtues, increase. The increase, that is, of 
 knowledge of the bearings of an impulse makes care in action 
 morally more imperative, we are no nearer a goal of perfection, 
 but action has more intellectual and aesthetic meaning. 
 
 (e) From this it follows also that progress in character is 
 purely negative; on the basis of a fixed ideal it consists sim- 
 ply in lessening the gap which separates us from the ideal. 
 The moral life thus becomes a struggle towards something 
 without and beyond, and, in so far, a hopeless and slavish 
 struggle. The ideal never is realized, do what we may. (Kant 
 has to fall back on purely supernatural means to meet this 
 difficulty. Theory, pp. 218-231.) The ideal has no self-exe- 
 cuting, no moving power. It is never of itself a motive. Upon 
 our theory, the very fact that an ideal is present in conscious- 
 ness, is, as far as it goes, its realization; it is the self mov- 
 ing that way; in so far as it modifies conduct, it is directive 
 and effective. A mere ideal, or unrealized ideal, is a contra-
 
 40 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 
 
 diction in terms. The ideal is a very present help in time of 
 trouble. 
 
 (f) The fixed ideal gives no instruction or information as 
 to the particular thing needing to be done. It does not trans- 
 late itself into terms of a concrete, individual act and every 
 act is concrete and individual. In other words, it does not and 
 cannot become a working principle for what has to be done. 
 (See Green, again, Prol. pp. 317-325, for the necessity, on his 
 basis, of a double standard. ) Such ideals are pure luxuries; 
 only the sentimentalist and the pure theorist can afford them. 
 The working man, of busy life, must have an ideal by which 
 he can go in action, one whicli defines specific acts. (Green 
 attempts to meet the need by reference to the past institutions 
 in which the ideal is embodied; cf. Prol. pp. 180; 207-208; 393- 
 394. But, since such embodiments are, according to him, only 
 apparent, not real, it is difficult to see how this gives the re- 
 quired instruction. Kant attempts to get to the specific act 
 needed by reference to the universal, non-self-contradictory 
 character of the ideal. Of this, more below.) Again, our 
 theory meets this need, because the ideal is nothing but the 
 definition or mediation of the immediately acting, or impul- 
 sive, self. 
 
 We conclude then, from our examination of abstract ideals, 
 that true ideals are the working hypotheses of action; they are 
 the best comprehension we can get of the value of our acts; 
 their use is that they mark our consciousness of what we are 
 doing, not that they set up remote goals. Ideals are like the 
 stars: we steer by them, not towards them. 
 
 SECTION XXII. THE HEDONISTIC THEORY OF VALUE. 
 
 According to the theory advanced, value consists in the 
 
 V 
 
 realization or expression of impulse, moral value being the 
 conscious realization of impulse in its relation to the self or 
 system of active experience. The " ideal " is the consciousness 
 of the relationship. The function of the ideal is to give con- 
 tent or meaning to the impulse: it is the impulse stated in
 
 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 41 
 
 objective terms. Abstract idealism was criticized on the 
 ground that it made the ideal something at which impulse and 
 activity in general is aimed, and in which therefore it is 
 exhausted. There is another group of theories which also sets 
 up an outside goal for activity, although differing as to the 
 nature of this goal. This group is tho hedonistic (from 
 the Greek, r^ovij pleasure.) It proclaims that pleasure is the 
 end towards which all action is directed that pleasurable 
 feeling (involving the absence of pain) is the Summum 
 Bonum, the supreme good and thus the standard for measur- 
 ing value. 
 
 Before passing on to its consideration, it may first be con- 
 trasted with abstract idealism. Comparatively, hedonism may 
 be termed empirical idealism. It has an ideal pleasure but 
 this ideal is a state, a passive experience, something which has 
 already been enjoyed;* as against this, the ideal of perfection 
 set up by the other school is attainable only in the remote 
 future at the end of an infinite time according to Kant and 
 Green. The good of one school is reason, that of the other 
 feeling.f The two schools have stood over against each other 
 since the very beginning of ethical speculation. At first, it 
 was the Cynic against the Cyrenaic; then the Stoic against the 
 Epicurean; latterly, the Kantian against the Utilitarian. 
 (See Sidgwick, History of Ethics, pp. 32-33 and 71-88.) 
 
 Such a continuous opposition is accounted for on the ground 
 not that one is all truth, and the other all error; but on the 
 ground that each school represents the abstraction of one phase 
 of the process of volition. In truth, the process begins and 
 ends in activity; the beginning being impulsive (original or 
 habitual) activity, the end activity whose value has been 
 measured. In this process, reason (the phase selected and set 
 up independently by the abstract idealists) represents the 
 
 *See note to p. 147 of Murray's Introduction to Ethics; also 
 Mill, Utilitarianism, pp. 348-849; Bain, Moral Science, p. 27. 
 
 f " Reason is and must be the slave of passion." Hume. See 
 Treatise on Huriian Nature, Book II., Part 3, Sees. 3 and 4.
 
 42 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 
 
 transition from the immediate to the mediated activity the 
 consciousness of the relations of the impulse, the objectified 
 impulse, while feeling (the phase abstracted by the empiricists) 
 represents the consciousness of value to the agent as an 
 individual the activity in its subjective existence. Reason is 
 turning the action inside out, seeing it as part of a general 
 order, independeut of the individual's own immediate propen>- 
 
 ^**"""^"^*^ *^^ *^" """ *" ^"^"^fc^ < ^^^ "~Wt^^fci ^FT**^^^^^*"^*^ 
 
 sities. Hence the ideas of specfatorV disinterestedr^universal, 
 which associate themselves so easily with reason. Rational 
 content is required to give the individual's feeling substance 
 and real worth. Feeling is turning the action outside in; it is 
 the realization of value terms of the agent's own peculiar 
 character.* 
 
 Hedonism (as compared with rationalism) fails to see that 
 the nature or content of this value (as distinct from the mere 
 fact of some value) depends upon the mediation of reason; 
 while abstract idealism fails to note that the reduction of self 
 to reason or thought leaves the self in the air, with no indi- 
 vidualized value. Each of them has to disparage the opposite 
 principle, or reduce it to a mere means to its own end. The 
 theory of experimental idealism (as we term the position here 
 taken), because of its recognition of activity as the primary 
 reality is enabled to give both thought and feeling their due. 
 It does not attempt the impossible task of setting up for 
 activity some end, whether a state of feeling or one of perfect 
 reason, outside itself. It is content to note that activity, mov- 
 ing according to its own law and principle, becomes objectively 
 conscious of its value in the ends which its projects (ideals) 
 and subjectively conscious of its value in the emotions which 
 accompany the realizing of these ends. 
 
 As compared with the facts, then, both ethical rationalism 
 and empiricism take a derived and secondary phase for the 
 whole truth. As compared with each other, rationalism is 
 
 * Hence Lotze's hedonistic tendencies. See Practical Phil- 
 osophy, pp. 15-20.
 
 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 43 
 
 right in so far as it asserts that feelings (or pleasure and pain) 
 are mere abstractions apart from the objects (or rational con- 
 tents) which give them their quality, while empiricism is right 
 in asserting that an end which is not felt (that is, app 
 as part of the agent's ownoeing) has no moral validity or 
 
 ^^- 
 
 "SECTION XXIII FEELING AS END OR IDEAL. 
 
 We shall consider pleasure-pain, (1) as end or ideal of 
 action, (2) as motive, and (3) as criterion or measure of value. 
 
 The contradiction in hedonism meets us at the outset- 
 Pleasure and pain as feelings exist only as they are actually 
 felt, and to the one who feels them. J Because we have one 
 word, we are apt to suppose that there is some one fact or 
 entity corresponding. There are, indeed, pleasures and pains, 
 but no such thing as pleasure in general. Hence we cannot 
 aim at pleasure. It is a pure abstraction. 
 
 We may aim, however, it will be said, at some particular 
 pleasure, the pleasure of eating an apple, of performing a 
 charitable act, of deceiving an enemy, etc. Even here, how- 
 ever, there is ambiguity, and even self-contradiction in the 
 theory as ordinarily stated. There is confusion of an ideal of 
 pleasure the conception of what constitutes pleasure with 
 pleasure as an ideal. Since pleasure exists only while it is 
 felt, to say that it is aimed at must mean that there is a 
 thought of it formed. Now this thought will either be an I 
 image so distinct that it is itself pleasurable, or it will be aj 
 conception of the objects or ends which afford pleasure or yield* 
 satisfaction. Take any of the instances above given and it will 
 be seen that fchese two alternatives exhaust the possibilities. 
 Neither of them is equivalent to pleasure as an ideal. In the 
 former case, a pleasure is actually felt and no action is called 
 forth aimed at it. In the latter case there is a presentation of 
 the ends whose attainment is regarded as affording satisfaction, 
 and (through redintegration) of a certain amount of accompa- 
 nying pleasure. But neither actually experienced pleasure, 1 
 nor a consideration of the objects which afford enjoyment is I
 
 44 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 
 
 pleasurable feeling as an aim of action. This latter is a psy- 
 chological impossibility. But since the idea has prevailed, not 
 only that pleasure is a possible end of action, but that it is the 
 only end, it must be examined in more detail. The idea is 
 us*ially_j>resented in connection with a theory of desire. (For 
 the notion tBat plea8Ur6"isTEe~6b]ect of desire see: Mill, Utili- 
 tarianism, pp. 354-355; Bain, Emotions and Will, Part II., ch. 
 8; Senses and Intellect, pp. 338-344; Spencer, Data, pp. 26-44; 
 Sully, Outlines of Psychology, pp. 574589, Human Mind, 
 vol. IL, pp. 196-207; Thompson, System of Psychology, Part 
 IX.; Lotze, Microcosmus, vol. I., pp. 678-706. Most of these 
 ' cover other points in the hedonistic theory besides the relation 
 of pleasure and desire. Stephen, Science of Ethics, pp. 42-57 
 and 246-263, is noteworthy for the clearness with which he 
 shows the confusion in ordinary hedonism as to the end, while 
 still himself holdirig that pleasure is motive.) 
 SECTION XXIV. HAPPINESS AND DESIRE. 
 
 It is generally held by hedonists to be self-evident that we 
 desire pleasure, and avoid pain. The doctrine is even tautol- 
 ogy, according to them. Good, pleasure, the desirable, are 
 synonymous terms; evil, pain, that to which we are averse, 
 mean the same experience. Substituting 'happiness' for 
 'pleasure', 'misery' for ' pain ', we agree unreservedly to this 
 statement, and yet insist that it does not mean that, pleasure is 
 the object of desire, or aim of action. It is true that good 
 (happiness) is the satisfaction, evil the thwarting of desire. 
 This measures, or defines, happiness in terms of desire; desire 
 is the primary fact, happiness its fulfilling, its completion. 
 Hedonism sees the connection, but reverses its* direction. It 
 takes happiness as a fixed fact, and then tries to define desire 
 in terms of happiness as that which aims at it. It is true 
 that happiness is found in the satisfaction of any desire, par- 
 ticularly in the degree of its dominance; happiness^ this \ 
 satisfaction of desire. But hedonism transforms this fact into 
 the notion that somehow pleasure is there as an ideal, and its 
 contemplation arouses desire. As Green says (Prolegomena,
 
 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 45 
 
 p. 168), the hedonists make the "mistake of supposing that 
 a desire can be excited by the anticipation of its own satis- 
 faction." 
 
 This identity of happiness with satisfaction of desire is the 
 reason for substituting 'happiness' for 'pleasure^-, Pleasure 
 anoVpain are often passive and accidental (pathological, Kant 
 terms it. Theory, p. 106). A child goes on the street and . 
 hears pleasant music; he runs and has a painful fall; a man 
 inherits money and finds himself in the possession of new 
 resources; he invests money safely, as he supposes, and finds it 
 swept away by a sudden panic. It is absurd to deny that satis- 
 faction and dissatisfaction, in the way of pleasure and pain, 
 result in all these instances; yet common speech agrees with 
 sound theory iu hoiding that any one or all of them may become 
 parts of either happiness or misery, weal or woe, according to 
 the relation assumed towards them by the dominant desires (that 
 is character) of the individual* (see Alexander, Moral Order, 
 pp. 212-218). 
 SECTION XXV. THE NATURE OF DESIRE. 
 
 The hedonist, then, gives the following account of desire: 
 ^Afhqjttiflg that the original, or impulsive, activity does not 
 occur for the sake of pleasure, it is held that when pleasure or 
 pain is experienced as a result of action, the image of memory 
 of the feeling occurring afterwar Is arouses a desire for its 
 renewal (if pleasure), or aversion, a movement to escape it (if 
 pain). 
 
 Concerning this account a question arises. How does this 
 image of inemory happen to occur to the mind? No image or 
 memory can come into the mind directly or of itself; there 
 must be some suggestion, association or exciting stimulus. We 
 may suppose (i) that the object which gave the satisfaction 
 before is seen (as a child, having eaten sugar once, sees it 
 
 *I do not mean that the words ' pleasure' and ' happiness' are 
 marked off to denote exclusively these two kinds of satisfaction, 
 one comparatively extraneous to character, the other measured by 
 it, but only to insist that there are these two types _pf satisfaction, 
 and that common speech is quite aware Uf lllelP
 
 46 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 
 
 again), and this redintegrates the pleasure image. Now (a) 
 this, at most, is an accidental and, morally, unimportant way 
 for desire to originate. A character whose desires were habit- 
 ually aroused in this style would be immature; it would be the 
 sport of caprice and circumstance, with no settled lines of action. 
 This theory presupposes that the mind is, like Micawber, pas- 
 sively waiting for experiences to "turn up." In the child, 
 or in any character so far as morally immature, the relatively 
 accidental recognition of an object may arouse its own isolated 
 line of action. But moral training consists not in perpetuating 
 this mode of actioj^btflTin eliminating it. Asamatte? oTfact, 
 even a child is actually engaged from the outset and all the 
 time in activity. He has his own impulses, or lines of dis- 
 charge, representing the selected outcome of generations of 
 activity. The child's immaturity chiefly consists not in the 
 fact that it is passively dependent upon external excitations, 
 but in the lack of -continuity in the activities set up by the 
 organs themselves. One way of action gives way to another 
 without reference to a general or comprehensive plan. In 
 other words, the impulse is not mediated or rationalized, (b) 
 Even in the child, therefore, the object arouses the desire 
 because of the activity already going on. The child's primary 
 impulse is already there that of eating. The presentation of 
 the object and the representation of the satisfaction previously 
 had in connection with it, simply deflects, or mediates, this 
 activity. 
 
 This suggests the fundamental fallacy in the old case of the 
 ass evenly balanced between two bundles of hay. It supposes 
 that the desirable quality, the power of inciting activity, resides 
 in the object entirely independent of the activity of the organ- 
 ism. As matter of fact, the animal (and so with man) is 
 already doing something, looking, or moving, this way or that, 
 and so the hypothesis of a purely indeterminate equilibrium is 
 
 ,absurd it assumes impossible conditions. 
 
 Pleasure, in other words, is not suggested immediately by the 
 
 [object, sugar, but by the activity of tasting, which constitutes 
 
 'the practical meaning of that object.
 
 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 47 
 
 This brings us (ii) to the normal case. The pleasure is 
 aroused because the activity already asserting itself, as a habit 
 more or less organized, hits in idea upon the object (that is, the 
 conditions) which will afford it fulfillment. The recognition of 
 the congruity of the object to the activity arouses the pleasure. 
 A hungry child, seeing or thinking of something to eat, experi- 
 ences gratification in the thought; an engineer, trying to express 
 his engineering capacity, thinks of a new machine and experi- 
 ences pleasure, etc.] Instead of the image of pleasure exciting 
 the action, the activity already going on sets up a pleasure by 
 calling into consciousness the conditions (the object) of its 
 satisfaction. J There is no image of a past pleasure once experi- 
 enced or of a future pleasure to be attained ; there is a present 
 pleasurable experience. This brings out the fact that desire, 
 instead of being the beginning of activity caused by a state of 
 feeling, is a stage in its development arising when both the 
 original and the induced activity are in consciousness but have 
 not yet come to a complete agreement, or co-ordination. (It 
 is the same condition as that already noticed as effort.) Desire 
 is not excited or aroused by any end, whether pleasure or any- 
 thing else. It is a phase in the growth of valued, or rational- 
 ized, action. 
 
 At this stage of development there is more than pleasure ' 
 felt; there is also pain. Pleasure is felt so far as the object 
 (the mediating or induced experience) is present in idea, thus 
 promising future satisfaction. Pain is felt so far as it is pres- 
 ent only in idea, not in act. 
 
 The actual perception of the sugar is still, in part, merely 
 ideal, so far as the activity is concerned; the activity which is 
 striving to assert itself is not seeing the sugar, but tasting it. 
 So far as the sight promises success, by redintegrating further 
 acts (reaching, etc.), it is pleasurable, the draft the organs of 
 tasting make upon it being honored. But so far as the full 
 activity is still non-existent, there is pain. 
 
 The very essence of desire is tension, divided activity. The 
 self is divided against itself; activity is partial. So far as it
 
 48 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 
 
 goes, it is action, and hence pleasurable; but as partial, it is 
 painf.il. Desire is neither complete activity aiming at a state 
 outside itself, nor a condition of sheer emptiness.* It is con- 
 flicting activity. The man who desires an education in so far 
 as he can "objectify" his desire (that is, present to himself 
 the conditions which will further his self-assertion in that 
 direction), is in so far already acting in the desired direction, 
 and there is satisfaction; but in so far as he is at present acting 
 in ways which must be mediated, or transformed, there is con- 
 flict and dissatisfaction. The pleasure-pain condition of desire 
 reports, in other words, the existing state of action ; it does not 
 initiate it. 
 
 i In any account of desire, there are thi-pe elements to be 
 / dealt with activity, object of. 
 
 / ' .MMMlL^MMMMV** 
 
 f , _ jre (end thought of as satis- 
 
 3^**. ^tB^pfc**^***^ 
 
 / fying), and feeling. According to hedonism, the object awakens 
 / feeling, and the feeling arouses active desire. I have tried to 
 / show above that the feeling is the activity subjectively appre- 
 S ciated; it is equally true, on our theory, that the object is no 
 independent thing, but is the activity presented to intelligence 
 is the content of action, the statement of the conditions 
 involved. The thought of food is the definition, in objective 
 terms, of hunger; a complex set of commercial relations (a plan 
 of business) is the objective definition of the impulse to assert 
 one's self in nature; the conception of conditions of political 
 power the objectifying of its special impulse, etc. ' Object ' 
 and pleasure-pain feeling are thus the correlative phases, ob- 
 jective and subjective, of activity. 
 
 The fundamental fallacy of both perfectionism and hedon- 
 ism is thus the same. Both assume value as something pre- 
 sented to the self, and awakening and measuring activity. In 
 trutb^yalue is constituted by activity. (An interesting form 
 of the assumption of a fixed system of goods or values (not 
 hedonistic) towards which activity should be directed will be 
 
 *The double sense of words here is suggestive. Want means 
 both lack and demand; it is dynamic, and still partial. Capacity 
 means both power (actuality) and possibility (ideality).
 
 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 49 
 
 found in the International Journal Ethics, vol. II., in an article 
 by Mr. Davidson, entitled "The Ethics of an Eternal Being." 
 All formulae like the one there given (p. 306) reverse the real 
 state of the case. They assume the existence of valuable ends 
 towards which interest, attention, affection are to be directed, 
 forgetting that such ends are simply the objective expression of 
 interest and attention.) 
 
 Arguments against ^the idea that pleasure is the object of 
 desire will be found in James, Psychology, vol. II., pp. 549 
 559; Green, Prol., pp. 163-177; Bradley, Ethical Studies, pp. 
 226-235, and Mind, vol. XIII., p. 1; Sidgwick, Methods of 
 Ethics, pp. 34-47, Mind, vol. IL, p. 27, and Contemporary 
 Review, 1871, p. 671; Alexander, Moral Order, pp. 186-225; 
 Dewey, Outlines, pp. 17-30; Muirhead, Elements, pp. 92-111; 
 Murray, Introduction, pp. 160-173; Mackenzie, Manual, pp. 
 89-116. Most of these references deal with the question of 
 motive as well as of end. The criticisms of hedonism advanced 
 above are practically identical with many of those contained in 
 the references. The positive doctrine of desire is, perhaps, 
 more nearly allied to that of Spinoza, according to which desire 
 is a form of fundamental self-assertion. It is not aroused by 
 some 'end', but the 'end' or 'object' is the consciousness of 
 the nature, or content, of self-assertion. See Spinoza, Ethics, 
 Part III., props. 6-9 and def. 1 of the affects. In Part IV., 
 props. 1437, desire seems at times to be defined in terms of 
 "Good", and good at other times in terms of desire as the 
 content of self-realization. The latter is the characteristic 
 doctrine, in any case. See III., p. 9, schol., and p. 39, schol. 
 
 SECTION XXVI. PLEASURE AND MOTIVE. "*tAy t 
 
 As already stated, most hedonists confuse the idea of pleasure 
 as object of desire with pleasure as motive. This confusion 
 testifies to a right psychological instinct: that which is an aim 
 of action must also move to action. There must be an identi- 
 fication of the real concrete ideal with the impelling spring to 
 action. Unless the aim or ideal itself becomes a moving force,
 
 50 THE STUDY OF ETHIC8. 
 
 it is barren and helpless. Unless the moving force becomes 
 itself idealized, unless it is permeated with the object aimed at, 
 it remains mere impulse, blind and irrational. According to 
 hedonism, the ideal and motive may be confused with each 
 other, but they cannot be identified. The thought of pleasure 
 is either simply an abstract conception, coldly intellectual, of 
 the means to getting pleasure, or it is a concrete image of pleas- 
 ure that is, itself a pleasure. In neither case is it a motive. 
 In the former case, it is simply an abstract idea, without prac- 
 tical efficiency; in the latter case, the pleasure is already enjoyed 
 or experienced, and there is no cause for action.* 
 
 We are in this dilemma in hedonism. If the motive is 
 feeling, it can suggest no intention whatever, and thus cannot 
 move to anything in particular. There is a certain state being 
 experienced, and that ends the story. Or, if there is a definite 
 aim or intention in view, that end will arouse feeling only in 
 the degree in which it expresses activity tendency towards or 
 away. The feeling excited will not be the moving spring, but 
 will indicate or register the extent to which the self is moved. 
 There is no connecting link, on its theory, between aim and 
 motive. 
 
 We may freely admit, with the hedonist, that bare thought 
 does not induce, is not motive. But before we can infer from 
 this that an ideal is not motive, we must be able to show that 
 an ideal, or aim, is mere thought. On the contrary, it is the 
 induced or mediating activity. The ideal, indeed, is a concep- 
 tion or thought; but as such, as intellectual, it simply gives 
 definiteness and coherency to the content of the induced self. 
 The concrete ideal is always activity asserting itself in another 
 direction from the present, natural, activity. 
 
 Physiology has, indeed, afforded a complete disproof of 
 any theory which makes a gap between the ideal (or intellect) 
 
 * Stephen, Science, p. 51, holds that pleasure means persistence 
 in given state, pain change. So also Ward, Psychic Factors of 
 Civilization, p. 54, who goes to the extreme of holding that all 
 desire is pain, while still defining it as representation of pleasure as 
 well as pain (p. 52).
 
 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 51 
 
 and overt action. From the side of the expenditure of energy, 
 the sole difference between thought and action is in the exter- 
 nal, or gross, visibility of the discharge. Thinking involves 
 molecular motion, and continued discharge to the muscles and 
 glands. The question of the final passage of idea into act is 
 simply the question of the concentration (unification) of this 
 organic activity in some definite direction. Physiologically, 
 the entire function of thought consists in transforming the 
 vague, diffuse and non-valued (valuable, bu not defined or 
 measured as to value) activity of infancy into definite, co- 
 ordinated and intentional (measured) activity. 
 
 Upon our view, then, the ideal and motive are both names 
 for self in certain phases of action. If a man kills another 
 intentionally, his ideal, the thought of the removal of the other 
 man, is not something beyond himself there is no way for 
 the thought, even as thought, to come into his mind, save as a 
 projection of himself. That the thought dwells there and 
 becomes an impelling force to action (a motive) is simply the 
 realization, the definite recognition, of the extent to which the 
 self is involved in that ideal, of the extent to which that ideal 
 is the self. The act of reflection is a phase of the act of ful- 
 fillment. 
 
 We thus come to the question of intention and motive. 
 The hedonist asserts that the motive is always a feeling of 
 j pleasure-pain, the intention is the consequences aimed at.* 
 
 We assert that both intention and motive are the self in 
 If action, and the sole difference is that motive is intention com- 
 ]j pletely developed, the concrete or unified self. 
 
 A man wills to kill another. Roughly speaking, intention 
 corresponds to what he wills, motive to why he wills it. His 
 intention is the "foreseen consequences,'' his motive, that 
 which makes him desire them. His intention is the death of 
 another man; his motive varies according as he is seeking 
 revenge, is a soldier in war, or is engaged in defending himself 
 
 *Mill, "The intention is what the agent wills, tj d/>, the motive, 
 is the feeling that makes him so will to do."
 
 
 62 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 
 
 from an assault. So far all agree. Does the complete separ- 
 ation of intention and motive follow from this account? 
 
 Intention, as above illustrated, is an abstraction of intel- 
 lectual analysis. No man ever intends merely to kill another. 
 He intends to save his own life, to defend his country, to "get 
 even" with another, to get money, or, maybe, to exhibit his 
 own markmanship. The " killing another" is simply part of 
 the intent, of the whole aim. It is necessary to discover in- 
 tention in the narrower sense in order to determine that one 
 acts in the moral sphere at all, but it is necessary to discover 
 the whole concrete aim before we can find what a man really 
 wills. Now the moment we have the whole aim, we have 
 motive also. To defend self, to get revenge, is what impels a 
 man to act. Or, if on the other hand, we say revenge, ambi- 
 tion, avarice, patriotism is the motive to murder, this sense of 
 motive is a mere sentiment, an abstraction (and hence inca- 
 pable of inducing action), or it means an active attitude towards 
 certain ideals and this is simply the concrete aim. Suppose 
 Napoleon's motive was ambition. Many men are ambitious; 
 why do they not do what he did? If ambjf.inn is a mere feel- 
 ing, it will never induce action at all; it will not define or sug- 
 gest any particular act to be performed. It will remain stuck 
 in its own sentimental, self-absorbed dreaming. A working 
 ambition must translate itself into thought, into the idea of 
 objects, and must be interest in these definite ends or objects; 
 it must be a demand for the reality of certain ideas. It thus 
 includes intention, in the abstract sense of that word, and is 
 intention in its full sense that at which a man really, and not 
 simply incidentally, aims. 
 
 An objection sometimes made will bring out the point. 
 Suppose a man shoots at game, knowing that a man is near 
 the line of fire; he kills the man. Now, it is urged, his motive 
 clearly implies lack of regard for life, but it cannot be said 
 that he intended to kill the man. 
 
 Or, from the other side, it may be said that Brutus intended 
 to kill Caesar, and yet the killing of Caesar was not part of his
 
 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 53 
 
 motive (Mackenzie, Manual, p. 40). As to the first, the agent 
 did not intend, by itself, to kill the man; yet neither did he 
 intend, merely by itself, to kill the deer. He intended, as a 
 result, a form of satisfaction of which the possible death of a 
 man, as well as of a deer, was a part and this aim, as self- 
 expression, was the impelling force. As to the second instance, 
 Brutus did not intend simply to kilj Caesar; he intended a cer- 
 tain deliverance of his country, or a certain self -advancement, 
 the death of Caesar forming a constituent part of this aim; and 
 in just this same sense the thought of the death of Caesar (which 
 is what I take Mackenzie to mean by the loose phrase "the 
 killing of Caesar") was a part of his motive; he took a positive 
 interest in the thought of Caesar out of the way, an interest 
 which was sufficient to induce him to do the deed. His whole 
 ideal, of which the removal of Caesar was a part, was what 
 
 moved him. 
 
 /The identity of the complete intention and the motive^may 
 also be gathered from a consideration of~The circumstances 
 under which we give credit to a man for a good intention even 
 when no act is obvious. We do so only when the agent can 
 point to effort on his part, and to obstacles which prevented 
 execution. If a man says he really intended to do a certain 
 duty but forgot it, we may indeed recognize the intention so 
 far as entertaining the thought is, psychologically, action, but 
 at the same time must recognize that the possibility of forget- 
 ting shows that the matter was not really ' ' on his mind. ' ' That 
 is, we infer from the fact that it did not move him to the fact 
 that it was only half-formed intention. We always, practi- 
 cally, judge intention from act, provided we have sufficient 
 data to enable us to judge intelligibly concerning the act. 
 Sound psychology justifies our condemnation of the man who 
 has "good intentions" but no deeds to show; his action, in 
 revealing himself, reveals his true intent aud gives the lie to 
 his profession. 
 
 The impossibility of really judging the conduct of others, 
 as maintained by Kant (Theory, pp. 23-24) and by Green
 
 54 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 
 
 (Prol., p. 318), is a fiction resulting from separation of 
 motive and intention. There is, of course, always difficulty in 
 deciding what the act is, but so far as we can tell this, we can 
 tell the intention, and knowing the intention executed, can tell 
 in. what kind of ends the man is sufficiently interested to be 
 moved by them to act can estimate his character. 
 
 This brings us again to the question: Is feeling motive? 
 Yes, and no. Decidedly no, in the sense in which the consistent 
 hedonist must use the term feeling a state of experienced pain 
 or pleasure. Yes, in the sense in which practical life uses 
 the term : An active interest in certain ends, that interest ex- 
 pressing the controlling lines of activity.* 
 
 ^'I'he distinctions of interest from mere feeling, or passive 
 affections are: 
 
 (1) Interest is active, projective. t Wetake interest. In- 
 terest is demand, insistence. Whenever we have an interest in 
 any thought, we cherish it, cling to it, endeavor in all ways to 
 realize or fulfill it. 
 
 (2) Interest implies an object the end, or thought, which 
 claims attention. We are interested in something, while mere 
 feeling begins and ends in itself. In common speech an "in- 
 terest" means the end which dominates activity. 
 
 (3) Interest (inter-esse) implies the relation which the in- 
 teresting end bears to the controlling lines of action, to char- 
 acter. It expresses the identification of the object with the 
 subject. Mere feeling does not involve this complete interac- 
 tion with character. Because of this difference, mere feeling is 
 of value only while felt, as actually experienced; an interest 
 has value on its own account (as the outworking of character) 
 whether the objective aim included within it is ever externally 
 experienced or not. "It is better to have loved and lost than 
 never to have loved at all." It is better to aim at anything 
 
 * Common speech often uses feeling to denote impulse. Hoeff- 
 o use feeling in a dynamic sense which 
 and yet pp. 235-236, he makes impulse a 
 
 \-S\J LLL LL1.\J H OJ-JCC/^H \JM. I't 
 
 ding, Psychology, seems to use feeling in a dynamic sense which 
 brings it close to impulse, 
 
 derivation from feeling.
 
 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 55 
 
 which calls forth the powers of the self than to get the passive 
 enjoyment of any object whatever; the true satisfaction of 
 interest lies in the assertion of its activity and not in the mere 
 results attained. That is, the assertion of self is the result, in 
 comparison with which all other results are insignificant. This 
 is that independence of the moral agent of all the contingencies 
 of life, of which the Stoics made so much. 
 
 We conclude, then, by saying that the term ' motive ' sim- 
 ply expresses the moving force or interest of a given end or aim, 
 this interest indicating the extent to which the self finds its own 
 character involved in the realization of that end. Confirma- 
 tion, if any further is necessary, is found in the fact that all 
 hedonists, since James Mill, have used their theory of motives 
 to furnish the machinery by which certain ends are made active 
 interests of the individual agent. The subject with which they 
 have really dealt is not the psychology of motive as such, but 
 rather this problem: Given certain ends which are requisite to 
 the welfare of society, how can these ends be rendered motives 
 to the individual? Their answer has been: We must so con- 
 nect, through the instrumentalities of pleasure and pain, these 
 ends with the individual's own welfare that they shall become 
 identified with his conception of himself. In other words, their 
 practical assumption is not that feeling as such is motive, but 
 that feeling may be so used as to make certain aims, otherwise 
 lying outside of the agent and hence indifferent, interests 
 to him. 
 
 The following references will give the status of the discus- 
 sion of intention and motive from the time of James Mill to 
 the present. James Mill, Analysis of Human Mind, vol. II., 
 chs. 22 and 25; Bentham, Principles, chs. 8 and 10, pp. 71, 
 92-95, 97-103; Austin, Jurisprudence, vol. I., chs. 18-20; 
 Mill, Utilitarianism, p. 27, note (Eng. ed., not in Am., but 
 quoted in next reference); Green, Prol., pp. 315-325; Inter- 
 national Jour. Eth., vol. IV., pp. 89-94 and 229-238, and 
 references there given.
 
 56 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 
 
 SECTION XXVII. PLEASURE AS CRITERION. 
 / We saw that pleasure as feeling could not be ideal, because 
 /every ideal is present as thought, not as feeling; we saw, how- 
 fever, that the ideal, or thought, might awaken present pleas- 
 ;ure, and so the question arose whether this present pleasure 
 L ; might not be impelling motive. We were obliged to deny it, 
 pn the ground that mere feeling ends in itself, or has no dyna- 
 ,' mic power, and because coucrede feeling, as actually expe- 
 rienced, (a) depends upon the activity already going on (in- 
 stead of exciting it), and (b) is colored throughout by the 
 character of the end or idea which defines the activity. We 
 concluded, then, that the pleasure-pain condition is not motive; 
 but registers the interest which a given individual takes at the 
 given time in a given act. 
 
 This brings us to the question of pleasure as criterion or 
 standard of the worth of action. Giving up the thought that 
 it is either aim or motive, have we not arrived at the concep- 
 tion that it indicates, registers, reports the worth of action, 
 and is thus its test? In the following sense, yes. The satis- 
 faction (interest) whiclia glVeH individual ' lakes in an act 
 measures the worth which that end, as a matter of fact, has to 
 him at that particular moment. But this does not mean that 
 pleasure or pain is the moral criterion. It means that if we 
 know the kind of ends and acts in which a certain agent takes 
 pleasure (instead of passively enjoying it), we know how to 
 estimate his moral character. If he rejoices in temperance, he 
 is temperate; if he grieves at it as an enforced thing, or as 
 merely useful to some further end, he is still partial in that 
 virtue, etc.|/Pleasure does not determine the worth of an actt 
 >bjit the kind of act which affords pleasure determine 
 _worth of an agent.' That is. wtTmeasure the worth of a given 
 experience Of pain or pleasure^by i tference to a Stanford of > 
 character, by reference to the moving ideal which calls"it forth.* 
 
 *See Plato, Laws, II., pp. 653-4, Aristotle, Ethics, Book II., ch. 
 8; Laws, II., pp. 659-61, and Aristotle, Ethics, Book X., ch. 5. I am 
 not able to see that much advance has since been made as to the 
 ethical psychology of pleasure and pain. The artistic sense of the 
 Greek who understood that it was a mark alone of a true gentle- 
 man to know how to take (as to when, where and how much) his 
 pleasures and pains, divined the truth.
 
 
 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 
 
 But the hedonist himself contends that it to not the pres- 
 ent felt pleasure which measures the value of the act, but the 
 results of the act in the way of pleasures and pains an act is 
 good according as it effects a net balance of pleasure over pain, 
 bad when painful results predominate over pleasures. It is 
 this doctrine which we must discuss. We note that it makes 
 a break between criterion and ideal and motive. Not the same 
 pleasure, or pleasure in the same sense, is criterion that (on 
 their theory) impels to action or that is the desirable end. (a) 
 The motive must be present and individual, the results are 
 distant and, according at least to one school of hedonists,* 
 general, consisting in pleasure or pain to all men, or to all sen- 
 tient creation, (b) According to the hedonist, no one would 
 ever aim at anything but pleasure, but the act may result in 
 pain as well as in pleasure, may bring other pleasures than 
 those aimed at, or may bring none at all. If the criterion and 
 the ideal were the same, every act whatsoever must be right 
 because an unadulterated pleasure. 
 
 I. Thus to dissever criterion from ideal is to reduce moral 
 experience to a chaos. A person may aim at anything what- 
 soever, may have any end we please to suggest and the char- 
 acter of that end has nothing whatever to do with the morality 
 of his act. The whole process of forming intentions, of defin- 
 ing ideals, of discussing aims, has absolutely no moral value. 
 It is true that Mill (Util., p. 27, note, Eng. Ed.) says "the 
 morality of the action depends entirely upon the intention," 
 but this seems a complete reversal of hedonism. It proclaims 
 that the test of an act is not the pleasures and pains which, as 
 matter of fact, result from it, but whether, in doing the act, 
 the agent aims at bringing pleasure or pain to himself and 
 others (Mill being a 'universal' hedonist). By no conceiv- 
 able stretch of language can this be interpreted as meaning 
 that pleasure is the 'test of morality; it makes the character oE 
 
 * Termed by Sidgwick, universalistic hedonism, as distinct 
 from individualistic, but commonly called utilitarianism.
 
 58 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 
 
 the agent, the sort of result he aims at, the kind of end that 
 moves him, the criterion. 
 
 Only extended quotation can show how typical this rever- 
 sal is of all modern utilitarianism, though it seems, in the 
 taaiu, to have escaped the critics. The only hedonistic view is 
 that which measures an act, after it has been performed, by its 
 results in pleasures and pains. Every utilitarian has substi- 
 tuted a criterion for the formation of right ideals. It says to 
 an agent: Before you act, consider as thoroughly as possible 
 the results of your actions, the pains and pleasures that are 
 likely to result to all people and animals from them; then, if 
 you decide uppn the act which promises to bring a balance of 
 pleasure, your act is right. See, for example, the "hedon- 
 istic calculus" as explained by Bentham, Principles (p. 16), 
 noting such expressions in the memoriter verses as ' ' such 
 pleasures seek," "such pains avoid," which clearly indicate 
 that he is setting up a standard for the kind of ideals at which 
 men ought to aim. We do not here need to discuss this cri- 
 terion of morality; whether correct or incorrect, it is not 
 hedonistic. It measures conduct not by pleasure and pain, but 
 by the character of the agent as manifested in the end which he 
 attempts to realize or bring into being. It virtually says that 
 the act performed by an agent in a spirit of benevolence 
 (defined as that which aims at giving pleasure to sentient 
 beings) is right. The utilitarian confuses results which do 
 happen with foreseen results moving to action. Yet if he does 
 not make this confusion, he has no alternative but to say that 
 intention, aim, etc., have nothing to do with the morality of 
 an act. As matter of fact, our criterion and ideal must have 
 a common denominator: the worth of an act must be measured 
 by the worth of its intention, or the experiences aimed at. 
 
 II. Similar confusion results from the divorce of criterion 
 and motive. The test for the morality o'f the agent is made 
 one thing, and the test for the act another, and both concep- 
 tions contradict the view just stated. The motive, being pleas- 
 ure, is, according to the hedonist, always good. (Bentham,
 
 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 59 
 
 Principles, p. 48.) "A motive is substantially nothing more 
 than pleasure or pain operating in a certain manner. Now 
 pleasure is in itself a good .... It follows, therefore, imme- 
 diately and incontestably, that there is no such thing as any 
 sort of motive that is in itself a bad one.* If motives are good 
 or bad, it is only on account of their effects." Here the 
 criterion is distinctly stated to reside in the effects of the act. 
 Hence the separation of the morality of the act from that of 
 an agent. The agent, as expressed in motive, may be 'good,' 
 his act 'bad,' or the contrary. Two entirely different sets of 
 considerations decide the respective cases. The Tightness of 
 the act is decided by its actual effects; of the agent by his pre- 
 dominating feelings. 
 
 It is quite true that other systems beside the hedonistic 
 make such a separation, generally under the names of the 
 * formal' and 'material' Tightness of an act. (For the histor- 
 ical origin of this distinction, see Sidgwick, History, p. 200; its 
 meaning to those who accept it will be found well stated in 
 Bowne, Principles of Ethics, pp. 39-40. The best assertion 
 known to me of the doctrine of the text [the identity of agent 
 and act] is found, of all places, in Brown, Philosophy of Mind, 
 Vol. III., pp. 489 and 499-502.) According to this distinc- 
 tion, formal Tightness pertains to the motive of the agent; it is 
 his will to do the right. But with the best will in the world, 
 the agent may still act contrary to the conditions of well-being, 
 and do something whose consequences are evil (materially 
 wrong). The distinction seems to avoid a real difficulty in 
 our judgment of conduct. But this very avoidance is the chief 
 objection to it. It restates the difficulty in generalized form 
 instead of solving it. It introduces a fundamental dualism 
 into moral experience by making it possible for a good man to 
 
 * It would seem as if "pain operating in a certain manner" 
 ought logically to be bad. But if Bentham admitted this, being 
 obliged to hold also that pain impels away from further evil, he 
 would be in an obvious dilemma: the motive would be at once bad 
 and good. The same contradiction, of course, is involved in hold- 
 ing, at one and the same time, that pleasure as motive is good, 
 
 yet that motive is good only by its effects.
 
 60 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 
 
 be continually doing bad acts, and for a bad man to express 
 himself constantly in good acts. No amount of criticism can 
 say more than the mere statement of the doctrine says. It 
 tends to reduce good character to mere sentimental well-wish- 
 ing in general, eliminating the objective factor, the kind of 
 ends aimed at, and to reduce good action to mere conducive- 
 ness to external results, eliminating the factor of self-reference, 
 of spontaneous vital self-assertion. 
 
 As the outcome, we are left with no working criterion for 
 acts. There is no way in which the individual can convince 
 himself in advance of the right thing to be done. The pleas- 
 ures and pains which may result from any act depend so much 
 upon circumstances lying outside both the ken and the charac- 
 ter of the agent, that it is impossible to forsee them, or to get 
 any guidance from their consideration. If we already have a 
 belief that certain lines of action are, upon the whole, right, 
 we may act in the faith (never with the proof) that such lines 
 of conduct will, upon the whole, result in more pleasure than 
 pain; but if we are dependent upon calculation of the painful 
 and pleasurable consequences, in each instance, we shall have 
 an infinite task. On the reference of an act to the self, to the 
 immediate and to the secondary impulses, there is a defining 
 principle, something which set the minimum and maximum 
 limits. But the pleasures and pains which may proceed from 
 an act are so remote from the intrinsic nature of the act that 
 there are no assignable values in the problem; it is indetermin- 
 ate throughout. A wholly consistent hedonist would be in the 
 position of one having the " mania of doubt"; the condition 
 of an agent who cannot start to do anything without thinking 
 that if he does the act, this, that or the other painful conse- 
 quence may follow, and who, consequently, passes his life in 
 self-absorbed, futile worry.* From the standpoint of possible 
 consequences, the position is legitimate; however improbable, 
 such possibilities cannot, with reference to external results, be 
 
 *See, for example, Amer. Journ. Psy., vol. I., pp. 222 and ff 
 especially p. 238.
 
 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 61 
 
 disproved. Only the force of inner impulse and the demand 
 of the occasion, the power of self-assertion, carry the normal 
 individual out of such endless reflections into act. The limit 
 must be self-contained. 
 
 Criticisms upon the hedonistic standard will be found in 
 the following references, some of which duplicate criticisms 
 upon the subject of ideal and motive, but, so far as possible, 
 confined to the subject of criterion: Bradley, Studies, Essay 3; 
 Green, Proleg., pp. 233-255, 361-388 and 399-415; Martin- 
 eau, Types, vol. II:, pp. 308-334; Leckey, History of Euro- 
 pean Morals, pp. 1-75; Grote, Examination of the Utilitarian 
 Philosophy; Birks, Utilitarianism, chs. 1-4; Alexander, Moral 
 Order, pp. 204-211; Murray, Introduction, pp. 167-205; 
 Dewey, Outlines, pp. 31-51. 
 
 SECTION XXVIII. THE STANDARD OF HAPPINESS. 
 
 In spite of all said concerning the unworkable character of 
 the hedonistic ideal, motive and criterion, there is little doubt 
 that, in its modern or utilitarian form, it has been, the chief / 
 
 theoretic instrument of practical reform. Such a paradox I/ 
 
 demands attention. Its explanation is found, I think, in the /,/ y,v 
 fact that while nominally the utilitarian has been insisting upon ^Jw./r 
 happiness as an ideal and standard, really he has been engaged T 
 (i) in working out an ideal and standard of happiness of a ~ 
 
 wide, free and, oftenloftv nature; (ii) has insisted tlial eVOlj 
 individual, without respect ofhirlh j^r^accident of fortune, 
 have the freest chance to realize this happiness for himself, 
 and has, (iii) identified happiness with general welfare, or 
 common good, demanding that all the machinery of law and edu- 
 cation blTSmployed to make reference to the general interest 
 a controlling motive with the individual. In all these respects, 
 utilitarianism has been in the forefront of modern political and 
 industrial development. But none of these demands js^in 
 itself,hedonistic; indeed, all are signs" of a more~organic view 
 of the individual and of society than is logically possible to 
 hedonism. It is the advance beyond hedonism which has con-
 
 62 THE STUDY OP ETHICS. 
 
 stituted the power of the doctrines, while their entanglement 
 in the individualistic psychology of the 18th century (which 
 gave them their hedonistic character), has, in so far, reduced 
 their effectiveness. A brief sketch of the development of 
 modern utilitarianism will at once complete our criticism by 
 showing how hedonism has abandoned its own ground of hap- 
 piness as standard and has set up a standard for happiness, and 
 will enable the criticism to take a more appreciative attitude 
 toward the practical spring and worth of the chief modern 
 writers. 
 
 In Bentham -(1748-1832), utilitarianism was made the 
 instrument of legal reform in the interest of the whole people 
 and a weapon of attack upon class interest. Great abuses had 
 deflected law and its administration from equal regard to the 
 community interest, and made of it a device by which a few 
 profited at the expense of the many. The abuses were protected 
 in the name of custom and precedent and these, in turn, were 
 consecrated, it seemed to Bentham, by an ethical philosophy 
 which held that right and wrong were inherent characteristics 
 of things, without regard to the end to which they contrib- 
 ute, or their practical serviceableness. Now as against this 
 fview, Bentham testified that every idea and institution must 
 be cross-questioned, and if not able to justify itself by showing 
 its contribution to the happiness of the world, be condemned 
 to pass out of existence. Bentham equally insisted that this 
 justifying end of happiness was public or common, not indi- 
 vidual or belonging to a class. Hence the two war-cries of 
 
 ^N 
 
 utilitarianism, "the greatest happiness of the greatest num- 
 ber," and in its computation, "everyone to count for one and 
 for only one." Here we have the standard, which is in prac- 
 tical substance, the well-being of the community as a whole, 
 with equal and impartial reference to the well-being of each 
 member of the community. To a period when the democratic 
 spirit was rising against the survivals, finally become useless, 
 of an aristocratic civilization, such a theory proved a most 
 useful standard and rallying point.
 
 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 68 
 
 In such_a standard, there is nothing of necessity hedonistic. 
 Happiness is the common name~for' welfare, well-being, a gen- 
 erally satisfactory condition of life. It conveys, of itself, no 
 suggestion concerning what constitutes happiness, and is far 
 enough from identifying itself with the hedonistic notion of a 
 series of states of agreeable sensation. 
 
 The other side of utilitarianism developed through the 
 need political reformers have, at least practically, of framing a 
 theory of motives Bentham differed ?romearlier utilitarians 
 
 largely in his appreciation of the necessity of inducing the 
 individual to take sufficient interest in the general welfare to 
 direct his conduct in accordance with its requirements. Pain 
 and pleasure seemed to him just the instruments needed. 
 Especially interested in criminal procedure and prison admin- 
 istration, pain, in the form of punishment, seemed to him to 
 have great possibilities as a motive power when brought to 
 bear, under the direction of a scientific psychological analysis, 
 upon the individual. On the other hand, the growth of com- 
 mercial life, as reflected in current political economy, had 
 brought to consciousness the ties of interest which hold men 
 together in modern society; it had revealed, in the language of 
 the day, how far the self-interest of one coincides with the self- 
 interest of others. Here, pleasure, as personal profit, seemed 
 to be a powerful inducement to men to seek the common weP 
 fare! 
 
 As happiness, under the influence of the dominant individ- 
 ualistic psychology, was translated into agreeable sensation, so 
 social interest, under the same influences, was interpreted as 
 sheer personal pains and pleasures, abstracted from the objec- 
 tive conditions which, in their relation to the activity of the 
 individual, really determine and measure them. 
 
 James Mill (1773-1836), who had a knowledge both of 
 current psychology and current political economy denied to 
 Bentham, completed the fusion of these various elements; and 
 bound, seemingly irretrievably, the new standard and ideal of 
 industrial democracy to the analyses of an individualistic psy-
 
 64 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 
 
 chology. John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), his son, while con- 
 tinuing the tradition, yet even more than Bentham changed 
 the idea of happiness as a standard unto a standard of happi- 
 ness, defining it still nominally as agreeable sensation, but in 
 reality in terms of the objective conditions which determine it. 
 (A). Bentham and James Mill had dwelt only upon the 
 quantity of pleasure, in the various forms of its intensity, dura- 
 
 M *^MMHiMiMflM^flff | * ll P' BI " l 'l^ 
 
 tion, fruitfulness (as to further pleasures) and purity (or free- 
 dom from pain)*. John Stuart Mill insisted that the quality 
 of pleasure must also be taken into account, and that a small 
 amount of a higher quality might, or should, take precedence 
 of a much larger bulk of a lower quality. Now differences of 
 quality in pleasure as to higher and lower evidently imply a 
 standard of measurement. What is it? Mill gives (or at least 
 suggests) two answers: (i) The standard is the prefergnnfi of 
 those who have experienced both. Now of this it may be said 
 thaT such preference only proves that it is preferable to that 
 person or body of persons; but, even if they were unanimous 
 in their judgment, this would not mean that one was higher 
 for me unless I found it so. But a more serious objection is 
 that this puts the standard of pleasure in the character of the 
 person enjoying it, instead of making pleasure the standard of 
 character, and thus contradicts hedonism. This aspect comes 
 explicit when we find(ii) Mill saying that a "sense of dignity," 
 presumably a sense of -the kind of pleasure that is appropriate 
 to a human being to enjoy, comes in to decide as to higher and 
 lower. (Mill, Util., pp. 309-313.) 
 
 Now when we define a higher pleasure as that (a) which 
 any person, or (b) a person of higher character, prefers, we 
 have obviously referred pleasure to that in the person's char- 
 acter which makes it preferable we have an objective 
 standard. 
 
 * Criticisms of the conception of greatest sum of pleasures, 
 showing the implied presence of an objective standard, will be 
 found in Green, Proleg., pp. 235-240; Alexander, Moral Order, pp. 
 207-210; Watson, Journal of Spec. Philos., vol. 10, p. 271.
 
 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. ^ 
 
 (B). As to motive, the question again arises how an individ- 
 ual agent may be induced to prefer the general well being to 
 his own private profit. The previous answer had been: through 
 the influence of punishment, of reward, of education, etc., set- 
 ting up associations in the^mind^of_the agent between his own 
 happiness and that of others. Mill saw clearly that an identi- 
 fication resting only upon association is artificial, and likely to 
 dissolve through the force of intellectual analysis (which hap 
 pened in his own case, leaving him with a feeling of isolation. 
 Autobiog., p. 136), and that there must be some intrinsic con- 
 nection. This is the social unity of mankind; the nature of 
 the individual h-xo t^opQughl^socj^l that he cannot conceive 
 -bipisplf " nthp.rwjse than as a member of a body He, tEere- 
 fore, comes to identify happiness with harmony jvith his fel- 
 fows. ~(Mill, Util. , 343-347. ) Here the social value of the 
 individual is made the criterion of the moral worth of happi- 
 ness. This thoroughly socialized ideal of happiness is the most 
 characteristic feature of Mill's ethics. It is noble, but it is 
 not hedonism. 
 
 fencer lharks the final stage in the transformation of hap- 
 piness as pleasurable sensation over into the accompaniment of 
 certain Abjective conditions. As John Stuart Mill is signalized 
 by recognition of the dependence of pleasure upon social law 
 and unity, Spencer is signalized by recognition of the depend^ 
 ence of pleasure upon the laws not of society alone, b 
 
 universe which conditions the life of society and of the indi- 
 
 *- ,, 
 
 vidual. (See his criticisms of the older utilitarianism, Data, 
 pp. 56-63, with which compare Stephen's Science of Ethics, 
 353-379.) 
 
 According to Spencer, we must "deduce, from the laws of 
 life and the conditions of existence, what kinds of action neces- 
 sarily tend to produce happiness." And to derive perfect 
 moral laws, we must postulate the case of a "completely jidao^ted 
 man in a completely evolved society," defining, therefore, man 
 
 "in terms of the conditions which his nature fulfills." (See / ((\j\t\ 
 pp. 179, 275, 280 of Data.) Under present conditions, pleas- (
 
 66 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 
 
 ure is not an adequate test of morality; we make it so only by 
 re7ereir<5e~td~Tlre thwighToFthe "complete relation of individual 
 to environment. At preaaak pleasure and Tightness conflict in 
 at least three respects. QJ We have to do things through 
 sense of obligation only, with constraint, dislike and pain. 
 (2) We have to compromise, and surrender present to future 
 -pleasure, while in a 'right' state we would enjoy both. (3) 
 We. have often to sacrifice our own pleasure to that of others. 
 (See Dewey, Outlines, pp. 75-77 and references there given.) 
 Now we do not have to ask concerning the adequacy of 
 Spencer's analysis here. In any case, it is all but the most 
 explicit recognition that pleasure is not of itself a standard, 
 but that certain activities and conditions, defined in objective 
 
 terms, measure, or are a standard for, pleasure. 
 
 In a similar maUIief, Stephen practically sets aside happi- 
 ness as a criterion, and substitutes for it conduciveness to the 
 vitality and development of the social organism. The objec- 
 tive conditions have finally encroached more and more upon 
 the "agreeable feeling, "^md_bave made it only a very thin 
 shell upon a very solfdcore. 
 
 Hoeffding, Ethik, compare also Monist, vol. I., p. 529, on 
 Principle of Welfare, represents the best contemporary effort 
 to develop utilitarianism along the lines of John Stuart Mill, 
 but distinguishing frankly between welfare as social criterion, 
 the motive which actually impels the individual, and the peda- 
 gogical problem of so influencing his motives as to make him 
 interested in the social end. Gizycki, Manual of Ethical Phil- 
 osophy (trans, by Coit) occupies much the same position, but 
 with less clear and thorough analysis. Compare, Mind, vol. 
 XI., p. 324, article by Coit on Ultimate Moral Aim, and Int. 
 Jour. Ethics, vol. I., p. 311, by Gizycki on Final Moral End. 
 A good statement of the best side of utilitarianism is found in 
 the last named Journal, vol. III., p. 90, by Hodder. 
 
 SECTION XXIX. STANDARD, IDEAL AND MOTIVE. 
 
 We conclude this phase of the subject by stating what 
 seems to be the true relation of the three. At fll>ot l in *** 1j r 
 
 "T^"^^ 
 
 of the child and of the race, the ideal or aim is comparatively
 
 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 
 
 As the ideal is 
 
 formed before, and with reference^ to a given act so the criter- 
 erion is applied to a given act after it has been performed. 
 The act is judged at first by its outcome; primitive people carry 
 this to the point of making no distinction between intentional 
 and accidental acts. Even inanimate things, axes, trees, as 
 well as animals, are tried and condemned.* At this stage, 
 fintentjOT or ideal? is also undefined, acts resulting from custom 
 or instilled habit rather than from tension of habit and intent. 
 But with farther development, there is recognized the need of 
 a criterion not simply for acts after~they are performed, but . 
 for the process of forming ends and purposes. As we have 
 seen, the utilitarian, while nominally dealing with the former, 
 really concerns himself with the latter. Now the act is Ju 
 beforehand as well as afterward; the agent asks not simply 
 wEetheT the act is good, u e. , Satisfies impulse, but also whether 
 it is right, i, e , whether the impulse itself meets the require- 
 ments 6f a"certain standard. This change is at the same time 
 obviously a change in the character of the ideal; the ideal is 
 no longer this or that particular act, its generality being sim- 
 ply in the uncTJffscTous, underlying habit, but is the relation of 
 this or that act to a more general aim. The aim becomes com- 
 prehensive, and the particular act simply one form which the 
 permanent aim assumes. 
 
 The criterion thus comes to be only the generalized ideal, 
 while the ideal is a specific definition of the more general 
 standard. They are related as a foot-rule in the abstract, and 
 this rule translated into the defined length of some portion of 
 space. The original mediation of impulse is through the 
 special consequences related to that special impulse. But as 
 
 Curious survivals of the early point of view are still found in 
 the procedure of admiralty law, relating to libelling of ships. O. 
 W. Holmes, Jr., Common Law; the same book contains a careful 
 analysis of the legal view of motive, showing that law, in its prac- 
 tice, identities motive not with feeling, but with foreseen conse- 
 quences as inducing to action, and that " malice " is inferred wher- 
 ever the consequences aimed at or assumed are not of a kind a 
 standard character would aim at.
 
 68 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 
 
 fi 
 
 consequences develop, it is seen that they are not one lot of 
 experience isolated from the whole system. It is seen that the 
 consequence chief in importance is that upon the agent's own 
 habits of action, his capacities, tastes, attitude toward life, 
 I ways of forming ends, etc. ; in short, the consequence is the 
 I mediation, not of this or that impulse, but of the entire actual 
 
 \ self. The mediation of the particular impulse has meaning 
 only in relation to the placing or function of that impulse in 
 the system of activity. The generic standard and ultimate 
 aim expression of self are thus one. (See Sec. XIII.) The 
 act is the subject; but what the act is the predicate is known 
 only by placing the act, in its obvious features, in its right 
 position in the whole activity. If we look at this whole activity 
 as that which the agent is urging towards in every 'act,' it is 
 Ideal; if we look at it as really deciding the nature and value 
 of the 'act,' it is Criterion. 
 
 The practical application of this conception of criterion 
 may be briefly stated. ( 1 ) . Such a criterion is workable. JTh^ 
 individual always has his criterion with him, because it hjj"- 
 seTfT It is nothing more nor less than the thought of the con- 
 sequences of the act with reference to his own efficiency as an 
 agent in the scene in which he participates. The formulation 
 here is abstract; it must be, because it is not a criterion for 
 action at large, but a criterion for some agent, this or that or 
 the other particular individual, with his own experiences and 
 part to play. Just because it is so absolutely concrete for him, 
 the criterion can be stated at large only in abstract terms. 
 The criterion and its application both exist in terms of the 
 individual's own moral life; it is always putting two and two 
 together; doing the best possible with the material available. 
 Its terras are the given impulse and its bearing in the agent's 
 own life; it is simply a complete view, or judgment, of the 
 intrinsic nature of the act. Only a Criterion which does lie 
 within the range of the self is workable; an outside criterion^ 
 just in the degree of its externality, will nevef^translate into 
 terms of the individual's own needs and powers; it will not
 
 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 69 
 
 couuect. The hedonistic criterion of consequences in the way 
 of pleasure and pain has no intimate intrinsic connection with 
 the individual's own habits and aims, and while the rational- 
 istic criterion is the self in name, it is only in name. The self 
 is a blank all-engulfing whole which does not define itself in 
 terms of definite experience. 
 
 (2). Such a criterion is absolute, yet relative. It is per- 
 manent, yet flexible. It is absolute in the sense of containing 
 all its conditions and terms within itself, it is self as a living 
 actuality. It is relative, in that it is not an abstract rule 
 excluding all difference of circumstauce, but applies to the 
 concrete relations of the case. It is permanent or identical, 
 because self is one in its life and movement; but flexible and 
 variable since the self is one in and through activity and not 
 by its mere static subsistence. 
 
 (3). Such a criterion excludes all taint of casuistry and 
 Pharisaism. In any standard save the efficiency, the expres- 
 sion, of the agent herself, the criterion is one thing, its appli- 
 cation another. The standard is a rigid something, external to 
 that to which it is applied. As a result, questions always arise 
 as to rules of application, as to possible exceptions, as to varia- 
 tion according to circumstaiiQe. The fatal weakness of encourag- 
 ing the agent to consider how far the rule may or may not apply 
 to this special case comes in. With complete, or organic 
 mediation as criterion, the case and the standard are really one; 
 it is always a question of what the case really is, when looked at 
 not partially, but in the light of the agent as a concrete, effective 
 agent in his vital relationships. Moreover, fixed, external crit- 
 erion encourages fixity of condemnation. A man is condemned 
 because he does not come ifp" to 'this abstract standard entirely 
 independently of his own instinctive tendencies and his own 
 situation. Only when the criterion is defined as we have above 
 defined it, can we judge the agent on his own ground according, to 
 the meaning the act. has for him. The external standard means 
 always a false complacency, a fixed self -congratulation when- 
 ever we conform to the rule. A criterion which is nothing but
 
 70 
 
 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 
 
 the act completely viewed imposes action by its very nature; 
 it leaves no time nor opportunity for self -directed complacency. 
 The joy is in the action, not in the thought of the self as good 
 enough to do it. Such a criterion, finally, requires acute and 
 objective examination of the conditions of action, as the exter- 
 nal criterion demands continued subjective introspection to 
 see how far along we have got. The latter makes the agent 
 keep his eye on his subjective attitude towards action, instead 
 of simply finding his attitude in the act. 
 
 So much for the connection between ideal and criterion, 
 and the identity of each with the act organically viewed, or 
 referred to self as self. How as to motive? That again 
 names the organic act from a certain side the side of the 
 interest as the act because expressing the self. It names the 
 extent to which the ideal and criterion are such in deed, and 
 not in name: the extent, that is, to which they are one with 
 action. An ideal which does not move is no part of the self 
 and hence not an ideal or guide to action. A criterion which 
 is not an application of character, an individualized, habitual 
 view of considering conduct, is mere knowledge that other per- 
 sons think well of an act; it is second handed information. A 
 man's ways of judging acts his standard are just as much a 
 part of himself as are the performance of the acts. The judg- 
 ing is one way of acting. The real criterion is the way of 
 estimating action; the value which the self puts upon it, the 
 interest it takes i. e., motive. 
 
 We have now finished our study of approbation, or the con- 
 scious value attached to action, on the sides both of the good 
 (ideal) and its standard. We have seen that action is itself 
 the process of measuring and defining goods, and that ideal 
 and standard both come into existence as phases of action. 
 We have seen that~goncious^ action 'is the protTess ot appijo- 
 involvmg tfte development OT a general standard of 
 reference and its translation into definite terms. In all this it 
 is implied thai me ace measures the agent, and that the act
 
 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 71 
 
 tests the standard as well as the standard the act. It is this 
 implication to which we now pass. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 SECTION XXX. REFLECTIVE APPROBATION, OR CONSCIENCE. 
 
 The identity _of agent and act has been our guiding prin- 
 ciple. Because of this identity, we have insisted that impulse, 
 ideal, motive and standard, all express various phases of char- 
 acter. But so far we have overtly considered this identity 
 only on the side of the passing forth of the agent into act, 
 showing that the act is the conclusion of the process of esti- 
 mating value entered upon whenever any impulse is referred 
 to its probable consequences. This also means, as just said, 
 that the act in manifesting character, reveals it makes it a 
 subject of judgment. This reaction of a deed back into the 
 estimation of character, the reflective weighing of character 
 and motive in the light of the acts which express it, constitutes 
 conscience. We measure the act by our controlling standard 
 direct approbation ; we must equally measure our standard by 
 the act as seen in its expression reflective approbation and 
 reprobation, with the involved ideas of merit and guilt. 
 
 The act from the standpoint of intention, that is the act in 
 consciousness before performance, is an abstraction. The act 
 as done, the deed with its import brought home, the act in 
 consciousness completed, is concrete or individual. The ab- 
 straction, in intention, comes from the fact that character, the 
 organized habits, the relatively permanent ideas, are taken for 
 granted. The agent is consciously concerned only with the 
 objective conditions under which the permanent, assumed ends 
 take their particular shape. A man will measure land well 
 only when he keeps his thought concentrated upon that one 
 fact of measuring, abstracting both from his larger end (selling 
 it, building a house, etc.), and from his largest end self- 
 expression. But this act done, its meaning in terms of his 
 own life, as realized self, must to some degree, appear. Be-
 
 72 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 
 
 fore, the act was defined, or measured, in terms of the objective 
 conditions involved in its performance; now, it is measured, or 
 appreciated, in terms of its significance for the self, one's own 
 individuality. It is this fuller value, in its relation to the 
 partial value, that constitutes conscience. It is the return of 
 the ideal,. the motive, the standard, back out of its abstraction 
 into terms of character, of living self. We have first to notice 
 the different sense which attaches to this return in the cases of 
 the good and the bad act respectively. 
 
 The good man's ideal is the next thing to be done, the step 
 which requires taking. But in so far as the agent is good, the 
 act, no matter how specific, utters his whole self. The definite 
 act and the generic end are one. It harmonizes his powers, 
 reducing his impulses, both primary and induced, to unity. 
 His whole self being in the act, the deed is solid and substan- 
 tial, no matter how trivial the outer occasion. As Aristotle 
 says (Ethics, Book I., ch. x., p. 12), the nobility of the good man 
 shines through ignoble circumstance. The good man always 
 builds better than he knows. Furthermore, the very aim of 
 the good man is itself a unification in thought, as the deed is in 
 act, of the realities of the situation. (See Sec. VI.) His 
 intent lines up, focuses the demands of life. In doing the 
 deed, then, the universe of Reality moves through him as its 
 conscious organ. Hence the sense of the dignity and validity 
 of the act the essence of the religious consciousness. Hence 
 the joy, the feeling of full life, and the peace, the feeling of 
 harmonized force, which accompany the good act. The 
 " moral sense," on the part of the good man, is this realization 
 of himself in his deed, the consciousness of the deed in its 
 organic significance. 
 
 The moral consciousness is thus one with the consciousness 
 of the act. The joy is in the act itself, not in the goodness of 
 the agent as distinct from the act; the peace is found in doing 
 the deed; it is not an end to be reached by the deed as a 
 means. The moral consciousness is not a distinct thing, apart 
 from the act: it is the act realized in its full meaning. We
 
 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 73 
 
 instinctively recognize that there is something unhealthy in 
 over-conscious morality. There is a Pharisaic paradox, as well 
 as a hedonistic one. Asjjleasure can be got on^v by aii^inp at 
 something else, so the consciousness of moral worth, the sense 
 of right doing, can be had only when it is not sought for. And 
 there is a necessary reason for this: the consciousness of good- 
 ness is the consciousness of a completely unified self. If the 
 agent is thinking of his own glory, or credit, or moral worth, 
 or improvement, he is, by that fact, divided; there is the deed 
 to be performed, and the reflex of it into himself. In so far as 
 the latter is the real motive for action, the interest is not in 
 the act as self (or in the acting self), but in the act as means 
 to a state of enjoyment (in the mere getting a certain expe- 
 rience). Attention to the act is, of necessity, partial, for it 
 does not absorb interest. Hence the moral emotion which is 
 the internalizing of complete activity, or attention, is missed. 
 
 Mackenzie (Manual, p. 164) takes the ground that conscience 
 refers only to wrong doing; that good action is unconscious of 
 itself. That there is no separate consciousness of good action fol- 
 lows, indeed, from the above. But when Mackenzie says (p. 338> 
 sec. ed.) that there is probably no pleasure of conscience proper, 
 since (i) the moral ideal can hardly be attained, and (ii) "if any 
 individual did attain it, he would attain it only by a devotion to 
 objective ends, which would exclude the possibility of any feeling 
 of self-satisfaction," he seems to me to make the moral life abso- 
 lutely meaningless (i) The first assertion sets up our old friend, 
 the 'abstract ideal' (Sec. XXI.), not a working ideal, and brings 
 out a further objection to it. The continual non-attainment must 
 mean continual dissatisfaction. Healthy interest in work for its 
 own sake, the only genuine and self -persisting form of morality, is 
 rendered impossible. Instead, we must have an anxious craving 
 for a remote future and a restless irritation with the present. 
 (Humility means not that what we have done is worthless, but 
 that its present worth is the itse we can make of it; humility is 
 willingness to throw the past achievement into the stream of life, 
 instead of clinging to it as a life preserver. And so aspiration is 
 not a striving for a vaguely higher ideal, but the tense muscle, the 
 full interest in the present deed. It is humility on its positive 
 side, or utilized for the future.) (ii) The second assertion brings 
 out the contradiction in the doctrine of self-realization when self 
 is conceived as remote, or is presupposed as in any way existing 
 outside the definite act. There is no alternative apparently save
 
 74 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 
 
 choice of a self-satisfaction which is exclusive and, really, hedon- 
 istic, or a devotion to objective ends which does not mean self- 
 satisfaction in reality, asceticism or self-sacrifice. All this, be- 
 cause it is not seen that devotion to objective ends(z. e., the media- 
 tion of impulse) is self-satisfaction. No theory which sets up a 
 self at large can recognize that the only satisfaction which really 
 satisfies is the interest, the value of the act itself. Only a doctrine 
 which sees self to be specific, defined activity can admit the con- 
 sciousness of satisfaction, or good, as a normal fact, and yet not 
 set it up as a separate (and therefore hedonistic) aim. To it, there 
 is no self save in the conscious act; no consciousness of satisfaction 
 save the interest, the value, of the act itself. 
 
 This disposes of the "disguised selfishness" theory con- 
 cerning virtue, the argument that the good man gets his satis- 
 faction out of the good act as much as the bad man out of the 
 evil act. Of course he does, and more. But it is a misunder- 
 standing, already dealt with, to suppose this means that he 
 does the act for his satisfaction; he does it as his satisfaction. 
 What makes him a good man is precisely the fact that such 
 acts are his interest, his satisfaction. In the good man, the 
 act measures or exhibits the interest; the self is only in the 
 moving act; in the bad man, the act is done for the sake of a 
 self, an interest, outside the act; it is measured by a fixed self. 
 (A good ethical statement here is Mackenzie, Manual, App. 
 B, IV.; a good psychological statement, James, Psy., vol. I., 
 ch. 10.) 
 
 SECTION XXXI. MORAL CONDEMNATION. 
 
 The recognition that an act is evil (moral condemnation or 
 consciousness of guilt) takes quite a different form, though 
 based on the same principle. Were all our acts approved, we 
 should have no moral consciousness distinct in any way from 
 our consciousness of action; but reprobation means a distinct, 
 a reflex, consciousness. We are morally glad in, not for, our 
 deed; but we are sorry for it. The condemning judgment is 
 one which stands, in a sense, outside of the act as well as 
 within it. It holds the act out; looks back upon it and feels 
 its unworthiness as measured by a standard self, up to which 
 the act has not come. This consciousness of division, of act
 
 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 75 
 
 and self, value and standard, is the very essence of the 
 troubled conscience. Yet, in principle, the consciousness of 
 evil is the same as consciousness of good; i, e., it is the real- 
 ization of an act in its full meaning, as brought out through 
 doing the deed. But the meaning of the bad act is division; 
 the agent has intended an unreality; his aim, his ideal, has 
 been severed from the conditions of the situation, from the 
 realities of the universe; he has set up a merely subjective end, 
 and thus isolated himself. In so far as the performance of 
 the act reveals the true nature of the act, there is recoil, 
 rebound; the deed kicks. The agent feels his separation. 
 The dissatisfaction of the act performed reveals the unrealty, 
 the split of self. 
 
 Hence the peculiar dualism in all remorse. The agent at 
 once feels the extremest repugnance at the very thought of 
 the act, would repel it as far from himself as possible, and yet 
 feels that that act was his very self knows, indeed, that he 
 feels this repulsion just because the act was himself. As his, 
 the act holds him, fascinates him, perhaps to the point of 
 morbidness; literature is filled with accounts of this binding, 
 gnawing, insistent character of evil done. As not truly him- 
 self, because unreal and false in its very nature, the agent is 
 repelled, he attempts to thrust out the memory, to drown 
 remorse and deaden conscience; to have "the damned spot 
 out." The contradiction of these two sides of remorse marks 
 the emergence in consciousness of the contradiction in the act 
 itself. No one intends an act save_as good; but the completed 
 act stands forth as most thoroughly not good. 
 
 The moral condemnation, in other words, is directed essen- 
 tially at the ideal and standard of the act. Not because the 
 agent consciously aimed at evil does he have the guilty con- 
 science, but because the good (ideal) aimed at was of such a 
 kind as to show a character which takes for good that which 
 in the light of enlarged character is seen as evil. Again, 
 guilt is imputed not because the agent already had a standard 
 of good and then fell short of it. On the contrary, the remorse
 
 76 THE STUDY OP ETHICS. 
 
 is, for the first time, the experieoce of shortcoming. The 
 guilt is imputed because it reveals the previous standard of 
 good. How unworthy my character must have been, how 
 defective myself to have such a conception of value! The evil 
 was radical, not simply in the act; it was in the way the self 
 determined, or measured good, in the way it set up ends as 
 approved. Prior to the act, the agent measures by his exist- 
 ing standard of good, aud does the deed as good; afterward, 
 the deed, in its full content, reveals his own character, and 
 thus measures the standard. 
 
 It is implied that the very condemnation, the consciousness 
 of evil, means the consciousness of a new standard of a higher 
 good. If the agent is still on the same level as that in which 
 he performed the act, no compunctions arise. The act is still 
 good to him, and he is still good as exhibited in that act. Only 
 because the bad act brings to light a new good in its own bad- 
 ness manifested. The reaction of the deed into character, 
 in other words, brings that character to consciousness; it 
 shows character its own powers and requirements, and thus 
 enables it to pass judgment upon, i. e. t to appreciate, its 
 own unworthiness. Moral condemnation, in fine, if really 
 moral, if itself approvable, is of itself always repentance 
 or the beginning of better things. Only because to some 
 extent the self is moving more organically does it realize the 
 disorganic character of its past efforts. Only the man becom- 
 ing good recognizes evil as evil. 
 
 From this appears the duty of the agent with reference to 
 his experiences of guilt, or unworthiness. It is not to experi- 
 ence them for themselves, but to get their reaction into char- 
 acter. One is to dwell on his mistakes aud shortcomings just 
 enough to get the meaning, the instruction, the mediation of 
 impulse and habit, which is in them. The more the attention 
 is turned upon the bad act in itself, the more that act becomes 
 a fixed, external thing, a finality; the dwelling upon the fact 
 that one has done a bad act is positively demoralizing save as 
 one gets from it correction and stimulus for the future. It
 
 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 77 
 
 simply widens the very division, hardens the very isolation, 
 which is the badness, while the true function of consciousness 
 of division is to enable one to heal the gap. In other words, 
 one lias the same duty regarding his experiences of guilt that 
 he has regarding every other experience, viz., to use them, to 
 make them functional in activity, instead of merely experi- 
 encing them.* It is a common fallacy to suppose that the 
 mere experiencing of painful consequences from bad action has 
 of itself any remedial power. As we noted (Sec. XXIV.), 
 pleasures do not mean satisfaction; here we note that pains do 
 not, of necessity, mean dissatisfaction. The "wicked" man 
 may experience an indefinite mass of pain from his badness, 
 and yet get none the better for it, if it is not reflected back into 
 his character, is not used as a standpoint whence to measure 
 his previous standard of good. And the professionally "good" 
 man may get nothing out of his compunctions, his pangs of 
 conscience. He may even, as a dilettauter, come to enjoy 
 them, relishing them as indications of his sensitive moral 
 nature. This happens when he isolates them, instead of using 
 them as symptoms by which to locate, and correct, his un- 
 worthiness of character. 
 
 If the foregoing is correct, then ethical writers have tended 
 immensely to exaggerate the distinction between regret and 
 remorse, in holding that the former applies simply to conse- 
 quences, having no moral meaning, while the latter refers to 
 motive and is essentially moral. The true difference is simply 
 one of perspective, of proportion; both relate to a reaction of 
 consequences into motive as used to guide the latter. It is 
 regret when duty demands that we do not dwell much upon 
 the past bad act; when we can get the good of it without much 
 reflection upon the unworthiness of a character which could 
 
 *The doctrine of 'salvation by grace,' as expressed in the 
 writings of St. Paul, with the immense meaning attached to it- 
 seems to have for its ethical content the first historical conscious- 
 ness, on the part of humanity, that sin, when it becomes a con 
 ciouxness of sin organically referred back to character, means, 
 also a consciousness of a good which can take that evil up into 
 itself and so conquer it, which, in fact, has already begun so to do.
 
 78 THE STUDY OP ETHICS. 
 
 assume such consequences. It is remorse (normal, not morbid) 
 when in order to get the change of attitude for the future, it is 
 necessary to realize, more radically, how unworthy was the self 
 displayed in an act of such consequences. Regret and remorse 
 stand on the same basis so far as the implication of character 
 is concerned. One no more regrets the death of a friend, 
 caused by himself without shadow of intent or carelessness, 
 than he regrets the earthquake of Lisbon. He may, do infin- 
 itely more than regret it; he may be stunned and haunted by 
 it; but 'regret' is as futile in one case as in the other. 
 
 It is impossible to give many references to distinctly ethical 
 writers in agreement with the foregoing position. It is the view, 
 in substance, of Emerson, expressed perhaps most definitely in his 
 Essay on Cpmpensation. The view regarding the essential defect 
 of the Puritanic morality, viz. , that it aimed at the moral con- 
 sciousness by itself, has been very forcibly expressed in the various 
 writings of James Hinton, and of William James, Sr. 
 
 SECTION XXXII. VARIOUS ASPECTS OF CONSCIENCE. 
 
 Conscience, as used in common speech, is a term as wide as 
 the entire moral consciousness of man. It is absurd, accord- 
 ingly, for theory to attempt to narrow the word to some tech- 
 nical or special meaning. But common speech indicates by 
 the word, at different times, certain typical phases of the moral 
 consciousness, and theory may follow with a description of 
 these typical phases. 
 
 1. We hear of a tender, a hardened conscience, the pangs, 
 
 / pricks, compunctions, pains and joys of conscience. This evi- 
 dently refers to conscience as an emotional fact] the interest 
 of the act as brought home to the agent in terms of his own 
 
 \ feelings. 
 
 /2. We hear of the voice of conscience, conscience telling us 
 to do this and that, of an enlightened conscience, of educating 
 conscience, etc. Here we are thinking of the intellectual con- 
 tent of the moral consciousness; moral judgments as a system 
 of truth, of ideals and standards. 
 
 3. We also hear of the commands of conscience, of its 
 majesty, its inviolability, that aspect which Kant terms "cate-
 
 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 79 
 
 gorical imperative." Here is clearly indicated the authora- 
 tiveness of any act recognized as moral. 
 
 SECTION XXXIII. CONSCIENCE AS THE MORAL SENTIMENTS. 
 
 The intellectual aspect of conscience is most conveniently 
 discussed in connection with the question of intuitionalism and 
 empiricism; that of the authority of conscience in connection 
 with obligation. 
 
 Concerning the emotional side of conscience, it is hardly 
 necessary to do more than gather together the scattered threads 
 of what has already been said. The purport of the theory, as 
 already developed, is that the valuation of an act assumes an 
 objective and a subjective form. The objective is the analysis 
 of the act into its various conditions, its definition or limita- 
 tion the ideal, intention, etc. The subjective is the feeling 
 excited in the individual, by either the contemplation of the 
 act in thought or by its actual execution in deed. The thought, 
 the intention, is not colorless; it represents a projection of the 
 self, and the moral emotion is simply the realization by an 
 individual of the value of the projected act for himself and as 
 an individual. The thought of every act must have, therefore, 
 its own peculiar, qualitative, emotional accompaniment. We 
 are somehow affected toward every plan. Hope, fear, disgust, 
 tedium, love, hate, etc., etc., so far as excited not directly by 
 some object, but the thought of an object as an end to be reached 
 (so far as mediated by ideas of acts) are thus all forms of moral 
 consciousness, on the emotional side. Such feelings are evi- 
 dently no adequate criterion of the act. On the contrary, they 
 depend upon that which needs judgment individual character 
 and vary with (See Sec. XXVII.) 
 
 The emotions which are usually picked out as peculiarly 
 ethical, correspond to the generalized ideals already spoken of 
 (Sec. XXIX.). When the feared or hoped for end is itself 
 brought into relation with the self as a whole, with organized 
 character, an emotional response appears which is ' moral ' in 
 a definite sense. A person who is susceptible to such reactions
 
 80 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 
 
 is the one with tender or acute conscience; it is natural for him 
 to feel the indwelling reference of character as a whole to any 
 special act; if a child, we say his moral nature is easily 
 appealed to. 
 
 To a considerable extent, this sensativeness to given acts as 
 expressions of the whole character is a natural gift, a temper- 
 amental quality; one person always differs in kind and range 
 of it from every other. This consideration shows how little 
 we can rest in this emotional response as an ultimate fact, or 
 regard, it as an adequate criterion for the distinction between 
 right and wrong.* It is, psychologically, simply one phase 
 of aesthetic susceptibility in general. Like all the other 
 phases, its moral value lies not in itself but in the use to which 
 it is put, the ends to which it is made subservient. A "sensi- 
 tive" conscience may become an ingredient of a bad character, 
 and a somewhat inert one a factor of a good character. The 
 former happens when the sensitiveness leads the individual to 
 taking the easiest way out of moral difficulties, as relieving a 
 beggar simply to quiet the clamor of his own "conscience," or 
 hiding scenes of sin and misery from himself because they pain 
 him so greviously. The latter happens whenever the inertness 
 is changed into the habit of looking every situation squarely 
 in the face as it comes, and deciding it on its own merits, 
 without regard to the merely personal feeling awakened by it. 
 Over pietistic training has almost always tended to make the 
 emotional response of conscience a criterion in itself, instead 
 of recognizing that it is a part of conduct to which the same 
 responsiblity for right use attaches, as to the passion of anger, 
 or the desire for food. 
 
 So far as responsibility for the emotional side of conscience 
 is concerned, the great need is to insure that emotion take the 
 form of interest that is, satisfaction in the working out of an 
 idea into deed, and not the form of mere feeling, even though 
 it be called "moral feeling." In the main, this is secured just 
 
 *As some writers, naming it " moral sense," have considered it.
 
 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 81 
 
 in so far as there is interest in the deed on its own account 
 just as the artist is interested in painting his picture, the chess- 
 player in his game, the engineer in the execution of his drain- 
 age project, etc. It must be remembered that every deflection 
 or defect of interest as to the deed itself, means lack of atten- 
 tion to it, and means diversion of thought in some other direc- 
 tion, and hence, of necessity, something slighted, scrimped or 
 distorted in the act itself. Completeness of action and com- 
 plete possession of consciousness (full interest) by the thought 
 of the act are synouomous terms. 
 
 In this sense, the moral emotion, or interest, and the artistic 
 interest, are identical.* Both, to be genuine, are interests in 
 adequate, non-slighted execution of ideas; a phrase which, after 
 all, means only undivided, organic, pure interest in the act 
 itself. The artist whose chief interest is in his product, qua, 
 product,f and not as fulfillment of a process (who separates, 
 that is, the thought of the completed house from the steps 
 necessary on his part to complete it, who looks at the making 
 of a statue as a mere means to the objective statue) is, by that 
 very fact, so far short as an artist. He has not sufficient in- 
 terest in his performance to give it the care and attention it 
 demands. A fortiori, any interest which looks beyond the ob- 
 jective result to the reflex of that result into personal profit or 
 credit is partial and must manifest itself in a partial that is", 
 inartistic-execution . 
 
 * I say ' artistic,' not ' aesthetic.' Artistic interest is interest in. 
 , the execution of an idea; in its assumption of that concrete full- 
 ness of detail which is realization. Aesthetic interest is interest 
 rather in the contemplation of some idea already executed. It is 
 the difference between art as a process to the artist and a work of 
 art to the spectator. The latter may free activity in the beholder 
 and so be artistic in turn; but it may stop in itself, in the mere 
 self-absorbed feeling awakened. All the attacks, worth consider- 
 ing, of moralists upon art as meaning self-indulgence, effiminate- 
 ness, corruption, etc., seem to me to rest on the confusion of artis- 
 tic with aesthetic. 
 
 f " You look to the result, you want to see some profit of your 
 endeavors: that is why you would never learn to paint, if you lived 
 to be Methusalem." Stevenson, in The Wrecker.
 
 82 THE STUDY OP ETHICS. 
 
 It is necessary, however, not to be too rigid in our concep- 
 tion of the act; not to attempt to draw lines too narrowly as to 
 just where the act itself begins or leaves off and external con- 
 siderations come in. A man who should write a book for the 
 mere sake of fame would not be, relatively, much of a writer; 
 his aim would not direct him; yet the thought of fame may 
 become fused with the thought of the book and add a deepened 
 touch of interest to his work. A man who should carry on a 
 profession simply for the sake of supporting his family would 
 be partial in his morality, and would reveal his moral disinte- 
 gration by carelessness at some critical juncture. But the 
 identification of his family's welfare with the pursuit of his 
 calling reinforces, by so much, his attention to his business, 
 the fullness with which he gives his whole mind to his duties. 
 
 In the same way, appeals to personal profit or loss often do 
 not have the selfish (in the bad sense) meaning, which, at first 
 sight, attaches to them. A man's indignation at some cruelty 
 to humanity is often first stirred by some bitter experience of 
 his own. A cynic may contend that all his efforts are now put 
 forth simply because of the personal injury he himself has 
 suffered; as matter of fact, the appeal to his own interest may 
 mean simply an enlargement of himself. The shock has acted 
 as a stimulus to call his attention to matters previously ignored; 
 it has revealed to him his own implication m that which had 
 previously seemed external. So a man may first be awakened 
 to the public's need of improvement of transit facilities, or 
 sanitation, by coming himself to own property in the needy 
 region; but it is, psychologically, .poor taste to assume that of 
 necessity such an one is moved simply by his own advantage. 
 It may again be that his own personal interest serves as a con- 
 necting link in giving a stimulus to attention." 
 
 This principle gives a basis* for judging concerning the 
 
 *See, again, James, Psy., vol. I., pp. 317-329, especially pp. 
 325-327. Alexander, Moral Order, pp. 317-323 is helpful, though he 
 seems to give too personal a definition to interest. The statement 
 " when its worth a man's while to do wrong, the guilt lies as often 
 with others as with himself," may be safely changed, I think, into 
 the statement that whenever there is opposition between principle 
 and interest, there is always a.responsibility upon others to change 
 the conditions which make the individual conceive of himself in 
 the narrow way.
 
 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 
 
 to \ 
 
 moral value of rewards and punishments; of appeals to do a 
 deed because of the profit it will bring self, or because it will 
 pleaseparent or friend or God to have the act done. So far 
 as these ends 1611(1 to Gecorae distinct "ends, substituted for the 
 act itself, the latter being reduced to a means, the tendency is 
 .thoroughly immoral. If these appeals are used as stimuli to 
 bring the self to consciousness of itself, to bring home to self the 
 real intrinsic nature of the deed needing to be done, in so far 
 the effect is moral provided always these instrumentalities 
 are the most efficient ones, under the circumstances, in effect- 
 ing this end. 
 
 Our general principle enables us to deal with the assertion 
 that a pure conscience always is attached to the right "for the 
 sake of the right." Correctly interpreted, this statement is 
 true to the point of truism, but many who insist upon it ap- 
 pear to interpret it so as to make it false theoretically, and 
 dangerously sentimental practically. In reality, to do a thing 
 for the sake of its rightuess means to do it for its own sake; 
 the rightuess is not an end beyond with reference to which the 
 act is a means; it simply names that phase of the end or aim 
 which confers upon it a claim to pass into act. Rightness 
 names the quality of the deed in itself as the fully mediated 
 activity, or expressed self. We may say that 'right' is pri- 
 marily and fundamentally an adverb; we are to act rightly, in 
 a certain way or fashion. It then becomes an adjective; the 
 deed is ' right' when performed in this way. Finally, it is a 
 noun. Rightness simply denominates this quality wherever 
 found. To make it an end in itself is to set up a sheer ab- 
 straction for the moral ideal. The result is the same as when 
 moral approbation, or a satisfied conscience, is made the end. 
 (See p. 75.) The end lying beyond the act, attention to the 
 latter is partial and diverted; the act is only partially, that is, 
 wrongly, done.* The theory avenges itself. 
 
 * When Green says (Works, vol. II., pp. 335-336) "The highest 
 moral goodness .... issues in acts done for the sake of their 
 goodness .... But it is impossible that an act should be 
 done for the sake of its goodness, unless it has been previously con- 
 templated as good for some other reason than that which consists 
 in its being done for the sake of its goodness," he seems to fall 
 into this error. Of course, acts done earlier as good are done later 
 with a deeper consciousness of what their goodness consists in, but 
 this is quite a different matter. Upon the whole subject, see 
 Bradley, Studies, Essay II.
 
 84 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 
 
 Yet there can be no doubt that conflicts arise, times when 
 interest in the act itself and interest in right as guch do not 
 immediately coincide. In times of great temptation, or at 
 periods of change, when it is necessary to do some act so novel 
 that as yet it does not present interest for its own sake, such 
 conflicts occur. We feel that the right in general demands 
 that the act be done, and yet the act, in itself, is decidedly a 
 bore or even repulsive. Or we feel that an act which has all 
 the argument of attractiveness on its side must be foregone 
 simply for the sake of right. Moreover, it is precisely at such 
 junctures that moral fibre is made. Only through such disci- 
 pi ine~Ts~7nnnTOTeT~oTn"eT~tn"an wishy-washy. Only at such per- 
 iods is morality freed from extraneous recommendations, and 
 the self thrown back naked upon itself in its own innate vigor. 
 Do not these facts contradict the theory laid down? 
 
 The apparent contradiction vanishes the moment we subject 
 the meaning of ' Right ' in general to analysis. The conflict 
 then turns out to be not between interest or self, and moral 
 A law or principle, but between two_ selyfip, between an interest 
 / in the act narrowly viewed, and an interest in the act more 
 / fully realized. My interest as a momentary being, with capa- 
 cities for enjoyment, may be in some self-indulgence; my inter- 
 est in myself as a member of a family is in abstinence; my 
 interest in myself as, abstractly, a person who can procure 
 enjoyment out of possession is in getting the better of my cus- 
 tomer in a bargain; my interest in my self as actively partici- 
 pating in the interchanges of life is in honor and good faith. 
 I In other words, the Right which demands loyalty to itself in 
 spite of the inducements of immediate interest, is not some 
 Rightness at large; is a view of the particular act as express- 
 ing the self wholly and not partially. And in general, when- 
 ever there is talk of a conflict between a lower and a higher 
 self, a material and a spiritual self, and of the necessity of 
 sacrificing one to the other, as identical with sacrificing self- 
 interest to the demands of Law and Right, it will be found 
 hat the lower self, the interest, is a partial, passive, possessing
 
 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 85 
 
 self; the higher self, the Right, is not some abstraction, but is 
 the self performing some concrete function, as father, neighbor 
 or citizen. 
 
 We conclude, then, with the statement that the emotional 
 side of conscience expresses the interest which every working 
 ideal and act have for the self have by their very nature psy- 
 chologically.* 
 
 SECTION XXXIV. NATURE OR CONSCIENCE AS MORAL 
 
 KNOWLEDGE.! 
 
 The intui^yiaj^jeory holds that conscience is a peculiar 
 faculty which gives man, directly and immediately, knowledge 
 of principles, or rules, of right. In attacking the opposed 
 theory of empiricism, it is quite customary, however, for the 
 intuitionalists to shift their ground, and substitute a doctrine of 
 the intrinsic nature of Tightness for a doctrine of immediate 
 knowledge of it. There is no necessary connection between 
 these two standpoints; Tightness may be a quality which be- 
 longs to acts in themselves (and not because of any consider- 
 ations or results extraneous to the acts) and yet it not be 
 known, except through experience, in what this Tightness con- 
 sists. Any relation made known by physical science certainly 
 belongs to mass and energy in their own intrinsic character 
 (if true, at all), but it does not follow that we perceive these 
 relations upon bare inspection of the facts. It takes experience, 
 
 * While not in all cases discussing the same questions, the 
 standpoint of Alexander seems to be close to that of the previous 
 pages. In addition to reference already given, see Moral Order, 
 pp. 148-160; 181-193; 324-332. See Stephen, Science, pp. 311-339, 
 and 396-417. On " moral sense," Mackenzie, Manual, pp. 49-52 and 
 references there given. Also references in next section An inter- 
 esting though (it appears to me) somewhat abstract view of moral 
 emotions will be found in Laurie, Ethica, chs. 8, 23, 26 and 27. 
 Schmidt, Das Gewissen, contains an interesting account of the 
 historical development of ideas about conscience, from the early 
 Greek and Hebrew period to the present. It includes much more 
 than the emotional side. A further statement of the doctrines of 
 'higher' and 'lower' selves will be found in Dewey, Outlines, pp. 
 216-220. A discussion of a point barely alluded to in the foregoing 
 will be found in Sharp, Aesthetic Element in Morality. 
 
 fThis is to be interpreted as knowledge of right and wrong, not 
 of obligation. To that, a further section is devoted.
 
 86 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 
 
 often long and painful, to bring home to us these "intrinsic" 
 qualities; there is every reason to believe the same is the case 
 with the quality of Tightness. It is no more a matter of direct 
 perception, than js the law of gravitation. It will be ioTind 
 upon careful reading most modern intuitionalists that they are 
 really concerned to uphold the real and necessary character of 
 the moral distinctions in themselves, rather than any special 
 theory regarding the way in which these distinctions are made 
 known. 
 
 A good historical sketch of intuitionalism will be found in 
 Sidgwick, History, pp. 167-2CO. 213-234. The same author gives a 
 theoretical analysis in Methods, Book I. chs-. 8 and 9, and Book III. 
 The following will indicate the positions of some of the modern 
 intuitionalists. Martineau, Types, Book I., Part II., Vol. II., espe- 
 cially pp. 17-64; Calderwood, Moral Philosophy; Maurice, Con- 
 science; Rickaby, Moral Philosophy; Janet, Theory of Morals. 
 
 A good criticism of ordinary intuitionalism will be found in 
 Porter, Elements of Moral science, ch. X; while in ch. VIII. will be 
 found a theory of reflective intuitionalism. 
 
 In general the intuitional theory in its older form has been 
 shattered by a series objections which may be summed up as 
 follows: The intuitional theory, instead of saving the neces- 
 sary and objective character of moral distinction, swamps them 
 all in the merely subjective consciousness. An appeal to_ 
 "intuition" as final meapa fo rfif^ty flu appeal jp pjorely 
 indTyidual^pj^monTto the dogmatic deliverance, or the unproved 
 sentiment of this or that man. If we go outside the "intui- 
 tions" of the individual, there is left only an appeal to a vague 
 common-sense, which is often unenlightened, the product of 
 mere custom and prejudice. In general, intuitionalism leads 
 to the consecration of established opinion. It allows every 
 existing creed and institution to resist challenge and reform by 
 the assertion, "I represent an eternal and necessary intui- 
 tion."* 
 
 * These are, in substance, the trenchant objections of Bentham, 
 Principles, chs. I and II. The objection to intuitions as always 
 inuring practically to the conservative party is as old as Locke, 
 see Essay, Book I. It largely determined Stuart Mill's standpoint. 
 See Autobiography, pp. 273-74.
 
 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 87 
 
 The development of historical and comparative science and 
 of the doctrine of evolution have dealt the theory hard blows. 
 The former has revealed the great variety of ideas conscien- 
 tiously maintained upon matters of right and wrong in different 
 ages and in different peoples, and also largely accounted for 
 this variety of ideas by showing their relativity to types of 
 social life. The latter theory, as it gains in acceptance, leaves 
 uojroom for belief in any faculty of moral knowledge separate 
 from the whole process of experience, and cuts the ground out 
 from under any storejof_iirf ormation given directly and imme- 
 
 diately?* The modern standpoint and method in psychology 
 also make it almost impossible to attach any intellegent mean" 
 ing to the thought of a special faculty of knowledge. 
 
 On strictly ethical ground, the value of such moral intui- 
 tions, if we had them, would be open to grave question. 
 Intuitionalism would take the form of knowledge either (a) 
 that this or that particular act is right, or (b) that certain 
 kinds of action (honesty, chastity, etc.) are right. The former 
 alternative would be useful if the essence of morality were a 
 short cut to doing the exact things which are right. But if 
 we abandon this materialistic ethics, and recognize that the 
 heart of morality is development ofcharacter. a certain spirit 
 and ruejhod in all conduct, such intuitions would much lessen 
 the range of self-expression, and render hard and mechanical 
 what little remains. It would shut out all that growth of 
 character, all that opening up of consciousness and experience 
 of values that comes in the search for and testing of right and 
 wrong; it would leave the individual simply with the sheer, 
 arbitrary decision to abide or not to abide by the right once 
 for all revealed. 
 
 *The first objection is generally met by intuitionalists by hold- 
 ing that certain ultimate principals are alike, though their 'applica- 
 tion ' varies. This transfers the ground entirely from a question of 
 mode of knowledge to a question of validity of content. In con- 
 nection with the theory of evolution, Spencer's contention that it 
 restores a modified intuitionalism (empirical for the race, intui- 
 tional, by inheritance of consolidated experience, for the individ- 
 ual) is to be noted. Data, pp. 123-124.
 
 88 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 
 
 If intuition reveals general principles, then the responsi- 
 bility of the individual is limited simply to their application. 
 More than this, moral principles once for all made known go 
 necessarily with an external ideal and standard. Casuistry 
 the consideration of an act from the standpoint of different 
 rules, in order to see under which one it is to be brought is a 
 necessary outcome. 
 
 p The term ' intuition' has a popular as well as a philosophi 
 | sense. Examination indicates that the popular sense is really 
 much more philosophical than the one professedly so. In 
 
 practical life, we mean by intuition the power to seize as a 
 
 /" , - , la 
 whole, in a single and almost instantaneous survey, a complete 
 gfniTpofjjjpn msjfeinopsr It is the power to read O& at a glance 
 thtffheaning of a given situation. It is opposed not to experi- 
 ence, but to abstract logical reflection. It is the outcome, on 
 / the theoretic side, of habit on the practical side. A custom of 
 I dealing with a certain sort of facts and conditions often gives 
 I an almost incredible facility in coming to an immediate conclu- 
 \ siou. When the quality is largely temperamental, we term it 
 f (or rather the response in action based upon it) ' tact'; devel- 
 oped through experience, it constitutes the 'expert.' The 
 architect sizes up a plan at once, and is prepared to act. The 
 landscape gardener takes in at a look the possibilities of a cer- 
 tain ' lie ' of ground, and sketches its future development, etc. 
 In this practical sense, much of our moral knowledge is 
 | constantly assuming theform ot intuitions. The demand for 
 / quick appreciatioji of conditions for action in general is much 
 M greater than it can be in any one special direction, like carpen- 
 ) try, or treatment of guests. Thus every individual comes to 
 \ have ways of judging action which are practically instinctive.* 
 ' It must also be remembered that the whole experience goes on 
 in terms of the individual self. Both initiating impulse and 
 mediating idea are acts of self. This reference to self always 
 limits the field for reflection, and also makes this field a whole, 
 a self contained unity. That a man should get intimate prac- 
 
 *See Dewey, Psy., pp. 344-46.
 
 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 89 
 
 tical acquaintance with self, should come to appreciate quickly 
 his own deepest concerns, that he should form habits so funda- 
 mental that they at once take up a given set of facts into them- 
 selves and thus judge its value all this is matter for no sur- 
 prise.* Two qualifications are to be noted. First, such intui- 
 tions are not an ultimate criterion. They test individual char- 
 acter, because they are functions of it; that is, the kind of 
 judgments immediately passed shows the kind of character 
 engaged in making the judgment. No moral judgment is ever 
 merely intellectual, because it reflects the aims and interests of 
 the judge. These intuitions must, therefore, upon occasion 
 submit themselves to wider judgment, must become conditions 
 of a fuller character. Secondly, strength of moral character 
 demands a continued tension between the reflective and intui- 
 tive sides, as between conscious aim and habit. (See pp. 18- 
 19. ) The intuitive side means quickness, certainty, and, above 
 all, concreteness and solidity; the reflective side is the demand 
 for continued mediation, for continued reaction of the whole 
 into the part, for enlargement of scope. It means delay, but 
 a delay which permits a wider field to be surveyed; uncer- 
 tainty, but an uncertainty which makes the final making up of 
 one's mind more reasonable. 
 
 The empirical theory of conscience is that the individual 
 has no immediale knowledge Uf flgntand wrong,. eittTer BH to ' 
 particular acts or general principles, but that such knowledge 
 is the outgrowth of Continued experience. Logically, this is 
 all the empirical theory is reqtttrtm to mean; and i 
 
 sense, empiricism seems to be true. The theory, however, has 
 no special meaning, until there is a further analysis of what 
 experience is. In general, the saying that " knowledge re- 
 sults from experience" is a meaningless one; the point of 
 interest is always in the question how experience gives birth to 
 knowledge. 
 
 * Emerson has stated the intuitive character of moral knowl- 
 edge as a result of the individual's own activity more clearly than 
 any moralist. See, for example, his Essay on Self -Reliance.
 
 90 THJfc STUDY OF ETHICS. 
 
 The f,>rce of this general statement is apparent when we 
 note that historically the ethical empiricist has gone far beyond 
 the harmless statement above made, and insisted that moral 
 knowledge comes from a calculation of the consequences of the 
 act, those consequences lying outside the content of the act 
 itself. In otherwords. the empiricists have, as a rule, been 
 hedonists, and have interpreted their empiricism as meaning 
 tEaFmoral quality is extrinsic to the act, lying in the results 
 of the act in the way of pleasure and pain, not intrinsic to the 
 act itself. 
 
 Thus the negative side of both intuitionalism and empiri- 
 cism has been their strength. The empiricist has kept up his 
 side by denying that we have immediate knowledge of right; 
 the intuitionalist has sustained his by denying that moral qual- 
 ity is found in considerations alien to the act's own structure. 
 Both have failed in interpreting the positive significance of 
 their own contentions. The failure of empiricism need hardly 
 be re-argued here. The force of the objections already brought 
 against pleasure as standard finally comes back to the idea 
 that pleasure as a result, lies outside the act itself, outside the 
 character of the person willing the act, and, therefore, is acci- 
 dental, externally variable, incapable of being foreseen, tend- 
 ing to produce either undue laxity or undue anxiety in gen- 
 
 .1, unusable. 
 
 On the ground of the principles hitherto advanced, experi- 
 ence is precisely the mediation of impulse; the execution of 
 impulse brings it to consciousness, shows the meaning for life 
 as a whole of that ^pfflulae-in particular. By reaching iq a- 
 certain way (that is, in connection with j)ther impulses of ear 
 or eye) we find out what this impulse means, its value, |n 
 terms^ both of the content of the impulse, the object (ball, or 
 Hiot iron or whatever) and in terms of the place which that 
 object occupies in our own sentient experience pleasure or 
 pain. Experience is the revelation of the meanjpg ?f our 
 impulse, of our acting selves. A* such, there must be all the 
 "to 1 consequences in forming aims, and using standards,
 
 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 91 
 
 which the most extreme empiricist could urge. But these con- 
 sequences are not extrinsic to the act they are the act un- 
 folded, defined. (See Sec75Ln. Amosi suggestive illustra- 
 fionand formulation of this principle will be found in vol. I., 
 No. 6 of Philosophical Review, article by Jamea) 
 
 CHAPTER VI-OBLIGATION. 
 SECTION XXXV. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF OBLIGATION. 
 
 A typical phase of conscience is indicated by such phrases 
 as 'I ought, am bound,' 'it is my duty,' to act thus and so. 
 There is here a consciousness of a double relation. ' I ought 
 to go to ray business today ' means there is an agent on one 
 side, and a certain idea on the other; that -the former owes 
 something to the latter, while the latter imposes a certain nec- 
 essity (a bounden somewhat) on the former (Duty, due, debt; 
 ought, owe.) What is the meaning of this peculiar relation 
 between agent and ideal? This problem becomes clearer when 
 we compare it with the question of the good. In that also, 
 there is a distinction between immediate ageut and ideal; the 
 one being in a condition of lack and effort, and the other ex- 
 pressing satisfaction, and a completed act. But both terms of 
 the relation are in the same line of movement. The immediate 
 self is striving to attain the good; the good is this striving^ 
 satisfied. But in duty, the distinction between present self 
 and ideal seems pushed to the point of dualism. The present 
 self does not want, of itself, it would seem, to realize the ideal; 
 the latter rather presents itself as a demand, an exaction, it' not 
 "S coercion. 11 yiUlHlH Uver agliinst the ageut and utters the 
 *** categorical imperative" (Kant), 'thou shalt,' 'thou ougbtst,' 
 instead of drawing the agent on by its own intrinsic attractive- 
 ness. 
 
 Were the relation one of sheer compulsion or coercion, how- 
 ever, the problem, in some respects, would be easier to deal 
 with. We could, at least, class it with other exhibitions of 
 brute force; the relation would be simply one case of a superior
 
 92 
 
 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 
 
 energy overcoming a lesser. But, on the contrary, in spite of 
 all the apparent opposition and resistance between agent and 
 ideal, the consciousness of duty carries with it the sense of a 
 fundamental underlying identity. The sense of obligation is 
 
 not the sense of a stronger alien force l)e;irinu r <l<>\vn ; it is rather 
 
 the sense that the obligatory act is somehow more truly and 
 definitely one's self than the present self upon which the obli- 
 gation is imposed. 'I ouglit to do this act,' implies that 'this 
 
 ^ *"***^^^***^^ 
 
 act' is- really " 1 ; in so far as the idea of the act is felt as 
 merely alien to self, it is felt as irritating, as something to be 
 got rid of, not as authoritatively binding. 
 
 t We thus have before us, in a descriptive way, the main 
 features of the consciousness of duty. It is a consciousness of 
 the present self in relation to an idea of action, this relation 
 involving (a) a certain opposition and conflict between the 
 two, based on the reluctance of the immediate self to identify 
 itself in action with the idea, and thus realize it, and (b) a 
 consciousness that in reality the ideal is a more adequate ex- 
 pression of the self than is the present agent. 
 
 The psychology of this relation may be most easily ap- 
 proached by a return to the distinction of self as immediate 
 and mediate. At a given time, there is always a certain body 
 of positive impulse and habit urging forward for complete 
 expression. But this very structure, in its expression, stimu- 
 lates certain other tendencies and activities which are not, on 
 their face, compatible with the prior activities which induced 
 them. It is, for example, upon the basis of certain present 
 activities that a person marries, or, again, engages in a certain 
 profession. The activities corresponding to these latter en- 
 gagements are stimulated by the former, and are, indeed, nec- 
 essary to their normal psychological completion. Neverthe- 
 less, the person has now, as we say, " assumed the obligations" 
 of a new condition or occupation. He cannot possibly con- 
 tinue his former habits unchanged; they must, moreover, not 
 only be modified here and there, in pieces, but must be subor- 
 dinated, readjusted to the new aims. Here we have the psy-
 
 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 93 
 
 chical conditions for the feeling of obligation. The old habits 
 tend to assert themselves; they maintain themselves by their 
 own inertia and momentum. Moreover, it is highly important, 
 from the moral standpoint (as well as necessary from the psy- 
 chical) that they should do so. If the habits are entirely , 
 resolved, or disintegrated, there is no efficient instrumentality 
 by which the new aims may realize themselves. The person 
 relapses into a moral pulp. What is wanted is not the destruc- 
 tion of the old habite and debires, bui tneir utilization in new 
 directions. Now, just in the degree in which the habit is defi- 
 nite and efficient, it will resist an immediate and speedy 
 assumption of a new direction. It is, upon the whole, safe to 
 say that only in matters of slight importance, or of weak and 
 unformed character, will the habit slip easily and naturally 
 into new channels, aud become, through its co-ordinations with 
 other habits, -a subordinate factor in a more comprehensive 
 habit. It is of its very nature to continue its self-assertion. 
 And yet the newly aroused tendencies and ideas are organ- 
 ically connected with this habit. They are included within its 
 self-assertion. The expression of the old habit carries within 
 itself the making over of the old habit. The responsibilities 
 of the new profession which demand a surrender of old acts 
 and enjoyments, which acquire a redistribution of time, which 
 impose changes in the direction of attention and interest all 
 this is not a visitor from an outside sphere, but arises from the* 
 former acts and impulses, the former interests and lines of 
 attention. The new which requires the readjustment of the 
 old is necessary to the integrity of the old. Hence the sense of 
 finding self In the duty, the sense of unity, as well as of con- 
 flict and difference. The two sides in their tension give that 
 consciousness of authority and subjection which is the marked 
 phase of the sense of duty. 
 
 The sense of duty is thus a phenomenon <rf m&ra\ progress, 
 
 appearing in so far as an intention or idi-al tlt'mamls tin- trans- 
 formation of impulse and habit, by adapting them to instru- 
 ments of its own realization. Without the new ideal, the habit
 
 94 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 
 
 becomes monotonous and dead; sheer routine. Not being in 
 tension with an aim, it falls entirely below consciousness, and 
 thus loses all value and significance. It is the essence of habit 
 to be instrumental, a means for accomplishing ends. If the 
 end has been accomplished, the unmodified repetition of the 
 habit is useless, and is paid for by disintegration; the habit 
 sets up in business for itself, runs on its own account, and its 
 action becomes at odds with the activity of the organism as a 
 whole. The habit of eating, for example, has been initiated 
 and ileveloped with reference to the end of maintaining life; 
 it is relative, as habit, to an organic function, and must, to be 
 efficient be controlled constantly (held in check, be made to 
 operate as to when, where and how much) by reference to the 
 function. 
 
 Biologically and psychologically, it is a division of labor; 
 yet, as such, it gets a certain independence and tends to isola- 
 tion ; to become the act of eating for the mere sake of eating.* 
 This tendency is involved in its becoming a division of labor, with 
 its own specific, defined structure and modes of operation. To 
 do away with the tendency would be to destroy the specializa- 
 tion of structure, and relapse into a relatively unorganized life, 
 one homogenous as to parts and organs. 
 
 The problem here arises, in other words, from the very 
 nature of progress, frogress^demands definite individuatT2a= 
 tiou, specific organization. It requires effective instruments, 
 anoT no instrument is effective save as its structure is individual- 
 ized with reference to the special service to be performed by 
 it. As long as the movement to be accomplished is rough and 
 bulky, one and the same physical lever will serve for a multi- 
 tude of ends; let the ends to be reached become refined and 
 valuable, the idea of leverage has to be differentiated into 
 
 *To recur to the ethics of hedonism, we thus get a criterion for 
 the moral value of pleasures and pains. Any pleasure or pain is 
 normal (moral) in so far as it accompanies the working of an organ 
 which is stimulated into action by the demands of the organism 
 as a whole; is pathological (immoral) in so far as the organ assumes 
 to work per $e, or on its own credit.
 
 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 95 
 
 thousands of physical shapes, sizes and materials. Every 
 instrument then, as instrument, must assert its own specific, 
 differentiated character, or relapse into uselessness. But, on 
 the other hand, it is the nature of progress to require that in- 
 struments be truly instrumental, that they serve for ideas, for 
 ends. The instrument must be flexible, must be continually 
 readjusted to meet new needs and requirements. This anti- 
 thesis between differentiation, definition (stability) and coor- 
 dination, interaction, (flexibility) gives, once more, the condi- 
 tion^ involved in the consciousness of obligation. 
 
 The progressive action of any organism illustrates the same 
 relationship. The eye represents in its structure definite habits 
 of action; it represents a specialization of the whole organism 
 for a certain purpose. It is effective and orderly just in the 
 degree of its specialization. It must assert itself, assert teeing, 
 and not attempt, upon occasion, to hear or to reach. There is, 
 therefore, a continued tendency to isolation, a continued ten- 
 dency merely to see. The healthy organism keeps this differ- 
 entiated action in tension by rendering the habit of seeing 
 adapted to the needs of other organs. The eye sees and only 
 sees, but not for itself merely. It sees to help the hand reach, 
 to help the legs walk, etc., etc. In short, there is a continued 
 relative distinction and continued reconciliation, onbasispf 
 organic unity, of structure (organ) and function. The indi- 
 
 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
 
 vidual agent, as present self, is so much immediate impulse 
 ami habit, so much structure, a definite organ; while the ideal 
 which demands a certain quality, a certain direction of the 
 agent, stands for function, for organic service. In this process, 
 'organ' evidently stands for the self as distinguished, as par- 
 tial, function for self as unified, as whole. 
 
 Here, as everywhere, both the conservative and the radical 
 factors are required for progressive action, nay, for each other, 
 An ideal, without existing habits and impulses which repre- 
 sent the past (impulses, the history of the race, habits, of the 
 individual) has no machinery, no instrument of realization. It 
 is in the air, impotent, sentimental, dreamy. The reform must
 
 THE STUDY OP ETHICS. 
 
 always be a re-form, a readjustment of the existing habits giv- 
 ing them new value. But the existing habits, save as they 
 become subordinate factors in a larger value, lose their power. 
 The past can be maintained only by being used, and that 
 means readjusted. Left to itself, it decays, introducing fric- 
 tion. Power is lost, not conserved. 
 
 To sum up: The consciousness of obligation arises whenever 
 there is felt the necessity of employing an existent habit or 
 impulse to realize an end with which it is connected on the 
 basis of present need, though not of past history^ Its peculiar 
 double relationship arises from the fact that it is the nature of 
 habit and impulse in themselves, or abstractly, to demand imme- 
 diate discharge on the basis of their own past; thus they tend 
 to rsaiatJ'eadjustment, and go their own way. But habits and 
 impulses are, after all, developed with reference to the needs 
 of the organism; the habit is not isolated, but connected ,^and 
 the consciousness of this functional connection comes out in 
 the recognition that the required thing is somehow bound up 
 with our own being, and not imposed from without. 
 
 This connection of duty with critical periods, periods of a 
 greater or less readjustment, of adaptation of old habits to new 
 needs, determines the extent to which the consciousness of duty 
 should, normally, enter into conduct. Practical common sense 
 recognizes two extremes equally repugnant to it. On one side 
 is the character which professes to bring every act, from small 
 to great, in connection with duty; which professes to perform 
 every act under the guidance of a stern sense of duty which 
 never lets itself go, never plays morally. Our repulsion to this 
 standpoint as pedantic, narrow, as indicating an ungenerous 
 disposition, making us suspect hypocrisy, is justified by the 
 previous analysis. It is true that every act of the moral man 
 should, objectively viewed, be a dutiful act; it should always 
 be possible to say of it (that is, when it is reflected upon) that 
 it was the act which, under the given conditions, ought to have 
 been performed. But it by no means follows that because 
 every moral act is dutiful (i. e., right) that it should be accom-
 
 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 97 
 
 paiiied with a distinct sense of obligation. On the contrary, 
 since the larger number of the acts of a decent man is covered 
 by some general plan in pursuance with which they occur, the 
 normal attitude in these cases is that of , unconsciousness of 
 duty. The act is taken care of by the general line of atten- 
 tion, by the comprehensive interest. It falls, in so far, within 
 the habit of action; the tension between habit and plan or ideal 
 is slight. The reflection or tension, between immediate act 
 and mediating idea, necessary for value, is simply by reflec- 
 tion upon means, upon the best expedients or instrumentalities 
 for realizing the end. Think of the moral futility of a mother 
 caring for her child, a business man following his calling, by 
 accompanying all acts with consciousness of duty! There is 
 not sufficient reconstruction of ends to demand any such con- 
 sciousness, and if it enters in, it is forced and unreal. 
 
 But there is another moral tendency which insists that 
 duty must be swallowed up in inclination and love that so far 
 as one is moral, he performs all his acts with no consciousness 
 of authority and subjection, no sense of bounden duty, but 
 from the overflowing spontaneity of his own affection. Prac- 
 tical sense, without being able to give its reasons, is as sus- 
 picious of this view as of the other. Analysis reveals the 
 reasons. , The steady affection, the direct outflow of interest, 
 will cover all actions which lie within the scope of any one 
 end, less or greater. But when the acts appropriate to that 
 end are exhausted, when the end has become realized, a read- 
 justment of attention is required. A new end comes in, and 
 demands a rearrangement, a reform, of older habits and inter- 
 ests. This means suspense, resistance, conflict, the sense of 
 subjection and of authority in some form. Were there no 
 critical periods, no times of readjustment, the absorption of 
 duty in direct inclination ; would occur, but so long as they 
 come so long in other words, as progress through relative 
 discontinuity or nodal points is the law of life a o.haraqffl 
 without sense of obligation is inadequate, slippery and wishy- 
 washy. The practical is that there is no occasion to be con-
 
 98 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 
 
 tinually stirring up the feeling of obligation, to be reminding 
 one's self of it ab extra. Interest in work is the normal con- 
 
 <^^B |MI **" IMMlBMI * IMH *^ MH <MMM^MHMHBHHMWMaMMMi*^^^^ 
 
 dition, and the open-minded man, with broad and flexible 
 interest, will find that very interest, at critical periods of his 
 work, force the problems of obligation upon him, without his 
 hunting them up afield. 
 
 This connection of obligation with the periods of recon- 
 struction in moral progress also accounts for the relativity, or 
 ^better, the individuality,* of duty. Let theorists deal with 
 the facts as they may, the facts remain that no two persons 
 have or can have the same duties. It is only when we are 
 dealing with abstractions that they appear the same. Truth- 
 telling is a duty for all, but it is not the duty of all to tell the 
 same truth, because they have not the same truth to tell. Any 
 other conception is like the pedagogical theory which has 
 mechanized our schools that all the children are to recite the 
 history, the geography, the arithmetic lesson in the same way. 
 It is only the abstraction, the text-book, which is the same. 
 The truth to each child is this abstract fact assimilated into 
 his own interests and habits, and proceeding from them vital- 
 ized free. The great underlying contradiction, the lie, in 
 mo~dern moral methods, is the assertion of individuality in 
 name, and the denial of it in fact. Dutvjajways expresses a 
 relation between the impulses and haliits, the existing -t ruc- 
 tures of a concrete agent, and the ideal, intention, purpose 
 which demands a new service of that structure. By the neces- 
 sities of the case, it is only the general form of duty; the rela- 
 tionship between habit and demand, which is alike in different 
 individuals, or in the same individual at different times. A 
 
 *The theories which have made so much of 'relativity' in 
 ethics seem to me, without exception, to stop half way. The very 
 idea of relativity implies that there is still somehow a single, 
 absolute standard and duty for all, but that owing to circum- 
 stances or ' finitude' or some other unanalyzed category, we aren't 
 up to it yet, and have to make a shift with our relative morality. 
 Assume frankly once the standpoint of the indimduality of con- 
 duct, and the whole relativity industry is outlawed, while all the 
 facts brought out in its maintenance are amply preserved. The 
 standard and process are absolute, but (and because) individual.
 
 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 99 
 
 man of real self-control is no more conscious (save at critical 
 junctures) of the duty of temperance than the thief is con- 
 scious of the duty of regard for property. In the former case, 
 there is no impulse or habit to fall into tension with the de- 
 mand for control, and hence no sense of duty save again at 
 the times when new circumstances flood in, arousing dormant 
 impulses. In the latter case there is no ideal to create the 
 tension. For consciousness of obligation to arise in the former 
 case (save in conditions mentioned) indicates degeneration; in 
 the latter case, it is the potency of reformation. Let this ex- 
 treme instance serve to indicate the dependence of conscious- 
 ness of duty upon individuality. 
 
 Other mooted questions with reference to obligation, the 
 conflict of desire and duty, of interest and reason, of the 
 'ought' and the Ms,' will best be discussed in connection with 
 the two types of one-sided theories of duty next to be con- 
 sidered. Each of these theories abstracts one phase of the 
 relationship between immediate acting and mediate ideal, and 
 by exaggerating it to cover the entire field, by denying or 
 minimizing the other phase, presents a distorted view of moral 
 experience. Here again we may consider the Stoic and Kan- 
 tian ethics as the abstraction of the ideal side, and the hedon- 
 istic ethics as the abstraction of the direct side. 
 SECTION XXXVI. THE KANTIAN THEORY OF OBLIGATION. 
 
 Kant's starting point is the unconditional-character of mor- 
 ality. It admits of no ^xcaplionsj allows of no parleyings, of 
 no if and buts. It says without compromise, "Thou oughtst." 
 It does not follow, but precedes and commands inclination. It 
 does not depend for its authority upon any desire or tendency 
 towards itself; it rather requires of desire a certain quality and 
 of tendency a certain direction. It proposes not a dependent, 
 but an absolute end it is a categorical, not a hypothetical 
 imperative. Some commands read, T< Do thus and so if you 
 would reach a certain end"; but morality says, you must do 
 this, you must have a certain kind of end in view.* Thus duty 
 
 *" There is an imperative which commands a certain conduct 
 immediately, without having 1 as its condition any other purpose to 
 be attained by it. This imperative is categorical. . . . This impera- 
 tive mav be called that of morality." Abbott's trans., p. 83; see 
 whole passage, pp. 30-39; also pp. 113-144; 119-121; 125-127; 153.
 
 100 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 
 
 imposes laws, while hypothetical aims, ends which presuppose 
 a further end, can give rise only to either rules of skill the 
 most suitable ways of reaching that end or to coungels^ of 
 provisions for securing happiness. 
 
 Beside the universal, independent authoritative character 
 of duty, its important feature is its r.elajM^opposition^to im- 
 mediate inclination. The notion of duty, says Kant (p. 13 of 
 AT^ot^~nins757~i mplies certain subjective restrictions and 
 hindrances. In other words, it is irfipevtttive, as well as cate- 
 gorical. The very fact that it takes the form of command, of 
 law, of authority, implies a subject who may, if left to himself, 
 resist.* As thus stated, the doctrine seems practically iden- 
 tical with that already laid down. This apparent identity is 
 reinforced when we find that the source from which the 'cate- 
 gorical imperative' proceeds is not eternal to self or will, but 
 is the self or will in its universal nature. Obligation is a rela- 
 tiou holding between will in one aspect, that of universal 
 rationality and validity, and will in another aspect, in(3TvT3uTal 
 preference ( Willkiihr), not between will and any external end 
 or power. Kant insists strenuously upon this point, terming 
 true obligation 'autonomous,' while, false theories make it 
 ' heteronomous. ' (See Abbott, pp. 50-54; 57-59; 72; 180- 
 
 l^TT" 
 
 The identity disappears when we study in detail the mean- 
 ing which Kant attaches to the conception of self as uncondi- 
 tional (authoritative) law-giver, and the relative opposition of 
 this law-giving self to the subject-self. We shall find that 
 Kant interprets these ideas negatively by abstraction. By 
 the universality of self he means something which excludes all 
 specific material of experience: by the opposition of the duty- 
 i m poT3TTTg - eTfto the immediate agent something which excludes 
 any natural underlying identity of the two. 
 
 *This aspect conies out most clearly in the case Kant takes to 
 distinguish the dutiful from the holy will. (See p. 58; 121; pp. 174- 
 178.) The latter will is so identified with the ideal that the ideal 
 presents itself not as law or duty, but simply as good. This is a 
 condition to be always striven for, but never attained by " finite " 
 beings, like man.
 
 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 101 
 
 The course of the argument runs as follows: Since the 
 authority of moral law, or duty, is unconditional and absolute, 
 it cannot rest upon anything given in experience. (See refer- 
 ences given at end of Sec. XIII., p. 21.) Everything which 
 rests upon experience is contingent and variable; experience 
 at most can determine that a thing has been so and so in the 
 past, not that it is so without qualification. Much less can it 
 establish that a certain duty ought to be done, for the duty 
 may refer to an ideal which has never been realized which 
 (Kant would sometimes seem to say) can never be realized, 
 and which it is none the less our duty to strive to realize. 
 Now if we remove all content of experience from the law thus 
 imposed there remains nothing but the mere form of will, or 
 practical reason, nothing but the bare idea of law universal. 
 
 The same kind of considerations determine the nature of 
 the opposition between duty and the immediate agent. The 
 immediate agent may be reduced to an impulsive, desiring 
 being; all ends posited by man in this capacity are matters of 
 experience and have, therefore, to be neglected in considering 
 the end involved in doing one's duty, the end imposed by the 
 rational will. Furthermore, those ends which the impulses 
 and desires propose for themselves are not only to be excluded 
 as empirical, but they must be suppressed (in forming the 
 moral motive) as anti-moral. For all these natural inclina- 
 tions reduce themselves to a desire for happiness, to self-love. 
 And while this is not evil ^erse, yet as suggestingitself to the 
 will as its motive, its controlling power, it ij3_^e_great_antag- 
 onhiLjyliicji duty has always to "meet. ^So far as anything is 
 
 done from inclination as motive, it is still non-moral; nay, 
 immoral, as representing the victory of inclination over duty. 
 It is not enough even that the right thing (the thing conform- 
 able to duty) be done; it must be done out of respect for law 
 as motive. The consciousness of law, of authoritative obliga- 
 tion (while furnishing no concrete material) is thus necessary 
 to give to all material, to every special act, its motivation, if 
 the act is to be done morally. This conflict of inclination and
 
 102 THE STUDY OP ETHICS. 
 
 law, and the use of the idea of law as motive, occur not simply 
 
 at critical reconstructive points, but with each and every act. 
 
 The ideal moral character would be he whom the practical 
 
 judgment of men unhesitatingly terms a moral jaedant.* (For 
 
 this account see Abbott's trans., pp. 9-20; 54-56; 105116). 
 
 Kant's position evidently involves two questions, questions 
 
 yi I which are the analogue of what we have previously considered as 
 
 "' 'ideal' or 'intention,' and as 'motive' respectively; the rational 
 
 ; " content of the moral will, and the propulsive, dynamic quality of 
 
 JLjft ACAjfc fc 
 
 Lthis content. Or, putting the first problem in terms of Kant's 
 "' own position, how can a consciousness of will in general, a con- 
 sciousness of law universal, be transformed into consciousness 
 
 L ^^yj 
 
 . i.of specific volition, of particular acts required; how can the 
 'form' get concrete filling? This is a question which must be 
 met. However universal the law may be, all acts are specific, 
 individual; there must be something in the law that gives 
 instruction as to the special duty which the general law imposes 
 in the given act. How do we get from the mere consciousness 
 that duty is duty, to the consciousness that truth telling, that 
 purity, etc., are duties? How do we get to the conscious that 
 my_djaty, in the present situation, is just thus and so? The 
 j*A second \uestion is: how can the consciousnecs of duty get 
 sufficient hold upon the agent to interest him, to move him to 
 act for its realization? This problem is particularly acute in 
 the Kanthian ethics, because it is through the agent as instru- 
 ment, in any case, that the law must be executed, and Kant 
 has reduced the agent, qua agent, to a mere seeker for happi- 
 ness as already given in experience. 
 
 * The extent to which Kant carries this may be well seen by 
 this account of the good man in distress (Abbott, p. 112.) "He still 
 lives only because it is his duty, not because he finds anything 
 pleasant in life." For my own part it seems less an exaggeration 
 to say that a man who consciously lives simply because it is his 
 duty to live is a self-absorbed egotist or a moral pedant and vale- 
 tudinarian. There can be no doubt that upon occasion of wreck- 
 age of hopes and habits, failure of concrete interest 'in life may 
 arise. But surely, upon such occasion, it is one's " duty " to bestir 
 one's self to find something worthwhile in life not merely to live 
 from a sense of duty.
 
 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 103 
 
 I. According to Kaut, instruction as to concrete acts pro- 
 ceeds from the very universality of the law. Universality, 
 even in its most formal interpretation, means self-identity, non- 
 contradiction. Morality requires consciousness of a universal 
 law, but a universal law, by its very nature, must be one which 
 can maintain itself without contradiction. Hence the general 
 consciousness of duty may be thus translated. 'Act only on 
 that motive which can become a universal law ' or act upon 
 the same basis on which you would act, if you were an omni- 
 potent Being, so that your principle of action were made a law 
 of nature. (Abbott, pp. 38-42; 115; 55-56; 119; 133; 16,1- 
 162). y 
 
 The way in which the universal imperative ' Do thy duty,' 
 thus becomes transformed into the particular imperatives ' do 
 this, that and the other specific thing' may be illustrated as 
 follows: 
 
 (a) Some one, wearied by what he conceives to be the 
 entire misery of life proposes to commit suicide, but he asks 
 himself whether this maxim based on the principle of self-love 
 could become a universal law of nature; and " we see at once 
 that a system of nature in which the very feeling, whose office 
 is to compel men to the preservation of life, should lead men 
 by a universal law to death, cannot be conceived without con- 
 tradiction." That is to say, the principle of the motive which 
 would lead a man to suicide cannot be generalized without 
 becoming contradictory it cannot be made a law universal 
 
 (6) An individual wishes to borrow money which he knows 
 that he cannot repay. Can the naxim of this act be univer- 
 salized? Evidently not: "a system of nature in which it 
 should be a universal law to promise without performing, for 
 the sake of private good, would contradict itself, for then no 
 one would believe the promise the promise itself would become 
 impossible as well as the end it had in view." 
 
 (c) A man finds that he has certain powers, but is disin- 
 cline 1 to develop them. Can he make the maxim of such con- 
 ducta universal law ? He cannot will that it should become
 
 104 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 
 
 universal. " As a rational being, he must will that faculties 
 be developed." 
 
 (d) A prosperous individual is disclined to relieve the 
 misery of others. Can his maxim be generalized? " It is 
 impossible to will that such a principle should have the univer 
 sal validity of a law of nature. For a will which resolved this 
 would contradict itself, inasmuch as many cases might occur 
 in which one would have need of the love and sympathy of 
 others, and in which, by such a law of nature, sprung from his 
 own will, he would deprive himself of all hope of the aid he 
 desires. ' ' 
 
 See Abbott's trans., pp. 9-46. Caird's Critical Philosophy 
 of Kant, vol. II., pp. 171-181; 209-212. 
 
 CRITICISM. That a valid moral motive is capable of gen- 
 eralization may be admitted without question. But what is 
 the nature of this generalization, and what is implied as to its 
 relation to inclination to desire? Is generalization possible 
 only on the basis of reason standing over against desire. Nay 
 is it possible at all on such a basis^ Let it be admitted that 
 truly moral action involves rationality or generalized validity, 
 does this rationality proceed from a faculty outside the natural 
 impulses and desires, is it attained only by abstraction from 
 them? or (to state the alternative theory definitely) is not ra- 
 tionality, universality, found in the co-ordination, the__rduc- 
 tion to a harmonjj^3jyunty''ol: the impulses and desire^? Ad- 
 mitting thatTThe moral life involves, as one of its features, a 
 certain relative opposition of sensuous material and rational 
 form, are form and content separate in origin and purpose? or 
 is the " form" simply the movement of the " material " to its 
 own organic unity? Or, again, admitting that it is often help- 
 ful to test a proposed line of conduct by reference to the capac- 
 ity of its motive to be universal law, are we to understand uni- 
 versal law in the sense of uniformity, of bare likeness among 
 different circumstances, or is the universal law found in the 
 organization of the different conditions? To sum fll] f.hnsfi 
 questions up in one: Arewe to do an act in its universality, or 
 because of its universality?
 
 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 105 
 
 These points may be tested by Kant's own illustrations. 
 In every case we find the question raised is not whether uni- 
 versality is the motive, but whether a specific motive can be 
 generalized. In every case, also, we find the answer to the 
 question turning not upon formal, but upon material identity. 
 The question is treated as if it were one concerning the char- 
 acter of the content involved. There is nothing formally self- 
 contradictory in the idea that every one should, from self-love? 
 shorten life when its continuance promises abaJjuic-uiLJjarni. 
 Contradictioneuters only when there is postulated a system of 
 nature, in which tKe impulse of self-love has a certain definite 
 quality tending toward " improvement of life." Grant this, 
 and there is no difficulty in showing that the general system 
 contradicts itself if the impulse is turned against itself. It is 
 the character of the system of nature, or of the impulse, which 
 affords the real criterion material, not formal considerations^ 
 So in the other cases. A social system and the impulse to 
 better one's self through the assistance of others would both 
 contradict themselves when promises were made not to be kept. 
 It is as a " rational being," that is, as a person with a certain 
 definite constitution, that one wills that faculties be developed, 
 and self-indulgence contradicts that organization of things 
 which man conceives to be truly rational. And so again a 
 social system in which men are interdependent would go to 
 pieces if men never assisted one another. In every case, the 
 contradiction is within a certain assumed structure or system. 
 Presuppose such a system, and it is simply a matter of ade- 
 quate detailed knowledge to discover whether a given line of 
 action will tend to reinforce or to disintegrate it. The criter- 
 ion is workable and often helpful, but it is in no way formal. 
 Universal is interpreted as falling in line with the maintenance 
 of the system as a whole. A self-integrity, material self-con- 
 sistency is the real standard. In this sense, every good act 
 must be legislative; it must execute principles which tend to 
 the maintenance of the system of which it is a member. 
 
 Not only do Kant's examples all go against a formal ration- 
 ality and point to a rationality which is none other than the
 
 106 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 
 
 organization of content, but a formal universality would abso- 
 lutely break down. If I kill a man in defence of my family 
 or country, I cannot will that everybody should always kill; if 
 I will to aid a man by charity, I cannot will that everybody at 
 all times should try to relieve all the distress that comes before 
 him. My moral imperative is to kill or to give,"but I cannot 
 will that it be formally universalized, that is, be made a uni- 
 form principle of action. I can only be willing that wherej^ 
 jctlexant circumstances are the same the same principle be fol- 
 lowed. In other words, 1 could wisn my motive to become 
 general law only in so far as the particular material conditions 
 have been not excluded from, but taken into the motive. 
 
 Reason, then, not mere sense, must constitute the law of the 
 moral will; it alone can substantiate the ideal. But this 'prac- 
 tical reason ' is not a faculty separate from desire; were it thus 
 separate it could furnish no directions whatever to the desire. 
 It could but demand its obliteration; not its functioning in a | 
 specific direction. The reason that consciousness of duty 
 always involves specification into some definite requirement is 
 urecisely because we cannot separate the consciousness of self 
 as a whole from the consciousness of a particular desire of the 
 self. Take the former in its adequate differentiation and it 
 becomes the latter, just as the consciousness of a particular 
 desire conceived in its relations, not abstractly, is the conscious- 
 ness of the whole moving self. 
 
 Duty as Motive. We turn now to the other aspect of the 
 question. How is it, upon Kant's theory, that the conscious- 
 ness of law universal becomes an interest a conception which 
 takes hold practically and mores to execution; how~aoes it be- 
 come a motor, become dynamic? 
 
 Kant's solution may be summarized as follows: The moral 
 law must of itself be -the spring to action; if it make use of 
 some feeling already in existence to become the motive, then 
 an act will be performed which has legality (5. e. , outward 
 conformity to duty) but not morality, because not springing 
 from a purely moral motive. "The essential point is that the
 
 THE STUD'S OF ETHICS. 107 
 
 agent be determined simply by the moral law, not only with- 
 out the co-operation of sensible impulses, but even to the re- 
 jection of all such." (Abbott, p. 165.) Thus the moral law 
 snubs the impulses, and in so far gives rise to the feeling of 
 humiliation; the pretension of the agent to worth in himself 
 (self-conceit) is struck down, and his effort to be happy (self, 
 love) is deprived of all valid claim to control. Here then we 
 have one feeling, humility, which tho' itself sensuous (or 
 pathological) is yet originated by reason. Moreover, this nega- 
 tive feeling of humility gets the obstacles (self-conceit and 
 self-love) to the moral law out of the way, and thus is the same 
 as so much positive impetus added to the law. It is equiva- 
 lent to a feeling of respect, reverence for law." "Humilia- 
 tion on the sensuous side is an elevation of the moral esteem 
 for the law itself on the rational side," (p. 171.) Reverence 
 is thus not simply a motive to morality, "it is morality itself 
 viewed subjectively as a motive; for our practical reason, by 
 rejecting the rival claims of self-love, gives authority to the 
 law which now alone has influence," (p. 168; see the whole of 
 ch. 3, of the Analytic of Practical Reason.) 
 
 CRITICISM. Criticism turns here upon the relation assumed 
 to exist between reason and sensibility as the system of im- 
 pulses. It may be urged that Kant's position is in unstable 
 equilibrium. If the relation between reason and sense is as 
 external and mechanical as he makes it, the operations which 
 he describes cannot occur; or, if these operations do take place, 
 the relation must be conceived as so organic and intrinsic as to 
 make necessary an entire reconstruction of the theory of desire. 
 
 In the first place, JUa sheer naaiynptinn thnf. f.li ^Uftimna 
 impulses may be adequately described under the heading of 
 self-love, in any aona<> in ^r%frit-rtiit ian{mjqTiW5rem to seek- 
 ing for pleasures. Kant retains the whole substructure of the 
 hedonistic psychology of desire; sees the evils which result 
 ethically from it, and then adds on the top story of reason as 
 an offset. If the discussion already had (pp. 46-50) is of 
 weight, the true course is to make over the theory of desire.
 
 108 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 
 
 If, however, impulse and desire are as self-absorbed as 
 Kant declares them to be, we must question the adequacy of 
 the machinery by which Kant makes law a motor. If there is 
 no intrinsic connection between desire and reason, how can the 
 former, even when checked and held in by reason, give rise to 
 the feeling of moral humiliation? This presupposes some 
 moral capacity already in the desires; something capable of 
 recognizing the authority and value of law which is not only 
 the thing to be explained, but also impossible if desire has 
 the purely low and selfish character Kant attributes to it. At 
 most, the desire would simply feel restraint, coercion, and 
 would be correspondingly impatient and desirous of breaking 
 away the reverse of humility.* When Kant changes the 
 negative feeling of humiliation into a positive one of reverence, 
 it simply attributes even more frankly some kind of positive 
 moral capacity to impulse. That the feeling is supposed to 
 originate from reason, emphasizes rather than avoids the djifi- 
 culty. If the moral law can transform itself into feeling; if 
 reason can become an impulse, then feeling and impul_sg_caii*- 
 not be so depraved as Kant has already defined them to be. 
 When Kant says (p. 170), the agent "can never , 
 
 when he has laid aside self-conceit, of contemplation of the 
 majesty of law, and the soul believes itself elevated in propor- 
 tion as it sees the moral law elevated above it and its frail 
 nature" there is something intrinsically akin to law ascribed 
 to the "frail nature" of the soul. It is simply a round-about 
 way of saying that the "soul" is not so frail after all, if only 
 it be given a chance. 
 
 Moreover the whole question is begged from the start. It 
 is only in so far as the reason is already itself impulsive or 
 moving that it can check and restrain the sense nature and 
 thus occasion humility. To hold that " whatever diminishes 
 the obstacles to an activity, furthers this activity itself," (p. 
 
 * It is worth notice that Plato, who has substantially the same 
 dualism between reason and appetite, is obliged to bring- in a third 
 and mediating pewerr-theowitcfl impulses, (spirited ness), to bridge 
 the gulf.
 
 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 109 
 
 171) is to admit that reason already possesses an active, self- 
 realizing power, i. e., is impulsive. 
 
 The further difficulty in the separation of sense and reason 
 may be seen in the utter inability to answer, from Kant's 
 standpoint, the question as to why, in a given case, the moral 
 law does or does not become a motive. I do not mean simply 
 that it can not give a detailed account perhaps no theory can 
 do that. But it cannot point to any method of approaching 
 the question. Failure cannot be due to lack of authoritative 
 presence of the moral reason that is always there. It cannot 
 be due to the mere presence or agency of the sensuous impulses 
 they are always present and always selfishly urgent. There 
 is absolutely no connecting link by which to indicate any ex- 
 planation of why the machinery of humiliation and reverence 
 should get itself adequately into operation in some cases and 
 fail in others. We are thrown back on bare chance. The 
 ideas of approval, blame, responsibility are-made meaningless. 
 All this because the actual concrete unity of individual char- 
 acter is surrendered and the two abstractions of sense and 
 reason substituted. 
 
 Thus far we have taken Kant purely on his own ground. 
 It may be added that, historically, reverence seems to have no 
 special priority or moral pre-eminence over motives like patriot- 
 ism,, manliness, desire for community esteem and recognition; 
 that when it did appear it took, until the development of spe- 
 cialized technical reflection (like Kant's own), the form not of 
 recognition of superiority of moral law as such over sensuous 
 impulse, but the recognition that the community welfare is 
 higher in its claims than the immediate pleasures and pains of 
 the agent. (See for example, Plato, Laws, 647, 649, 671, on 
 reverence as fear of pain attached to right objects.) If we turn 
 from theoretical analysis to actual life, it is at once evident 
 that to make reverence for duty the sole motive would lead to 
 a Pharisaism which must deny morality to the vast masses of 
 mankind, and jx-nnit it only to a few who luivr attained a cer- 
 tain stage of intellectual abstraction.
 
 110 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 
 
 Upon the whole question, positively, it may be said: (1) 
 The truth in Kant's main contention is adequately recognized 
 j in the statement that an action is to be done as duty, that is, 
 \J for its own intrinsic meaning independent of any reflex advan- 
 / tage, but not fgr duty. The latter makes an abstraction of 
 / duty, reduces the act to a mere means, and thus introduces 
 s. division and lessens interest (See pp. 85-87.) (2) The con- 
 sciousness of the opposition between desire and duty, with the 
 correlative feelings of humility and reverence, arises not essen- 
 tially, by the nature of each, but historically that is, when 
 the appearance of a more comprehensive and organic end 
 demands a readjustment of desires, demand that they attach 
 themselves to the new end instead of following their past 
 course. 
 
 Kant's account, therefore, strengthens our original analysis. 
 The sense of the majesty and inviolability of duty is the con- 
 sciousness of the moving, the functioning self as against a par- 
 tial habit, which in its narrow self-assertion, tends to become 
 isolated and static^ instead of connected and instrumental. 
 The moral feeling of humility is in its essence the continued 
 attitude of not hanging on to attainment for its own sake of 
 recognizing that it has no worth save as changed into power. 
 Reverence is the correlative continued openness of will and 
 interest to new and larger demands (p. 75). They require not 
 the absolute opposition of a higher and lower nature to explain 
 thera^but the relative opposition between differentiation and 
 inter-connection of impulses and habits. 
 
 Convenient accounts and criticisms of Kant's Ethics will be 
 found in Caird, Critical Philosophy of Kant, vol. II.; Muirhead, 
 Elements, pp. 112-124; Mackenzie, Manual, pp. 55-70. 
 
 SECTION XXXVII. HEDONISTIC THEORY OF OBLIGATION. 
 
 The problem of duty for the hedonist assumes the converse 
 aspect from that presented to the Kantian. For the latter, 
 the main difficulty is in showing how the consciousness of law, 
 proclaimed by reason, should come into working relations,
 
 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 
 
 intellectual and motor, with desire, so great is the assumed oppo- 
 sition. For the hedonist, the difficulty lies in getting enough 
 opposition to desire to subject the latter to authority* or in 
 getting that kind of opposition which should give rise to a feel- 
 ing of duty rather than of coercion. Upon the basis of hed-^ ^ 
 onisiu, it may be said that it is to an agent's profit or advantage L/-^0 
 or superior jnterest to take such and such a course, but how ^J **4> 
 can it be said to be his duty? Pleasure is the good, and man's 
 natural desire is for pleasure. How can there be any checking 
 of desire, save as another desire, promising more pleasure, pre- 
 sents itself? Such a checking as this has none of the elements 
 of the consciousness of duty. 
 
 The traditional hedonistic answer has been through the 
 idea of sanction, some foreseen evil attached to the satisfaction 
 of a desire which, in itself, would give pleasure. f 
 
 The essence of Bain's theory is the transfer within the 
 mind of the agent of a relation, now existing between elements 
 of his own conduct, which originally existed between the 
 agent's conduct and the behavior of others. The ideas of 
 authority (command) and obedience are correlative. The les- 
 son of obedience is taught from the outset of life to every agent. 
 "The child's susceptibility to pleasure and pain is made use 
 of to bring about this obedience, and a mental association is 
 rapidly formed between this obedience and apprehended pain, 
 more or less magnified by fear." The knowledge that punish- 
 ment may be continued until the act is discontinued " leaves on 
 
 *Bentham felt this difficulty that it wished to banish the very 
 term 'duty' from ethical discussion. 
 
 \ Besides the authors considered below, this conception has 
 been developed by Paley, Moral Philosophy, in a theological form 
 (virtue is " doing good to mankind, in obedience to the will of God 
 and for the sake of everlasting happiness''); by Austin, Jurispru- 
 dence in jural form; by Bentham, in jural and social form, in his, 
 Principle of Morals and Legislation, and by J. S. Mill, notes on h ? s 
 father's Analysis of the Human Mind, vol. II.. pp. 334-326 and 
 Utilitarianism, ch. V. It should be remarked, however, that 
 Mill's account only touches the question why we judge the con- 
 duct of others from the standpoint of duty; it does not answer the 
 question why a man conceives something as obligatory upon him- 
 self.
 
 112 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 
 
 the mind a certain dread and awful impression as connected 
 with forbidden actions." This "dread of offending" is the 
 germ of the consciousness of duty. It is reinforced, first, by 
 the sentiment of love or respect for the person imposing the 
 command which brings in a new dread, "that of giving pain 
 to a beloved object." Then a tertiary factor comes in : " When 
 the young mind is able to take notice of the use and meaning 
 of the prohibitions imposed upon it, and to approve of the end 
 intended by them, a new motive is added on and begirds the 
 action with a three-fold fear." This latter fear is more defi- 
 nitely stated as follows: "If the duty prescribed has been 
 approved of by the mind as protective of the general interests 
 of persons engaging our sympathies, the violation of this on 
 our part affects us with all the pain that we feel from the in- 
 flicting an injury upon those interests." (See Bain, Emotions 
 and Will, pp. 285-87.) 
 
 Now this sentiment of fear or reverence attached to supe- 
 rior power, "at first formed and cultivated by the relations of 
 actual command and obedience, may come at last to stand upon 
 an independent foundation." The third factor mentioned 
 above s'e'e'llia, Irom isain^ further account, to be not so much 
 
 a factor as a revolution. When the child appreciates the 
 "reasons for the command, the character of conscience is in- 
 tirely transformed " (E. and W. p. 288.) The form of author- 
 ity and subjection remains, although the authority is no longer 
 imposed from without. Conscience becomes an " ideal resejBr 
 blajice of public authority " (E. and W. p. 264; the references 
 are all to the third ed., London, 1888); " it is an imitation 
 within ourselves of the p)vennnent without, us" (p. '2<S- r ).) 
 When the thing which a person regards as obligatory is so far 
 from being enforced by social pressure, that it contradicts re- 
 ceived moral ideas, " even then the notion, sentiment or form 
 of duty is derived from what society imposes, although the 
 particular matter is quite different. Social obedience develops 
 in the mind originally the feeling and habit of obligation, and 
 this remains when the individual articles ure changed .....
 
 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 113 
 
 The person has so assimilated in his mind the laws of his own 
 coining to the imperative requirements of society, that he 
 reckons them as of equal force as duty" p. 289 note. See 
 also pp. 467-73 and his Moral Science, pp. 20-21 and 41-43). 
 
 CRITICISM. Now just as we did not question the principle 
 of generalization, but simply the way in which Kant interprets 
 it, so here the question is not as to the account given by Bain, 
 but rather as to its real meaning, especially as to its consistency 
 with hedonism. (1) Admitting that a consciousness of duty 
 arises historically in connection with commands and fear of 
 punishment, does it follow that the sense of duty is, even at 
 the outset, equivalent to fear of pain? (2) And how can this 
 whole content of fear drop out at the proper moment and leave 
 the pure sense of duty the man a moral law to himself? 
 
 (1) In so far as there is auy moral consciousness at all, 
 any sense of authority, we must say that from the start there is 
 a sense of the reasonableness of the command, and not a mere 
 dread of the pain to result from its infringement. The latter 
 alone gives rise, even at a very early age, to a sense not of duty 
 and authority, but of wrong and smarting injustice, or else to 
 apparent acquiescence while the one commanding is at hand, 
 and to great cleverness in evading whenever the pressure is 
 removed. Any careful observation will reveal three cases: 
 
 (a) that in which it is necessary to prevent, and at once, a 
 given line of conduct as a child's going into a fire. Here 
 the motive of sheer fright may be appealed to, but not with 
 any moral end, or with reference to developing a sense of duty 
 or as punishment; but simply as the necessary way of prevent- 
 ing, under the circumstances, the occurrence of a given overt 
 act. Every sensible parent appeals to this motive when neces- 
 sary, but does not assume too easily that it is necessary; and 
 tries to replace it by more rational means as soon as possible. 
 
 (b) Second, there is the case already referred to of using the 
 dread of punishment per se as motive. This, as suggested, is 
 so far from calling into being the sense of duty, that it arouses 
 irritation and auger, duplicity and slyness, (c) There is the
 
 114 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 
 
 use of punishment to draw positive attention to a content other- 
 wise ignored punishment as a means of enforcing an idea not 
 strong enough to make its own way in an immature mind. 
 The first case is non-moral, the second immoral, the third 
 alone moral. Here again careful observation will reveal that 
 punishment, in the case say of a lie, is morally effective just 
 in the degree in which fear of it does not operate as an isolated 
 motive, but is the emphasis required to bring out the undesir- 
 able quality of the act itsolf. It is a means of revealing the 
 hatefulness, the repulsiveness of the lie. Bain himself speaks 
 of the "fear of offending," and this is quite other than the fear 
 of punishment. (2) Only in so far as punishment is a means 
 of calling attention to the intrinsic quality of the act, does it 
 afford a transition to the third stage the independent con- 
 science, or one which recognizes the act as obligatory because 
 of its own significance. The more we use punishment to effect 
 simply a dread of itself the more surely we prevent the growth 
 of the conscience which can recognize acts as valuable "in 
 themselves." Logically and practically (so far as the theory 
 is acted upon), there is not only no bridge from the first of 
 Bain's stages to the last, but the two are exclusive. (For 
 some practical phases of this discussion, see the Aug. '94 No. 
 of the Pop. Sci. Mo., article on Chaps in Moral Training.) 
 
 The point of these criticisms is that Bain unconsciously 
 begs the whole question. The authority somehow resides 
 already in the idea (the act proposed) and the agent in recog- 
 nizing the idea purely, must recognize its authoritative quality. 
 The punishment , simply serves to bring the idea adequately 
 into consciousness (compare what is said pp. 84-5.) Punish- 
 ment may provide the psychological conditions (put the mind 
 into shape) for recognizing authority, but cannot possibly con- 
 stitute it. Unless the positive value, capable of being seen, 
 already reside in the idea, punishment causes either rebellion 
 or servility or trickiuess or a mixture of all three. The ques- 
 tion is still untouched: What is that which constitutes the 
 value of the proposed idea so supreme that it is authoritative,
 
 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 115 
 
 and gives some rational assurance that punishment, judiciously 
 used, will assist the growth of conscience?* In lack of a bet- 
 ter, our previous answer must still stand; because the act pro- 
 posed stands for the active, the functioning and thus the whole 
 self, while the agent to whom it appears obligatory, or authori- 
 tative, is the static, the instrumental (and thus if isolated, the 
 partial) self. 
 
 ^SPENCER'S THEORY OF OBLIGATION. Spencer, like Bain, 
 holds that the sense of duty originates from social pressure. 
 He emphasizes, perhaps, the element of fear less than that of 
 restraint the checking of the immediate impulse or desire. 
 The chief inhibitory agencies in the history of the race have 
 been the "visible ruler, the invisible ruler, and public opinion" 
 the policeman, the priest, and public opinion, as someone 
 has alliteratively summed it up. These restraining agencies 
 operate mainly through fear the dread awakened of, respect- 
 ively, "legal penalty, supernatural punishment and social 
 reprobation." As in Bain's theory, the sense of restraint thus 
 originated gradually works itself free from the incidents of its 
 birth and growth, and asserts itself as an independent" factor 
 in consciousness. The favorite hedonistic analogy is the love, 
 of gold on the part of the miser a love which can have arisen 
 only in connection with the special benefits derived from the- 
 gold, but which finally sets itself free from these accompani- 
 ments, and attaches to the gold_per se. The individual learns, 
 to connect the forseen evil effects resulting intrinsically from 
 the satisfaction of a given presen impulse or desire with the 
 feeling of compulsion, and this representative association 
 suffices to restraint the urgency of the desire. 
 
 The "essential trait in the moral consciousness is the cop.-, 
 trol of some feeling or feelings by some other feeling or feel- 
 ings." (Principles of Ethics Data p. 113.) In general, 
 
 *In strict logic, the term 'judiciously used' cannot be em- 
 ployed in Bain's theory. Everything fails back upon the mere 
 punishment, apart from its relations and attachments; there is uo 
 duty as respects the use of punishment, because it is the source of 
 duty, just as in Hobbes' political philosophy the sovereign, being 
 the source of law, cannot be subject to it.
 
 116 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 
 
 and upon the average, the feelings which control are related 
 to those controlled as the compound to the simple, the remote 
 to the proximate, the representative to the presentative (Data, 
 pp. 103-109.) 
 
 The connecting link with the element of social coerciveness 
 is thus found by Spencer: " Since the political, religious, and 
 social restraining motives, are mainly formed of represented 
 future results; it happens that the representatives, having 
 much in common, and being often aroused at the same time, 
 the fear joined with three sets of them becomes, by association, 
 joined with the fourth. Thinking of the .extrinsic effects of a 
 forbidden act, excites a dread which continues present while 
 the intrinsic effects are thought of; and being thus linked 
 with these intrinsic effects causes a vague sense of moral com- 
 pulsion." And from this Spencer draws the logical conclusion ' 
 (logical because true morality refers only to the intrinsic 
 effects of an act, p. 120) that the "sense of duty or moral 
 obligation is transitory, and will diminish as fast as moraliza- 
 tion increases." The duty comes to have interest of itself, 
 becomes itself pleasurable if persisted in, and the aspect of 
 coerciveness dies out, (pp. 127-128.) 
 
 CRITICISM. In so far as Spencer's theory resembles Bain's, 
 the same criticism, of course, holds. External compulsion 
 (which generates, by association, the feeling of self-compulsion) 
 is positively an ti -moral, because bringing into play the motive 
 of sheer fear; if it have moral potentiality at all, even in fur- 
 thering the transitional sense of obligation at a certain imper- 
 fect stage of moral development, it is because it does not oper- 
 ate as coercion, but as bringing to light, or reinforcing against 
 opposition, the intrinsic authoritativeness of the acts proposed. 
 Spencer's contention that with moralization the sense of duty 
 tends to disappear is a recognition of the immoral character of 
 the sense of coercion. But the contention, after all, only 
 emphasizes the difficulty. Is it not the logical conclusion, 
 from Spencer's premises, that we should never us or appeal to 
 the sense of obligation; that, from the outset, we should strive
 
 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 117 
 
 to prevent the growth of this feeling, instead of encouraging it 
 through punishment, blame, etc.? Or, otherwise stated, if 
 Spencer's conclusion is correct, we must condemn all the social 
 agencies which develop in the child the sense of compulsion 
 (whether external or self) and leave the child to the expression 
 of his own impulses, till he learns, by intrinsic reflection, to 
 control some of them.* 
 
 In the other factor of Spencer's theory, the doctrine of in- 
 trinsic control as connected with increasing complexity, remote- 
 ness and representativeness of ends, -we have, I think, an approx- 
 imation to the true doctrine. It is, indeed, impossible to see 
 why these facts should of themselves confer any claims to con- 
 trol. Carlyle's 'do the thing that lies nearest' is just as valu- 
 able as Spencer's remote end. Indeed, Spencer himself calls 
 attention to the fact that cases often arise where the simple and 
 present desire has moral supremacy on its side. He gives, 
 however, no explanation of why one or other has this claim, 
 this supremacy. An analysis of his biological accounts, will 
 reveal however, that the real criterion in each is the self in its 
 wholeness. And if we translate complexity, remoteness, etc., 
 into terms of standing for the self as a whole, the moving, 
 functioning self, all the mystery vanishes. It is not qua remote, 
 or qua proximate, that an end exercises authority, but as com- 
 prehending within itself the self as functional unity. On the 
 other hand, the criterion of complexity, it seems to me, will always 
 work, because the complex, by its very definition, represents. the 
 self as organic activity. In the conflict, say of hunger impulse 
 with the impulse to give food to children to keep them alive, 
 (the example given by Spencer, p. 110) the former may be 
 
 *The difficulty is only increased when we remember that, upon 
 Spencer's theory, the postponement or checking of a desire in- 
 volves pain ana the sacrifice of pleasure, and thus, absolutely is 
 bad, even if relatively right. Data, pp. 183-184; 260-261. The reader 
 may be reminded that, upon the theory already stated, the sense 
 of duty ever disappears with respect to certain ends as these become 
 absorbed into a habit, but not absolutely. It reconnects itself with 
 those other ends, which, for any reason, demand readjustment of 
 habits.
 
 118 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 
 
 more, not less, complex than the latter, and is more complex 
 whenever its fulfillment is a condition of fulfilling the latter. 
 In this case, to feed one's self is an act which, psychologically, 
 includes within itself the feeding of others. The same may be 
 said of the claims of health as respects the claims of meeting 
 obligations to others; in so far as the former is supreme it is 
 also more complex, carrying the other within itself repre- 
 sentative, in other words, of the whole self. We repeat, then, 
 the original statement the sense of duty, with its correlative 
 phases of authority and subjection, is a sense of the supreme 
 value of the functional self, and the relative, or instrumental 
 value of the structural self. Authority is not to be identified 
 with coercion, any more than with the action of self conceived 
 as a blank metaphysical form. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. FREEDOM AND RESPONSIBILITY. 
 SECTION XXXVIII. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF FREEDOM. 
 
 The violitional has been defined and developed as the 
 mediation of activity, at first impulsive or direct. It has-been 
 shown that the -ideal (indention), with the deliberative process, 
 is the growth of the mediation; that this finds its completion 
 in the standard or generalized ideal. But the end and law 
 react by their very natures into the direct impulses, and pre- 
 sent another phase of moral experience: desire and conscious- 
 ness of good, so far as the end and standard reinforce the 
 immediate tendencies of impulse and habit; effort and con- 
 sciousness of duty, so far as this reaction checks and recon- 
 structs. 
 
 It must be remembered that the process of reaction is not 
 one which follows in time after that of projection of ends and 
 recognition of law. The origin and growth of the mediate, 
 the rational content, proceed contemporaneously with its use 
 in reinforcing and in checking the impulse or habits. What- 
 ever completes the development of the ideal, the concrete 
 recognition of the end and principle of action, completes the
 
 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 119 
 
 habit urging forward for expression. It is this completion 
 with which we now have to deal. 
 
 The completely mediated activity is what we term a deed. 
 The deed cannot be distinguished as act in contrast with mere 
 getting ready to act. The whole process of working out ends, 
 of selecting means, of estimating moral values, of recognizing 
 duty, is, as we have seen, one of activity at every point; it is 
 dynamic and propulsive throughout. The deed is simply this 
 activity focused, brought to a head. The deed is the activity, 
 concluded; it is the 'round up,' and in this conclusion at once 
 (1) defined, marked out, and (2) unified. 
 
 ( 1 ) The overt act or deed is the definition of self. Up 
 to this time all is tentative; it is the experimenting of self in 
 this direction or that, seeking outlet, forming and revising pos- 
 sible ends, trying on this satisfaction and that. In the deed, 
 this movement of the self culminates; the activity is no longer 
 tentative, but definitive. Up to this time, the self has been 
 exploring, trying to find self and to come to consciousness. 
 The deed is the net. result of the exploration, of the learning; 
 it exhibits or shows what the self, at the time, is. The voyage 
 of discovery is summed up in the map which shows the limit, 
 external and internal, of the activity. 
 
 (2) This culmination of activity is complete co-ordination 
 or unification. Starting from the immediate, impulsive activ- 
 ity, the whole intervening development may be regarded as 
 one of increasing range of stimulation, bringing this and that 
 further habit or impulse into play. This increasing range or 
 scope of action is not merely quantitative, as just said, it finds 
 a limit, an end. Now this limiting principle prevents the in- 
 creasing waves of activity from being mere diffusive, expan- 
 sive outgoing agitation without meaning. This principle, con- 
 fining and determining the range and distribution of interven- 
 ing activity, is, in biological terms, the function of the organ- 
 ism ; in psychological terms, the unity of the self. The increase 
 of activity, the continued suggestion of new ends and tentative 
 adoption of new means, does not go on ad indefinitum, but with
 
 120 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 
 
 reference to a whole the self. The deed expresses the attain- 
 ment of this whole. 
 
 In this connection we must recall the fact that a moral 
 struggle means, psychologically, not the sacrifice or exclusion 
 of one value by another, but its inclusion, comprehension (pp. 
 31-32); the process of control is not one of suppression of desire 
 or habit, but one of directing, using it making it a tributary 
 factor. Physically, outwardly, the deed is a selection of one 
 impulse or ideal, and a rejection of the other. A man takes 
 either the right or left hand road; steals or remains true to his 
 trust; is self-indulgent, or puts his passions to the service of 
 others. But morally the meaning, the value, of this defined, 
 or one-sided deed, has the competing of ends and habits ab- 
 sorbed into it; the process of completion determines the signi- 
 ficance of the deed in and to the agent's own consciousness.* 
 
 We have various words to designate the completion, the 
 finality of the process; some naming it from the side of the 
 impulsive, others of its intellectual phase. Preferencef brings 
 out the defiuiteness, the individuality of the conclusion. So 
 also does determination, with the added shade of wholeness m 
 its idea of firmness and certainty; decision and resolution name 
 it considered both as the outcome of a complex, tangled intel- 
 
 * This gives another point of view for criticizing Martineau's 
 theory of preferential selection of one of two impulses in the scale 
 of values. It fails to note how the value of the impulse chosen 
 (that is. its moral character) includes the rejected impulses. It 
 also shows why an agent who is continually conscious that he has 
 done an act of self-sacrifice is still immoral; he has not succeeded 
 in comprehending the 'sacrificed' end within the act performed. 
 It is still there, asserting itself on its own isolated account. Para- 
 doxical as the phrase may sound, the fact that it is felt ay sacrifice 
 shows that the sacrifice is not yet made. On any basis save that 
 of the text, the moral life reduces itself, as Emerson says, to mere 
 expiation for something else; it never asserts itself as of positive 
 value. See Emerson's Essay on Self-Reliance, p. 54. 
 
 f Preference seems sometimes to be opposed to choice, as when 
 one says, 'I should prefer that, but I choose to do this.' But this is 
 only an abstract preference; it says, under other circumstances, 
 with changed conditions, I should prefer otherwise. But with 
 things as they are, the agent prefers what he chooses. Preference, 
 however, undoubtedly has more reference to the natural, unmoral- 
 ized (unmediated) aspect. We prefer things; we choose acts or 
 lines of action.
 
 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 121 
 
 lectual process and as indicating the single volitional attitude 
 assumed for the future. All these these various implications 
 are pretty well blended in the term 'choice,' and thus that is 
 the most characteristic moral term. 
 
 The essence of this account of choice is obviously the con- 
 ception of it as the normal outcome of the process of will, the 
 conclusion of a process which in its primary stage is named 
 impulse, and at a latter stage deliberation (intellectual) and 
 effort (emotional). It is thus opposed to those conceptions 
 which regard all that goes on before as non-voluntary, and 
 regards choice alone as act of will. The latter makes will, 
 self, personality, an entity existing outside of the operations of 
 impulse, habit, desire, reflection, etc., and coming in ab extra 
 to settle a process which in itself is endless, and to import an 
 ethical element into a process otherwise mechanical. Upon 
 the basis of psychological analysis, there is no more a dualism 
 between non-volitional data on one side, and will, on the 
 other, than there is in the process of intellectual judgment. 
 We do not have, in the latter, two separate faculties, one, that 
 of gathering data, weighing, rejecting and accepting evidence, 
 the other, an outside power, reason, to draw the inference. 
 The whole process is rational in form, and is determined by 
 rational considerations as to its content; the drawing of the 
 inference is the conclusion arrived at when the data assume 
 coherency and completeness that is, exhibit neither such 
 mutual contradictions as to stimulate the mind to make them 
 over, nor such gaps as to set the mind hunting up more facts. 
 
 Self-made problems incapable of solution, result from the 
 indentification of volitional action with choice alone, difficulties 
 which are not existent upon the other theory. Such questions 
 as these arise only to be unanswerable: What induces the will 
 to interfere? how does it know the proper time at which to do 
 so? is it unerring in its selection of time, or may it operate too 
 soon or too late? are the sources of error in the will or in the 
 outside soliciting elements? upon what basis does the will 
 select this side rather than that ? etc. , etc. , all the iutermin-
 
 122 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 
 
 able discussions, in fact, which since the time of the scholastics 
 have haunted the problem of freedom of will. No justifica- 
 tion in the psychology of will can be found for the view which 
 gives rise to these insoluble difficulties; whether the explana- 
 tion of moral freedom and responsibility demands them will be 
 considered later. 
 
 The foregoing account implies that choice and doing (the 
 deed) are morally identical. This appears to run against the 
 conviction of practical sense that we can choose to do a thing 
 at a future time, make up our mind to act in a certain way, at, 
 a distant period that choice is not doing but getting ready to 
 do. Cannot a man choose to eat without beginning to eat, 
 choose to go to Europe without at once starting? The consid- 
 eration of this difficulty will serve to bring out more clearly 
 the identity. 
 
 A more appropriate name than choice for conclusions of 
 the sort indicated is decision. The question is not a merely 
 verbal one, in some cases only the intellectual phase of the 
 process is developed, and accordingly, the conclusion is still 
 abstract, hypothetical. To say that I have decided to act in a 
 certain way if attacked by a burglar, or to go to Europe, etc., 
 means that intellectually I present a certain hypothetical case 
 to myself and draw the appropriate conclusion. It is an antic- 
 ipation or prior rehearsal which gets the various relevant con- 
 ditions before one and thus shortens and facilitates the actual 
 choice when that is necessary. We decide to do so and so, if 
 something happens. We decide not to act, but how to act. 
 The categorical, concrete implication of the whole self does not 
 occur, hence no deed and no true choice. 
 
 In cases whicli are not intellectual preparations, choice 10 
 really a beginning to act on the spot. If I really choose to 
 eat an apple, I at once bend all my energies to getting it; 
 if I do not begin on the spot, choice is still hypothetical; I 
 choose to when I get a good chance. If I really choose to go 
 to Europe, while outwardly a spectator may not see the action 
 commence, psychologically the deed at once begins. I now,
 
 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 123 
 
 at once, act differently than I would otherwise, and this differ- 
 ent way of acting is an actual part, under the circumstances of 
 going to Europe. 
 
 The moral meaning of this identity of choice and act comes 
 out in such an illustration as this: A person virtually says, 'I 
 decide, I will to reform, but circumstances are such that I 
 must do this one evil act; to-morrow I positively will do bet- 
 ter.' Such a person is simply deceiving himself. He still 
 wills the evil thing and that only; the supposition that he has 
 chosen another line, and that this is an exception which 
 doesn't count, is one of the best (and commonest) devices 
 imaginable for keeping one's self from squarely facing things 
 as they are. The person who wills merely to do something in 
 the future is in an impossible state psychologically and a dan- 
 gerous one morally. The identity of choice, deed and will is 
 the culmination of psychology, as well as the supreme moral 
 lesson . 
 
 SECTION XXXIX. THE ETHICS OF FREEDOM AND RESPON- 
 SIBILITY. 
 
 The etbica^cpjxsfcrjtion of freedom is the recognition of the 
 meaning for conduct of the identity of self and act, of will and 
 deed. There is no Factor in "tne~~HcT~foreign or alien to the 
 agent^>etff-iti~hjmself through and through. No action is 
 moral (that is, falling in the moral sphere) save as voluntary, 
 and every voluntary act, as the entire foregoing analysis indi- 
 cates, is the self operating, and hence is free. Impulse is self, 
 the developing ideal is self; the reaction ef the ideal as meas- 
 uring and controlling impulse is self. The entire voluntary, 
 process is one of self-expression, of coming to consciousness of 
 self. This intimate and thorough going selfness of the deed 
 constitutes freedom. 
 
 Ethical writers have distinguished ' formal ' and ' substan- 
 tial ' freedom; and have claimed that only right acts are really 
 free. This claim involves this truth: Every conscious act in 
 free in the sense that it expresses the self; it is psychologically
 
 124 THE STUDY OP ETHICS. 
 
 free. But is the intention, the purpose, of self, one ' really 
 possible' ? Does it square with the conditions of things, with 
 the laws of the universe? Is it possible for the self to be what 
 it would be? No intention guarantees its own execution. It* 
 execution depends upon the co-operation of reality; it must fit 
 into the forces which really make up the course of events. 
 Now if the self has a solid intention, one which reality itself 
 reinforces, one whose execution is guaranteed by the conditions 
 of the case, the agent is said to be really, as well as formally, 
 free. But if his intention is merely subjective, if it involves 
 objective impossibilities, the attempt at execution involves 
 friction, loss, a negative, or destructive, reaction of deed into 
 self. In such cases, the agent is really (ethically) in bondage. 
 He is self contradictory. He cannot express the self he aims 
 to express. It is not so much a paradox as it seems, to say 
 that only the good can be really willed; that we only seem to 
 will, only go through the motions or form of willing, the bad. 
 
 This same identity of self and deed is, of course, the basis- 
 of responsibility. We are responsible for our deeds because 
 they are ourselves. Responsibility is a name for the fact that 
 we are, and are something definite and concrete specific indi- 
 viduals. I am myself, I am conscious of myself in my deeds 
 (self-conscious), I am responsible, name not three facts, but 
 one fact. 
 
 There is a formal and a substantial responsiblity. One is 
 liable, accountable, held responsible for his acts, because they 
 are himself. This is formal responsibility, and may coincide 
 with moral irresponsiblity. Every bad man is (in the sub- 
 stantial sense) irresponsible; he cannot be counted upon in 
 action, he is not certain, reliable, trustworthy. He does not 
 respond to his duties, to his functions. His impulses and 
 habits are not coordinated, and hence do not answer properly 
 to the stimuli, to the demands made. The vicious man is not 
 socially responsible, and one part of his nature does not respond 
 to the whole. Irresponsibility is but another name for his lack 
 of unity, of integrity; being divided within himself, he ia
 
 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 125 
 
 unstable, we can never be sure of him, he is not sure of him- 
 self. Yet this is consistent with formal responsibility. He is 
 capable of forseeing consequences, and of having these fore- 
 seen consequenses influence or modify his conduct. The per- 
 son who fails in one respect or other of these factors is insane, 
 imbecile or morally immature and is not responsible. 
 
 One's conduct calls forth certain reactions from others 
 reactions as natural as those called forth when one comes in 
 contact with a physical force. The individual lives as truly in 
 a social as in a physical environment, and the reaction of 
 the one to his deed is as much an intrinsic organic consequence 
 of the deed as that of the other. If the individual has not 
 properly mediated his habit or impulse, if he acts upon inten- 
 tion which is one sided, the reaction brings out that factor of 
 the deed. In one case, it may be the burn from putting his 
 hand in the fire, the other case the rebuke or punishment for 
 violating or coining short of social functioning. This is no 
 external consequence (see pp. 14-16); it is an organic factor 
 of his deed, formerly hidden, but brought to light through the 
 action. The deed executed brings the agent to a more definite 
 consciousness of himself; the reactions of others in the way 
 of praise or blame are simply phases of the return of the 
 deed into the agent, arousing him to consciousness of certain 
 features hitherto obscure. A person who is not capable of 
 such experiences, of having the consequences of his action 
 react back into himself, and become motives or modify char- 
 acter, is not (even formally) responsible; one who has this 
 capacity is responsible. This capacity for mediation is not the 
 cause, and responsibility the effect; this capacity for mediation 
 is responsibility. 
 
 But if this power of being influenced by the foreseen conse- 
 quences is a habit we have substantial respousiblity. This is 
 an attainment, a conquest, not an original possession; it is a 
 name for virtue or Tightness of will. Such a man is respon- 
 sible in his acts, not simply liable for them. He does not try 
 to escape himself in his deeds; when they are bad, he does not
 
 126 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 
 
 try to escape himself in his deeds; when they are bad, he does 
 not ' lay it off ' on circumstances, but stands up to the reckon- 
 ing, and in the very identification of himself with the evil 
 deed in its consequences gets beyond it. He meets the 
 demands of the situation. He is sufficiently interested in his 
 function adequately to translate it into its rational detail of 
 specific aims, and to carry out these aims to overt conclusion 
 in deeds. Just as to say that a man is truly free is to recog- 
 nize his realization of moral good, so to say that one is truly 
 responsible is to give him the highest commendation for actual 
 faithfulness to duty. 
 
 SECTION XL. DETERMINIST AND INDETERMINIST THEORIES. 
 
 We are, however, told that man cannot be responsible 
 unless he is free in another sense; that a man cannot be respon- 
 sible unless at the time when he acted he could equally well 
 have acted otherwise than as he did act, and this without 
 any change of character and motive. We are told that self- 
 blame, remorse, etc., are inexplicable without this freedom of 
 indifference; and that rebuke and punishment from others 
 become meaningless and unjust without such freedom. All 
 arguments to this effect seem to rest upon an ambiguity. 
 Just so far as a man believes that he was forced to act as he 
 did act, he excuses himself and rightly; the act was not him- 
 self at all, it was the external compulsory force that really 
 acted. The condition of responsibility, that the deed be the 
 concrete will or unified self, is absent. The confusion comes 
 in when absence of adequate self-motivation is substituted for 
 absence of external compulsion. 'I might have done other- 
 wise' that consciousness is itself my miserable condition, my 
 blame or remorse, and not simply a condition of it (pp. 77-8); 
 but what it means is not that I might arbitrarily or with no 
 different self have done otherwise, but that the sole reason for 
 my acting as I did lies in myself, is attributable to no external 
 cause. I might have done otherwise had I been a better self, 
 had I been a worthy person had I been one to whom this
 
 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 127 
 
 right end adequately appealed, but I was not such an one; I 
 was just such an one as would do this sort of deed, which I now 
 see in all its badness; this is ray blame. 
 
 The whole problem arises because the objector insists upon 
 carrying the dualism between agent and deed which he li.ra- 
 self makes over into the doctrine of his opponent. He contin- 
 ually says: 'Ah, then, according to your doctrine, the agent 
 at the time he acted could not have done otherwise than as he 
 did; this I call not freedom but necessity.' He has simply 
 imported here his own separation of agent and act. Upon the 
 basis of the theory against which the objection is brought, this 
 sentence must be rendered as follows: 'The man was himself 
 and did act precisely as he acted.'* 
 
 The entire sting of the proposition vanishes and it becomes 
 a harmless truism. But the content of this truism gives the 
 only basis of responsibility. Everything which lessens or 
 loosens the concrete, specific organic connection of the agent 
 with his act, in just so much relieves the agent from responsi- 
 bility for his act. if the abstract, metaphysical will or self 
 intervenes between the concrete self, the impulses, habits, ends, 
 and the deed, then it and not this concrete individuality must 
 assume the responsibility for the act; it is none of my doing. 
 
 )ln the desire^tojnagujfy the self, the indeterminists d-iiy the 
 Specific, real self, whiV.h ia in ^fl fthrmiprh action. ^.nil prfwt an 
 abstract, outeide self, re4acing fre^yfp, f/> n 'fif^/Miniify an( j 
 rt-sp >n.<:M!ity \<> a myth. 
 
 Only a few of the indeterminists carry the argument be- 
 yond an expansion, generally rhetorical and hortatory, of the 
 dependence of self-blame and just punishment upon ability to 
 have acted otherwise. Martineau has attempted a more de- 
 tailed statement (Study of Religion, Book III., ch. II., vol. II., 
 esp. pp. 210-227.) An analysis of this shows that the real 
 origin of the doctrine of indifference is not the need of justify- 
 
 *The 'determinism,' in other words is a logical determinate- 
 ness, and not an external pre-determmism. See an article in the 
 Monist, vol. III., p. 362, The Superstition of Necessity.
 
 128 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 
 
 ing moral responsibility, but a defective psychological analysis 
 of will, making of it an impossible abstraction. 
 
 Mr. Martineau gives the following case (pp. 213-215.) You 
 suffer from calumny admitting disproof; to make the exculpa- 
 tion would cast a shadow on some one else, or embitter some 
 precious friendship. The impulse to exculpate self is arrested 
 by another impulse, equally natural. Now in the decision of 
 this conflict Martineau claims that the following factors are 
 involved: 
 
 (1) " The^two-vincompatible springs of action; (2) Your own 
 past, i, e., a c^rtainTormedsyst5fiT~or~habits and dispositions 
 brought from your own previous use of life. The former head 
 comprises the, motives that are offered; the latter the character 
 that has come to be. Do these settle the matter between them? 
 
 * * * Or, is our account of what is there still incomplete, and 
 must we admit that besides our formed habit or past self, there is 
 also a, present self that has a part to perform in reference to both? 
 
 * * * In all cases of self-consciousness and self-action there is 
 necessarily this duplication of the ego into the objective, that con- 
 tains the felt and predicated phenomena at which we look, or may 
 look, and the subjective, that apprehends and uses them. It is 
 with the latter that the preferential power and personal causality 
 reside." And further (p. 216): 
 
 "I submit that no one can sincerely deem himself incapable 
 by nature of controlling his impulses and modifying his acquired 
 character. That he is able to make them the objects of examina- 
 tion, comparison and estimate, places him in a judicial and authori- 
 tative attitude towards them, and would have no meaning if he 
 were not to decide what influence they should have. The casting 
 vote, and verdict upon the offered motives is with him, and not 
 with themselves; he is 'free' to say 'yes' or 'no' to any of their 
 suggestions; they are the conditions of the act; he is its agent. 
 
 * * * * you do not let yourself sway to and fro with varying 
 fling of the motives upon your character, like a floating log on an 
 advancing and retreating wave; but address yourself to an active 
 handling of their pretensions. * * * * You yourself, as a per- 
 sonal centre of intelligence and causality are at the head of the 
 transaction and determine how it shall go." 
 
 The passage has been quoted at length because it clearly 
 reveals the process which leads to the fiction of a distinct, 
 deciding self, a self separate from the material estimated, the 
 impulses competing. That process is an unreal abstraction of
 
 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 129 
 
 motive on one side, and of character on the other. These 
 abstractions being erected into fixed things, some other power 
 h:i- to be brought in to make up for the omitted elements and 
 to bridge the gulf: Martineau's third factor, or self in which 
 alone selecting power resides. If motive and if character were 
 what Martiueau assumes them to be, certainly something else 
 would be required to get a moral action under way. 
 
 (1) Consider the matter from the side of ' motive,' and see 
 what an impossible abstraction Mr. Martineau has made. 
 Here is" the impulse to clear one's repute; there the impulse 
 not to hurt the friend's reputation or affection. And these 
 set over against character, and supposed to be acting upon it 
 or acted on by it ! A very moderate amount of reflection will 
 reveal that each impulse is what it is, in intensity,* in intel- 
 lectual significance and in moral weight, as a function of char- 
 acter. The desire to clear my standing cannot even occur to 
 me save as I have certain habits and dispositions. Its very 
 existence is the expression of a certain tendency of character; 
 what it is, whether a mere dislike to be thought ill of, a love 
 of popularity for its own sake, a recognition of the commercial 
 or professional value of good standing, or the need of having 
 everything that concerns one squared and true all this is con- 
 stituted wholly by character; finally, the weight which it has 
 with respect to other 'motives,' the relative value attached to 
 it, the whole process of estimation, etc., is a process of internal 
 development, of revelation of the extent to which character is 
 bound up with, is present in the motive. The mere appear- 
 ance of the 'impulse' is the immediate, hasty, possibly super- 
 ficial moving of character in a given direction; the constitution 
 of its intellectual significance and moral import is the mediated, 
 persistent assertion of self, developing itself in this defined 
 direction. And the completion of the motive is the volition, 
 the deed. 
 
 * Martineau afterwards recognizes this much (p. 229), but with- 
 out reconstructing his theory of motives at all. They still remain 
 objective, phenomenal, etc., etc.
 
 130 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 
 
 (2) Equally fictitious is the assumption of the character 
 as fixed, given or presupposed. One would imagine from Mr. 
 Martineau's account that habit means only mechanical routine, 
 formation is equivalent to fossilization and organization to a 
 static arrest of development. When one reflects that the dif- 
 ference in the dynamic efficiency of amoeba and man is the 
 difference in habits, in structure, in organization, one sees how 
 much truth is likely to be arrived at from this assumption. 
 
 j-jcJ^*- "-" *i n fili r igid attainment were it only for the reason 
 that every habit is a dependent function of the whole organism, 
 is a member of a system of habits, and must co-ordinate, must 
 stimulate and be stimulated by others must, in a word, be 
 flexible, continually readjusting itself. The development of 
 volition is a continued exhibition, self-revelation of character, 
 just as the formation of motive is one with passage of self into 
 unified activity or deed. We know what we are and what we 
 can be only through what we do. If character were this solid, 
 inert lump that Mar tinea u conceives it, undoubtedly it could 
 not originate an act which is free and responsible. But in 
 reality the whole process of initiating impulse, considering, 
 deliberating, choosing is a movement of character aiming at 
 adequate discovery and exhibition of self. 
 
 (3) The necessity of the third factor, the deciding self, "is 
 a necessity originated wholly through the failure to recognize 
 the present moving self in 'motive' and 'character.' Tlje 
 defect comes out clearly when we find the problem stated as if 
 it were an alternative between determination of the volition by 
 character and motive, or by the Self, the free will. It is in 
 reality simply a question oTthe resolution of a volition into its 
 definite factors. There is no third thing, a volition, deter- 
 mined by motive; the volition is the completed motive; and 
 just so it is _the exhibited character, the fulfilled self. The 
 introduction of self as a third factor (instead of the recognition 
 that the whole process is one of self-movement) marks the 
 break, due to defective psychological analysis, between char- 
 acter and deed. It is the flagrant symbol of the failure to
 
 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 131 
 
 recognize that the' deed is the concrete agent, the self in func- 
 tional (that is, definitive and co-ordinated) activity. 
 
 The truth of the matter is that Martineau (and so with all 
 the other indetermiuists) simply accepts the adequacy of the 
 necessitarian psychology of volition up to a certain point, 
 accepts its dualistic separation of impulse and motive from 
 self, and then, seeing the ethical insufficiency, help themselves 
 out by bringing in the Deus ex Machina, a Free Will. This 
 is the reason the contests between inde'erminists and determin- 
 ists (in the causational, not logical sense) are so futile and un- 
 ending. Both have the same premises, the product of inade- 
 quate psychological analysis. The only way to 'rescue ' free- 
 dom from the attack of the determinist is not to bring it in as 
 a 'third factor,' but to reconstruct the theory of motive and 
 character to bring out the functional presence of the self in 
 them, and their consequent flexible, dynamic structure. 
 
 The criticism of the iudeterrainist holds equally, therefore, 
 against the determiuist, that is, the predeterminist. He makes 
 the same abstraction of motive, erecting hunger, love of praise,, 
 modesty, etc., into little entities which pull and haul on a self 
 outside of them. Or, going into a wider field, he talks of the 
 determination of self by heredity and environment. He has 
 the two things, set over against each other, and with only a 
 mechanical connection between them, one of force, just as the 
 indeterminist can get only an arbitrary relation. They both 
 argue then as if it were a question between mechanical causa- 
 tion on one side, and arbitrary interference on the other, forget- 
 ting that both alternatives arise from the unexamined assump- 
 tion of the dualism of self and ideal and motive. The whole 
 controversy vanishes in thin air when we substitute for the 
 determination of volition by circumstances or by Free Will, the 
 determination of Self in volition, in deed its passage into 
 definite, unified activity. 
 
 The best statement of the determinist position will be found in 
 Bain, Emotions and Will, ch. XI. For indeterininism, see, besides 
 the above reference to Martineau, his Types, vol. II., pp. 34r-8;
 
 132 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 
 
 Lotze, Practical Philosophy and James, Unitarian Review, vol. 
 XXII., p. 193: Dilemma of Determinism (James's refutation of Pre- 
 determinism is convincing: but I see nothing in his positive argu- 
 ment for indeterminism which does not fall in with the determin- 
 ateness of action argued for above); Calderwood, Handbook, Part 
 II., chs. 3 and 4. Stephen's Science of Ethics, pp. 274-293, seems 
 to be in unstable equilibrium between predeterminism and deter- 
 minateness. Much the same may be said for Gizycki, Introduc- 
 tion, ch. VI. Green, Prolegomena, Book II., ch. I., would be in sub- 
 stantial agreement with the view above stated were it not for his 
 abstract view of the Self, which compels him to separate self as 
 ideal (future) from character, making the latter fixed, or past only, 
 and thus bringing him to the determination of deed by character 
 and circumstance. Alexander, Moral Order, pp. 336-341, does not 
 seem to me wholly free from the idea of character as static, but 
 brings out more clearly than any other writer that choice, prefer- 
 ence is freedom, and that it is irrational to try to get back of 
 choice as both indeterminist and predeterminist attempt to do. 
 Dr. Ritchie, Ethical Implications of Determinism, Philos. Rev., 
 vol. II. , p. 529, turns the tables neatly against the indeterminist's 
 usual assertion that he alone can ' rescue ' responsibility. (Gizycki 
 is strong here also; Hodgson's statement, quoted in Martineau, 
 Study, II., p. 224, is also excellent). Bradley's Ethical Studies, I., is 
 a thorough-going statement of the identity of freedom and respon- 
 sibility, as they are valued by the popular consciousness, with con- 
 crete Selfhood. Muirhead, Elements, pp. 50-54; and Mackenzie, 
 Manual, pp. 140-150, are in accord with the text, but hardly ade- 
 quate upon the psychological side. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. VIRTUE AND THE VIRTUES. 
 SECTION XLI. THE Two-FoLD STATEMENT OF VIRTUE. 
 
 It is implied iu what has already been said that virtue, the 
 active good will, or unified self, may be stated from either of 
 two standpoints; that of freedom or of responsibility. Virtue 
 may be considered either as a case of substantial freedom, of 
 solid, thoroughly unified action, or as a case of substantial re- 
 sponsibility, of flexible, properly adjusted, interaction the 
 adequate intellectual recognition of, and adequate emotional 
 interest iu, the demands of the situation. We have, here, the 
 emphasis, first upon one side, then upon another, of the idea 
 of coordination. Coordination implies the attained order, or- 
 ganization freedom. But as coordination, it implies the
 
 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 133 
 
 reciprocal adjustment of the various su&ordinate activities in- 
 volved responsibility. 
 
 It is because the unity of will is a functional, a dynamic 
 unity, because deed i.-i simply self in full activity, that freedom 
 and responsibility are the correlative phases of virtue. Every 
 organic function is maintained through the cooperation, the 
 working together of a number of organs, and the higher the 
 specialization of the function (the definiteuess of the deed), 
 the more comprehensive the number and scope of reinforcing 
 organs. 
 
 Freedom, again, names virtue from the standpoint of good, 
 of value; responsibility from the standpoint of duty. To be a 
 free and responsible self at every point, and in every act, is at 
 once the sole law and the sole end of conduct.* 
 
 This gives the solution of the apparent paradox of virtue. 
 Some writers insist that virtue is not virtue until it is wholly 
 free, or one's very nature, uutil it is spontaneous self-movement 
 from sheer inclination; that every sign of struggle, of effort, 
 of constraint, must be eliminated.f Others hold that it is the 
 essence of virtue to express effort, resistance and conquest; it 
 is, in Kant's expressive words, "the moral disposition warring," 
 in Laurie's, "it is mediation through pain." (Ethica, p. 145.) 
 Now a case can be made out for either of these positions; and 
 this fact would seem to indicate some common ground. This 
 is found, I think, in the fact that both contentions have in view 
 in their conception of virtue the wholeness of the self in the 
 deed, but approach it from different points of view. The first 
 view thinks of the relation of the whole to the part, rein- 
 forcing, completing it; the self so present in the deed that 
 there is no resistance, so that we, as Emerson says, "do by 
 knowledge what the stones do by structure." It is the full- 
 ness of the mediation that is in mind. The second view thinks 
 
 *The principle, it may be observed, is formal in statement, j 
 because it is so full of detailed content in actuality. 
 
 fSee Aristotle, Ethics, Book II., ch. III., and still more ex- 
 pressly, Emerson, Spiritual Laws.
 
 134 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 
 
 of the readjustment of the original, or isolated, tendency, of 
 the part, involved in its membership in the whole. It thinks 
 of the reconstruction, the readjustment involved in mediation. 
 It is not because there has been no struggle that we identify 
 virtue with full, easy nature, nor is it merely because of strug- 
 gle that we identify virtue with conquest. It is, in both cases, 
 because conquest means struggle brought to an issue. We 
 know well enough that the man to whom virtue is natural has 
 had his own fights, and we reverence him the more 'that he has 
 subdued his own enemies, and not inflicted part of the burden 
 upon us, nor distracted our own efforts by continually calling 
 attention to his. We reverence him because he has turned 
 even his struggle into power. 
 
 We may assume that the position of maximum ease and 
 aesthetic freedom in the human body is not one of impotence 
 or flabbiness, or even of being asleep; but the maximum exer- 
 tion of all the muscles, the limit being found in the principle 
 of balance. In looking at such a poise, one might praise it as 
 indicating the power of doing maximum work, another as indi- 
 cating that it is not work but play. So, after all, there is no 
 inconsistency in the statement that it is not easy to be virtuous, 
 and that yet we are not virtuous till it is -easy. 
 
 SECTION XLIT. THE CLASSIFICATION OP VIRTUES. 
 
 Virtue being the wholeness of self, the full and definite 
 manifestation of agent in act (the adequate mediation of im- 
 pulse), the various virtues will naturally name various phases 
 of this act. The main phases were first hit upon by Plato 
 (Republic) and have since been named the 'cardinal virtues.' 
 These are wisdom (practical judgment), temperance, (self-con- 
 trol), courage and justice. After the psychological analysis 
 now completed, the derivation and significance of the virtues 
 should be obvious. Wisdom, as a virtue, is evidently the 
 habit of considering the bearings and relations of a given act; 
 it is the habit of interpreting and appreciating it in terms of 
 the self, of taking it concretely and seriously, instead of ab-
 
 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 135 
 
 stractly; whether the abstraction be of brute irrationality, or 
 of that sentimentality which sometimes constitutes an over- 
 refined culture and sometimes a crude flippancy. It is, in 
 short, the habit of defining impulse in terms of its objective 
 content, a preparation for giving its due function, of attaching 
 it to its proper use. 
 
 The over-subjective ethics of one-sided individualism, fos- 
 tered by evangelical phases of Protestantism, need a recon- 
 struction upon the basis of Hellenic thought as regards this 
 virtue. The modern ' I have to follow my conviction ' finds 
 substantiality only in the ancient 'wisdom is the guarantee of 
 all virtues.' There is and can be no duty of living up to con- 
 viction till we have some surety as to the rationality of convic- 
 tion; no duty of ' obeying conscience ' till we have taken pains 
 to have an instructed conscience. Moral education requires a 
 shifting of the centre of obligation, locating it less in the mere 
 doing of what seems to be right and more as the habit of 
 searching for what is really right. As mediaeval Catholicism, 
 in its consciousness of the superiority of spirit over matter, is 
 accused of confusing dirt with piety, so modern Evangelical- 
 ism, in its emphasis upon moral emotion and attitude, is open 
 to the charge of encouraging an ignorant sentimentalism at the 
 expense of a truthfulness which is not simply formal truth- 
 telling, but which insists upon knowing what the truth is. 
 
 The tendency to derogate from the ethical claims of knowl- 
 '<ln- on the ground that knowledge is merely intellectual, is 
 entirely aside from the point. As long as an idea (an aim, 
 purpose, reason) is essentially involved in voluntary conduct, 
 so long responsibility will attach to the formation of the idea, 
 and attention to this need will be a virtue. While the idea 
 itself, in its content, is 'merely intellectual,' that factor deter- 
 mining what this content shall be, is not 'intellectual' at all; 
 it is character: which may be stated, in emotional terms as the 
 interest in the adequate recognition of what one is doing; in 
 volitional terms, as the habit of attending to the bearing and 
 value of acts. In short, it is that phase of virtue ordinarily
 
 136 THE STUDY OF ETHIC8. 
 
 termed conscientiousness. The Socratic identification of wis- 
 dom and virtue is much nearer the truth than the modern 
 view which, holding to knowing the good and still doing the 
 evil, substitutes a conventional state of being informed, a 
 second hand, representative or symbolic set of opinions, for 
 vital intelligence. 
 
 So much for the mediate side. But we have also the rela- 
 tion of the mediate and immediate the tension due to their 
 interaction. Now because this is a process of mediation, not 
 of suppression or substitution, each phase of the process must 
 duly assert itself. If the process be looked at from the side of 
 the necessity of self-assertion of impulse, we have courage. 
 Courage, as a virtue, is the habit of adequate persistence on 
 the part of impulse, in the face of external resistance or 
 obstacles, such as, when transformed into self-experience, give 
 rise to fear. 
 
 But mediation involves change of direction, and this in 
 volves the adequate assertion of the mediating activity. As 
 the present felt pleasure is apt to be connected with the imme- 
 diate impulse, representing as that does some assured satis- 
 faction of the past, we seem here to have a struggle against 
 pleasure, as, in the case of courage, one against pain. The 
 virtue of adequate assertion of the mediating activity is self- 
 control, temperance, in the Greek sense of whole- mindedness. 
 
 The. man under self-control does not go off at a tangent, 
 he does not act partially; he has himself in hand, at command, 
 and hence acts as a whole. Unfortunately, the virtue has 
 become associated mainly with the negative aspect of this vir- 
 tue, with the immorality of false asceticism and false Puritan- 
 ism. Self-denial has flourished upon the perversion. The 
 rational injunction, deny yourself this or that satisfaction, has 
 been changed into the impossible and immoral injunction, 
 Deny Yourself without qualification. That is, the need of 
 checking the primary tendency of a desire, the need of trans- 
 forming it by attaching it to a more functional end has been 
 perverted into a need for suppressing, or, if that is impossible,
 
 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 137 
 
 minimizing, desire itself. The continual assumption has been 
 that appetite itself is evil. In reality the negative phase of 
 temperance is hut the partial development of the positive, 
 arrested in its incompleteness. It is but a step, a means; as 
 an end it is meaningless. The positive phase, clearly embod- 
 ied iu the term ' control,' is power; efficiency as an agent or 
 instrument. To abstain, to mortify, this, taken absolutely, 
 is immoral; to attain mastery, to live, undergoing whatever 
 sacrifice and refusal of particulars may be involved in the 
 attainment of full power, is the law of self.* 
 
 There is need for a return to the Greek standpoint from 
 which many traits now regarded as gifts of fortune, or as 
 happy acquirements, as talents or mere accomplishments, were 
 considered as virtues. The very term ' intellectual virtue ' 
 sounds strangely to our ears, so given up are we to the habit 
 of considering knowledge as the choice possession of a few. 
 Yet continuity of thought, power of concentration, clear-sight- 
 edness, sincerity, all these are but particular forms which the 
 one virtue of conscientiousness assumes, and there can be no 
 concrete conscientiousness save when these specific powers are 
 developed according to the measure of the agent. So persist- 
 ence, patience, honor, good humor are but the varied mani- 
 festations of courage, while readiness, alertness, flexibility, 
 industry, balance, decorum are as much forms of self-control 
 as are chastity, and moderation in eating and drinking. All the 
 so-called minor morals, or manners, in fact, are but the 
 detailed contents of the great or cardinal virtues, their trans- 
 lation into the daily detail without which conduct is a barren 
 ideality, an iridescent dream. If it be said that concentra- 
 tion of attention, good humor, presence of mind, equable tem- 
 perament are gifts of ' nature, the answer is 'Yes,' as capaci- 
 
 *So far as ' egoism' and 'altruism' is a psychological problem, 
 this principle applies there also. To say that altruism is a defini- 
 tion of the ego, indicating its essential outgoing character, is one 
 thing; to suppose that besides the self there is another end is to 
 affirm a psychological impossibility. The sole value of the idea of 
 altruism, in other words, is in forming a demand for a wide and 
 flexible conception of self.
 
 138 THE STUDY OP ETHICS. 
 
 ties, 'No,' as habits. And precisely the same is to be said of 
 truthfulness, modesty, honesty, charity, or any virtue which 
 has a secured place in the catalogue of the Moral Pantheon. In 
 every case there is a natural impulse in the given direction, 
 which becomes virtue when transformed into a rational habit 
 that is, into an impulse attached to the realizing of a certain 
 end or idea. Our failure to recognize these traits as true vir- 
 tues does not mark, as we are apt to flatter ourselves, an 
 advance over the Greeks in distinguishing between the gifts of 
 nature and the attainments of will; it marks rather a falling 
 off in the standards of responsibility, a more abstract idea of 
 will. 
 
 The conception that Justice is a term applied to the pro- 
 cess in its entirety, designating its organic character, the 
 adequate and completed unification of impulse and reason, 
 may be approached by reflection upon the mutual dependencies 
 existing between wisdom, temperance and courage. Wisdom 
 is impossible without courage; what makes our intentions, our 
 ideals, imperfect is our unwillingness to face the thought of 
 consequences of a given habit or desire; our tendency to shy 
 when the first unpleasant thought comes to view. There is no 
 courage in the world like the courage of holding ourselves 
 fairly and squarely to the import of our own deeds. From 
 this point of view, all vice is letting things drift, waiting to 
 see what will turn up, hoping for a turn of luck, a miraculous 
 intervention which shall come between our deed and its legi- 
 timate fruit. (See James II., pp. 563-564, for an excellent 
 statement.) Wisdom is equally dependent upon temperance. 
 To follow the lead of appetite, of passion, is the same thing as 
 not to think. The checked impulse, the arrested habit, ia 
 reflection commenced. The self-denial of prejudice, of hasty 
 assumption, of one-sided opinion, of cherished tradition is as 
 real and as virtuous as the conquest of any lust of the flesh. 
 The interdependence of courage and temperance stands out on. 
 the face of things when we give the latter its positive name, 
 self-control. Self-control is ever passing into self-assertion;
 
 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 139 
 
 the fruit of the spirit into second nature. On the other side, 
 there is no rejection of the solicitations of pleasure, of the 
 allurements of the Siren, that is not equally ability to bear the 
 infliction of pain. All these mutual dependencies are inexpli- 
 cable, if, making an entity of each virtue, we suppose them to 
 be causal. They are inevitable if courage, temperance and 
 wisdom denote simply phases of every moral act; and the name 
 is given according to the phase which, in a given case, happens 
 to be uppermost. 
 
 Justice, then, is the name for the deed in its entirety; it 
 names as a whole what we name in aspects when we use the 
 other virtues. It is not another virtue; it is the system of 
 virtue, the organized doing: whose organic members are wis- 
 dom, the will to know; courage, the impulse to reach, control, 
 the acquired power to do. 
 
 Justice is the habit of maintaining function, concrete indi- 
 viduality, in its supremacy and of giving every impulse, desire, 
 habit its value according to its factorship in this function. Jus- 
 tice conveys so fully, in the very term, its meaning of regard for 
 the whole, but for the whole maintained by the positive main- 
 tenance of its parts as organs, instead of by their suppression, 
 that it is hardly possible to bring out the idea more closely 
 with any number of words. 
 
 Aristotle (Ethics, Book V., ch. 1), points out a supposed 
 ambiguity of meaning in the term justice; in one sense, it is 
 equivalent to obedience to law, and equals complete virtue; in 
 this sense the just man is the man who fulfills all requirements, 
 the good man. In the other sense, it means fairness, equity; 
 the just man being he who demands simply his share in an ap- 
 "portionment. The first sense is the whole of virtue; the second 
 simply a part, according to Aristotle. 
 
 There can be no doubt of these two senses, and yet I think 
 practical sense is wiser iu fusing them than Aristotle in separ- 
 ating them. It seems, again, to be a case of considering the 
 organization of self in action, the co-ordination of impulse and 
 habit, from the standpoint first of the co ordination as such, of
 
 140 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 
 
 the whole, and then of the process of co-ordering the constit- 
 uent factors. The just man (in the first sense), is after all 
 simply the man who is fair, impartial in meeting demands; he 
 is the man who adequately distributes his attention, giving to 
 each impulse and habit precisely its place, neither more nor 
 less, in the whole function. Because the unity of a good act 
 is a unity of function, that is of content, an organization (not 
 simply a formal unity), it must have the aspect of the adjust- 
 ment, the fitting in of one part to another. But co-ordination 
 both as effective organization, and as mutual adjustment of 
 parts according to the claims of each (equity), is goodness as a 
 whole; the difference is simply one of emphasis. If justice as 
 obedience to moral law is severed from justice as equity, as due 
 attention to every aspect of one's nature, it becomes external, 
 the law is no one knows what, and obedience is mere con- 
 formity. If justice, as due sharing in the distribution of a 
 whole, is severed from justice as law-obeying, it loses all stand- 
 ard; there is no measure by which to tell what the due share 
 of each is. 
 
 And this suggests Aristotle's other division of justice into 
 corrective and distributive (Book V., chs. 3 and 4.) The 
 former is sharing in the distribution of an evil (i. e., punish- 
 ment), and its rule is arithmetical; i. e., make the individual 
 suffer according to his deed simple re-quital, redress. The 
 latter is sharing in the distribution of honor, wealth, etc., posi- 
 tive goods; and its law is not arithmetical equality, but geo- 
 metrical (that is, proportion, not simply equality of sums.) It 
 is fair, (equal) that the better citizen should receive more, not 
 the same honor as another; the workman of skill more, not the 
 same return as another. It seems obvious that when we deal 
 with this positive, distributive equity, we have nothing save 
 justice as full virtue. Certainly the man who gives value to 
 every impulse and habit according to its service in the consti- 
 tution of his function is precisely the good man, the man of 
 fully mediated impulse, of adequate concrete interests in life. 
 And this suggests that the current distinction between jua-
 
 THE- STUDY OF ETHICS. 141 
 
 tice as penal, and justice as concrete recognition of positive 
 merit by the share awarded an agent in the conferring of 
 praise, honor or wealth, is far too rigid. Justice, in this dis- 
 tributive aspect, involves the whole question of merit and 
 blame, and of rendering a man his due. If we ask what is 
 his due, we are told his deserts; his merits according to his 
 service. Then into this answer, not so much true as tautolog- 
 ical, is unconsciously inserted an assumption of the most 
 momentous character. The question, what is a man's due, his 
 desert, his merit; that is, what estimate is to be set upon him; 
 remains wholly unanswered; but unconsciously there is smug- 
 gled in the assumption that worth is static, that it is to be 
 measured by what the man has done; that what the man has 
 done is somehow complete in itself, and serves to indicate his 
 merit, and, therefore, the way in which he should be treated. 
 Service is taken as some thing rendered, not as function. 
 
 Re-tribution, re-quital is, indeed, just; it is the good, and 
 the only good; but, after all, what is retribution? And the 
 assumption that it is an arithmetical measuring out to the indi- 
 vidual of pain similar to that which he has inflicted, the restor- 
 ing of an algebraic equation, is monstrous as an assumption, 
 even if it should turn out to be justified by examination. The 
 whole subject of a standard of measurement is ignored, and yet 
 that is the all determining question. 
 
 What is due the self is that it be treated as self; what is 
 due a man is that he be regarded in his manhood. Nothing 
 less than this is 'fair.' But a given deed taken as something 
 which has been performed is not the self, it is an isolation, an 
 arrest, an abstraction. The deed in its living concrete charac- 
 ter is activity; it has the whole self implicit in it, and that self 
 is an urgent, on-going power, not a finished performance, or a 
 settled accomplishment. What is due the self is that it be 
 made aware of itself in its deed, be brought to full conscious- 
 ness of itself through the mediation of the deed. In other 
 words, its due is that its deed in fact and not merely in name 
 be the self manifested, and that there follow the re-action, the
 
 142 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 
 
 
 reflection of the 'consequences' of the deed back into impulse 
 
 aud habit; that character be transformed and developed through 
 this continual mediation. 
 
 Now this reaction may be of a kind to inhibit, and require 
 modification of dominant habits. In that case there is pain, 
 punishment. The return of the deed into the agent's con- 
 sciousness is painful, negative, i. e., destructive. It tends to 
 disturb, to uproot existing tendencies or directions of action. 
 But this, of course, is but the first phase in re-construction, in 
 the re-adjustment; it is new habit beginning. That is, so far 
 as the pain is normal, and not pathological, it is reform. 
 Stated in the abused antithesis of current language, all punish- 
 ment is retribution, but the only genuine retribution is reform. 
 The conception that the desert of the self is anything other 
 than to be self is as monstrous in its content as it is as an 
 assumption. No man can concretely realize the definition of 
 the self involved in any other idea, without indignation at the 
 degradation, the meanness of character involved in the harbor- 
 ing of such an idea about manhood and life. The worst pes- 
 simism is not that which flaunts itself as such, but that which 
 damns human nature at its very heart. 
 
 But the very fact that it is necessary to spend so much 
 time upon justice as penal, shows how almost completely, 
 under the influence of one-sided aspects of Christianity, ethical 
 theory has come to be dominated by pathological, rather than 
 by healthy, physiological considerations. The normal case, 
 that to which punishment is incident, is the reaction of the 
 whole into the part, of function into habit, stimulating, rein- 
 forcing, expanding setting free. Justice is thus self-realiza- 
 tion. 
 
 The contention that the 'Platonic' classification of cardinal 
 virtues is incomplete, and needs to be supplemented by the 
 distinctively Christian virtues of faith, humility, aspiration 
 (reverence) and love is due simply to retaining narrow con- 
 ceptions of wisdom, courage, temperance and justice. Aspira- 
 tion, hope, if other than sentimental longing, is self-assertion,
 
 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 143 
 
 courage in its pure form; and the same may be said of the rela- 
 tion of temperance to humility, if the latter is other than arti- 
 ficial self effacement. Faith, as virtue, is but the adequate 
 consciousness of the practical character, the volitional stamp 
 of all knowledge: the staking one's self upon the reality of the 
 idea, affirming it absolutely as identical with self, instead of 
 resting content with the easy acknowledgment of it as mere 
 object. 
 
 When it was said that the ordinary conception of desert 
 concealed a momentous assumption, it was meant that the 
 whole dualism of justice and love is involved. If justice be 
 conceived as mere return to an individual of the equivalent of 
 what he has done; if his deeds, in other words, be separated 
 from his vital, developing self, and, if therefore, the 'equiva- 
 lent return ' ignore the profound and persistent presence of 
 self-hood in the deed, then it is true that justice is narrow in 
 its sphere, harsh in form, requiring to be supplemented by 
 another virtue of larger outlook and freer play Grace. Bat if 
 justice be the returning to a man of the equivalent of his deed, 
 and if, in truth, the sole thing which equates the deed is self, 
 then quite otherwise. Love is justice brought to self-con- 
 sciousness; justice with a full, instead of partial, standard of 
 value; justice with a dynamic, instead of static, scale of equi- 
 valency. 
 
 Psychologically, then, love as justice is not simply the 
 supreme virtue; it is virtue. It is the fulfilling of the law 
 the law of self. Love is the complete identification of subject 
 and object, of agent and function, and, therefore, is complete 
 in every phase. It is complete interest in, full attention to 
 the objects, the aims of life, and thus insures responsibility. 
 It provides the channels which give the fullest outlet to self, 
 which stirs up the powers and keeps them at their fullest ten- 
 sion, and thus guarantees, or is, freedom, adequate self-expres- 
 sion. It alone is wisdom, for anything but love fails to pene- 
 trate to the reality, the individuality of self, in every act, and 
 thus comes short in its estimate of values. It alone is cour-
 
 144 THE STUDY OF ETHICS. 
 
 age, for, in its complete identification with its object, obstacles 
 exist only as stimuli to renewed action. It alone is temper- 
 ance, for it alone provides an object of devotion adequate to 
 keep the agent in balance aud power. It alone is justice, deal- 
 ing with every object, aim and circumstance according to its 
 rights as a constituent, a member, an organ of self the sole 
 ultimate and absolute. 
 
 In many respects the discussions of virtue by Plato and Aris- 
 totle are still unequaled. The Platonic dialogues are so permeated 
 with the idea of virtue throughout that it is impossible to give 
 specific adequate references. The Republic, 427-434, suggests the 
 main principle. See Aristotle, Ethics, Books III., chs. 6-12; IV., 
 V. , VI. Modern ethics has been so occupied with the problem of 
 duty in its metaphysical and practical aspects as to very defective 
 in its treatment of virtue. For the most part, the question is 
 ignored or else there is given an empirical cataloguing of virtues, 
 with no attempt to discover any principle. Again, the writings 
 which do use a principle of classification generally use that of indi- 
 vidual and social virtues, failing to see that no matter how social 
 a virtue may be in its content and object, it must, as a quality of 
 character, or attitude and disposition of will, be capable of a 
 thorough going psychological statement. Since a certain type of 
 character, since the right activity of will, is confessedly the go~al 
 of all practical endeavor, the slighting of this goal in the theoret- 
 ical treatments, as if it were a mere incident or corollary, is the 
 more fatal. The following references will serve to indicate the 
 various methods of treatment: Sklgvvick, Methods of Ethics, Book 
 III., chs. 2-5; 9-10; Book IV., ch. 3; Spencer, Principles of Ethics, 
 Vol. II., especially, pp. 3-34 and 263-276 (Justice is public; Benefi- 
 cence private, and either negative or positive); Stephen, Science, 
 ch. V., courage, temperance, truthfulness individual, efficiency of 
 the agent; justice and benevolence, social vitality. In spite of 
 this (to me) false disjunction, Stephen's treatment is exceedingly 
 real and faithful in detail; Alexander, Moral Order and Progress, 
 pp. 242-253 (denies the value of psychological classification, hold- 
 ing they refer to social institutions has the advantage of sticking 
 to a single, instead of a cross, principle of classification.) 
 
 The question of ' natural ability ' vs. ' virtue ' is suggestively 
 handled by Hume, Treatise, Part II., Book III., Sec. 4, and Inquiry, 
 Appendix IV. See also Bonar, Intellectual Virtues. 
 
 The literature upon penal justice or punishment is almost end- 
 less. Emerson's Essay on Compensation has the advantage of 
 being written from the normal instead of the pathological point 
 of view, and is a good substitute for a large quantity of other 
 discussions.
 
 C/ 
 
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