FRIVATK LIBRARV 
 
 OF 
 
 Smitl|.
 
 ITV OF C 
 
 A SYLLABUS 
 
 BY JOHN DEWEY 
 
 ANN ARBOR MICHIGAN 
 
 REGISTER PUBLISHING COMPANY 
 
 Ube Unlani press 
 1894
 
 COPYRIGHT 
 
 JOHN DEWEY
 
 PEEFATOEY 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 y 
 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. 
 
 EEEATA. 
 
 Page 5, lines 14 and 15, for 'Jameson, The Moral' etc., read 
 
 ' James, on The Moral ' etc. 
 Page 19, line 16, for 'aserts,' read 'assert.' 
 Page 50, for 'Section XIV,' read 'XXVI.' 
 Page 73, for ' Chapter V,' read ' Chapter VI.' 
 Page 93, line 12, for 'quality is intrinsic,' read 'quality is 
 
 extrinsic.' 
 
 2052624
 
 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 73 
 
 Chapter VII. Nature of Obligation 94 
 
 Chapter VIII. Freedom and Responsibility 1 24 
 
 Chapter IX. Virtue and the Virtues 139
 
 SYLLABUS-ETHICAL THEORY. 
 
 CHAPTER I. NATURE OF ETHICAL THEORY. 
 
 SECTION I. SUBJECT-MATTER or 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.)OThird stage, reflective judgment as to reason for 
 such acts. 
 
 Ethical theory is simply (1) 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, 
 customary and legislative. 
 
 Demand for more systematic generalization arises when, 
 through 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 on 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: 
 the act done is done because it is thought to be worth ivhile, or 
 valuable.. Thus a man's real (as distinct from his nominal or
 
 2 
 
 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 Mur- 
 ray, Introduction to Ethics, pp. 1-7 ; Porter, Elements of 
 Moral Science, Introductory; Muirhead, Elements of Ethics, 
 chaps. 1 and 2 ; Mackenzie, Manual of Ethics, Introduction ; 
 Bowne, Principles of Ethics, Introduction. 
 
 SEC. II. RISE OF ETHICAL THEORY. 
 
 Origin of reflective morality was in Greece. Other ethical 
 codes were either customary or else conceived to be absolute em- 
 anations from a divine will. The Greek was in the habit of dis- 
 cussing questions regarding ends and means of life. This 
 strengthened*by growth of democracy. Also by methods of ed- 
 ucation, 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 to
 
 3 
 
 prove arbitrarily an act either right or wrong ; others holding 
 the source of moral law to be the superior power of the ruler. 
 Thus they raised the question whether moral distinctions exist 
 in the nature of things, or simply by arbitrary enactment, or 
 for convenience and expediency. While the Sophists them- 
 selves tended to answer the question in one of the two latter 
 senses, the dramatists (JEschylus 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 
 ability to refer the value of particular acts and aims to this 
 supreme end. He thus became the founder of conscious 
 ethical theory. 
 
 See Sidgwick, History of Ethics, esp. ch. 2 ; Grant, Ethics 
 . of Aristotle, ch. 2 ; Paulsen, Ethik, bk. 1, ch. 1 ; Grote, His- 
 
 (j ?** tory of Greece, chs. 57 and 58 ; Hegel, History of Philosophy 
 (trans, by Haldane), vol. 1 ; Fairbanks, on Sophocles's Ethics, 
 
 y International Journal of Ethics, vol. 2, 77 ; and Butcher, As- 
 pects of Greek Genius ; Hellenica, essays by Myers and Abbott. 
 Consult also histories of philosophy by Erdmann, Windelband, 
 and TJeberweg, 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 I, Chs. 2 
 and 3; Ch. 6; Book X, Ch. 9). The inference sometimes 
 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 
 statement 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. Ill 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 
 principle and a rule; former a method for action, latter a
 
 5 
 
 prescription for it; former experimental, latter fixed; former 
 orders in sense of setting in 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 
 to Ethics, pp. 338-360; Hoeffding, Ethik, pp. 1-9; Interna- 
 tional Journal of Ethics, Vol. I, No. 2, Art. by Dewey, on Moral 
 Theory and Moral Practice; p. 330, by Jamesws. ' The moral 
 Philosopher and the Moral Life (a very strong statement of -yj 
 
 the practical character of the moral judgment); Vol. 4, p. 160, , >I \V- 
 by Mackenzie, on Moral Science and Moral Life. .A w&^* W*^ 
 
 CHAPTEE II THE FACTORS OF MORAL CONDUCT. 
 THE AGENT AND HIS SPHERE OF ACTION. 
 
 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 and interest on the part of a conscious agent. 
 ( Spencer, Data of Ethics, Ch. I. ) 
 
 The elements involved in such reference of an act 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 
 what 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-
 
 6 
 
 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. 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 justifica- 
 tion by faith) and proclaimed the criterion of moral worth to 
 be in the personal attitude, rathor 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 chose 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. Ill, 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. 
 
 SECTION V. REFERENCE OF CONDUCT TO THE SPHERE OF ACTION. 
 In 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 
 and conscious, into certain habits of thinking and feeling as 
 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 tbis 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 offorded. 
 
 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 to 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 reacts into consciousness, and strengthens or modifies the 
 plan. All existing ideals of all practical (i. e., non-senti- 
 mental) agents are the outcome of such a struggle for 
 realization. 
 
 HISTORIC. At the outset of reflection, equal emphasis was 
 put upon 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, Kepublic, II. 368-9, IV. 427^45 ; 
 Aristotle, Ethics, X., ch. 9 ; Politics, I., chs. 1 and 2 ; III., ch. 
 12. The term ethos meant the disposition or prevailing habit 
 of the community (compare Lat. mos, mores), and it only 
 gradually shaded over into 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
 
 8 
 
 referred to, and partly to the general disintegration of local 
 customs and interests, consequent upon the growth of the 
 Boman Empire. (See Eenan, 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 -suffici- 
 ent to himself, independent of everything beyond himself 
 that is, everything beyond his own consciousness. (Sidgwick, 
 History of Ethics, pp. 70-73 ; Windelband, History of Philos- 
 ophy,' 164-170). The identification of the highest ideal with 
 a good capable of realization only through supernatural assist- 
 ance, and, as to content, only in another world, led in the 
 Middle Ages to considering the present conditions 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 steadily the other way. It has 
 culminated in the present generation 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 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. I., pp. 301 
 and 354, Hadley, Ethics as Political Science ; Mind, Vol. II., 
 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.,
 
 9 
 
 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 
 saying that in order to secure right conduct we find ourselves 
 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 de- 
 velop within the individual right plans, and to attach right 
 values to ends, save as these plans reflect the requirements of 
 the situation 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, &c. 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 
 is nothing but the complete co-ordination of all his poicers 
 (abilities) and relations. 
 
 \
 
 10 
 
 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 con- 
 crete powers, the impulses and habits, of an individual agent. 
 
 (See Alexander, Moral Order, pp. 97-130.) 
 
 SEC. VII. MOBAL 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, &c. 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 func- 
 tion, that finally fixes the organ (as food builds up the organ- 
 ism), and thus, indirectly or mediately, the environment is of 
 the most importance. (Compare the mutual dependence of 
 " apperception " and " retention." Psychology, p. 149. ) 
 
 It is equally an error then to consider either organ or en- 
 vironment 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. 
 J 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, 
 Part I., ch. 4; Psychology, Part III.; Ethics, pp. 75-76) has 
 defined life, mind, and conduct as adjustment of inner rela-
 
 11 
 
 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 exer- 
 cise of function itself tends to this transformation of environ- 
 ment. ( Illustrated by nutrition, by industry, by valor, &c. ) 
 
 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 lime, the conduct required to maintain the situation in 
 tvhich 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 uniformity of nature, 
 reign of law, &c. That is, we demand order in our experience. 
 The only proof of its existence is in the results reached by 
 making the demand. The postulate is verified by being acted 
 upon. The proof is experimental. 
 
 The ethical postulate, in other words, expresses the fact 
 that moral experience continually demands of every agent that
 
 19 
 
 1 _ 
 
 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 
 himself 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.
 
 PART II. PSYCHOLOGICAL ETHICS. 
 
 CHAPTER III. A GENERAL ANALYSIS OF CONDUCT. 
 
 SECTION IX. THE NATTJKE OF IMPULSE. 
 
 All conduct is at first impulsive. It has no end con- 
 sciously 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; follow- 
 ing light with eyes; handling; reaching; locomotion; the talk- 
 ing 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 begin- 
 nings and ends of very many instincts. Hence the range and 
 variety of human, as compared with animal, actions. Hence 
 also the impossibility of a systematic classification of funda- 
 mental impulses to action. ( Such classifications were frequent 
 in the older psychologies: see also Hartineau, Types of Eth- 
 ical 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 circumstances of the agent that it is meaning- 
 less when separated. Such impulses as love of gain, love of 
 fame, etc., are either pure abstractions, there being in the nor- 
 mal 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 abstract classification of the various ends to 
 which impulses may be directed.
 
 14 
 
 SECTION X. THE EXPRESSION OF IMPULSE AND ITS CONSEQUENCES. 
 
 The various impulses of the individual are not a loose 
 bundle of tendencies existing side by side. Because they have 
 been evolved in relation to the one more inclusive activity of 
 maintaining life, they are interconnected. One impulse in its 
 , 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 only the very 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, his 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 animals, so far as we can judge, the stimulus and the 
 response seem to assume purely serial order, one impulse 
 calling forth its appropriate act, this its proper sequence and 
 .so on. The later acts or experiences do not return into the
 
 15 
 
 earlier; they are not referred or reflected back. The animal 
 life is one of association, not of thought or reflection. 
 
 SECTION XI. WILL, OK THE MEDIATION OF IMPULSE. 
 
 This back-reference of an experience to the impulse which I 
 induces it, we may term the mediation of impulse. If we * 
 suppose that the series of experiences used in the previous 
 illustration give the experience of an orange, then the next 
 time the same impulse of following light occurs it is modi- 
 fied by all the experiences in which it previously resulted. 
 It is qualitatively different; the image or idea of the pleasant 
 contacts and tastes is now a part of the impulse. A child fol- 
 lows a purely natural impulse in making more or less articu- 
 late sounds; these sounds, through the response which others 
 make to them (a response as natural as the sequence of con- 
 tacts upon the following of light with the eye) set up other 
 experiences 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 back- refer- v 
 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 OF THIS PROCESS. 
 
 As the primary point to understand, in ethical psychology, 
 is the return of induced experiences into the stimulating 
 impulse, so the fundamental fallacy to avoid]is ihe*separation 
 of impulse and induced experiences. It is too ^common an 
 error to think of the expression of the impulse as an inde-
 
 16 
 
 pendent act and of the induced experiences as simply cer- 
 tain external consequences which follow upon the act, but 
 which have nothing intrinsically to do with it which in them- 
 selves are indifferent to the act. (See Martineau, Types, Vol. 
 II, p. 24). So we hear of the act and its consequences. In 
 fact, the consequences, 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 
 mistake of the systems which attempt like Marti neau's to 
 build up ethical theory on the basis of separate natural im- 
 pulses. Their moral value is in their interactions, not in 
 themselves as independent. (Bentham, Principles of Morals 
 and Legislation, Vol. I of Works, pp. 49-55, brings out this 
 truth very clearly; he uses, however, the term 'motive' to 
 denote what I call natural impulse, while I shall use the term 
 motive to designate 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, 
 theji 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 
 indifferent. A large part of our moral discipline consists pre- 
 cisely in learning how to estimate probabilities to distinguish 
 between relatively necessary and relatively accidental results 
 and to mediate the impulse accordingly.
 
 17- 
 
 Psychologically, the mediation of inapulse (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 pain 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 of impulse by 
 the whole system of which it is one part. 
 
 Thus we have, on one side, the moral categories of 
 Satisfaction, 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 
 character, as affording satisfaction and, at the same time, ful- 
 filling 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 conduct. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. THE MORAL CONSCIOUSNESS. 
 SECTION XIII. THE SUBJECT OF THE MOBAL JUDGMENT. 
 
 What is the subject, and what the predicate of the moral 
 judgment ? That is, to what do we attach the ideas of good, 
 bad, right, wrong, etc., and what is the meaning of these pre-
 
 18 
 
 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 (and a conscious act) has moral significance; every con- 
 scious act, in its lowest terms, is a mediated impulse " media- 
 tion" being the reference back to an impulse of the expe- 
 riences 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 
 jnto 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, and 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
 
 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 consisten3y and force; 
 the reflective element keeps us thoughtful. All of the ten- 
 dencies to action, taken together, constitute "capacity" Lhe 
 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 asertjf 
 that either conduct or character iS the subject to which we 
 attach moral predicates. The terms "character" and "con- 
 duct" do not refer to different subjects, but to slightly differ- 
 ent 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 
 unmediated 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, charac- 
 ter 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"
 
 20 
 
 feeling or disposition from which they proceeded. Character 
 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 defect; 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 
 because acts proceed from character that they are not a mere 
 series of separate things, one after another, but form the 
 organized whole: conduct. In a word, character is the unity, 
 the spirit, 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
 
 21 
 
 itself is neither good, nor bad. It becomes good or bad 
 according to the nature of the end to which it is attached. 
 Consequences, on the other hand, are no more a part of con- 
 duct 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 conse- 
 quences 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, 
 107114, 123. For theories holding to consequences see Ben- 
 tham, 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, see Sidgwick, Meth- 
 ods of Ethics, Bk. Ill, Ch. 12. For a discussion of the sub- 
 ject, Muirhead, Elements, pp. 55-62, Mackenzie, Manual of 
 Ethics, pp. 40-46, Alexander, Moral Order, pp. 36-46, Green, 
 Prolegomena, Bk. IY, 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
 
 22 
 
 relations, and into a world of science and literature, which the 
 expression of that impulse brings about. And yet all this is 
 rf involved in the original impulse. The expression of impulse 
 I 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. 
 These relations differentiate the impulse and bring the self to 
 consciousness in this direction. The completest possible inter- 
 action of an impulse icith all other experiences, or the com- 
 pletest possible relation of an impulse to the whole self consti- 
 tutes the predicate, or moral value, of an act. The predicate 
 is, therefore, identical in kind with the subject.* That is, the 
 subject, ' this act,' in the judgment ' this act is right,' is an 
 act mediated by reference to the other experiences it occasions 
 its effect upon the s.elf. 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 between "right" and wrong 
 in the judgment is found in the fact that some acts tend to 
 narrow the self, to introduce friction into it, to weaken its 
 power, and in various ways to disintegrate it, while other acts 
 tend to expand, invigorate, harmonize, and in general organize 
 the self. 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. 
 
 * This has important bearings upon the subject of the criterion as we shall 
 ie hereafter. Because the predicate and subject are identical in principle 
 oth 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.
 
 I 
 
 23 
 
 The first effect of every mediation of an impulse is to 
 check or arrest that impulse. Reflection means postponement; 
 it is delayed action. Through this delay the impulse is 
 brought into connection with other impulses, habits and experi- 
 ences. 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 pro- 
 ceeding from anger or from benevolence is whether only a 
 part of 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 appe- 
 tite 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 sacrific- 
 ing 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 pro- 
 ceeds. The satisfaction of hunger in its place (that is, one 
 which unifies the whole self) is as imperious in its Tightness as 
 the noblest act of heroism or the sublimest act of self-devotion. 
 
 The good man, in a word, is his whole self in each of his \ 
 acts; the bad man is a partial (and hence a different) self in i 
 his conduct. He is not one person, for he has no unifying I 
 principle. (Compare the expressions " dissipated, gone to 
 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. 
 Aristotle 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 trans- i 
 late what he says into the conception of an active balance in 1 
 which due regard is had both to the immediate impulse and to
 
 24 
 
 the mediating consequences; e. g., courage as the mean 
 between foolhardiness and cowardice, foolbardiness being 
 undue preponderance of impulse, cowardice lack of proper 
 assertion of impulse; moderation is the balance between 
 extravagance (preponderance of immediate impulse) and 
 miserliness (preponderance of reflection), and so on. 
 
 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 
 expressing the concrete capacity of an individual agent, and 
 not in the sense of filling in the blank scheme of some unde- 
 fined, purely general self. (Green, Prolegomena to Ethics, 
 178-207; Mackenzie, Manual of Ethics, 136-38, 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. NATUBAL GOOD. 
 
 / The satisfaction which any impulse affords in its expres- 
 l sion may be termed its natural value. It is equivalent to 
 what the economists term " value in use " value which is di- 
 rectly 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 enjoyingfsuf- 
 feringJgoodjOr suffering evil as they come.
 
 25 
 
 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 
 satisfaction 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. 
 
 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 reference 
 of an impulse to the whole experience of the self. The pro- 
 cess 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 ex- 1 
 periences induced. The process, as a whole, is one of adjust- 
 ment, of balancing, of co-ordination. But if we identify our- 
 selves 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.
 
 26 
 
 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 
 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, i^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, "^^yf 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 
 nd becomes developed into an act. This end is at first intel- 
 lectual that is, it exists in thought only. It is a 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
 
 27 
 
 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 
 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. 121-29, on natural and acquired 
 value; James, Psy., vol. 1, pp. 416-24, on passive and volun-
 
 28 
 
 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 
 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 practical 
 or dynamic value its connection with impulse as the immedi- 
 ately acting self. 
 
 SECTION XVIII. DEVELOPMENT or INTENTION OB THE RATIONAL 
 CONTENT. 
 
 An intention is what an agent means to do. It is thus the 
 primary differentia of a volitional from a purely impulsive act, 
 showing that the impulse is mediated. It constitutes reflection, 
 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 building 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 
 ethically justifiable, it signifies giving attention to all the 
 bearings which could be foreseen by an agent who had a 
 proper interest in knowing wh$t 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-
 
 \rcCl 
 
 29- 
 
 sion in many cases. The natural satisfaction, that is, the\^ a 
 thought of the course which the original impulse would take if I 
 left to itself, and the rational, or mediated, satisfaction con- / * 
 tend in the mind. This is, as we shall see, the basis of the 4 
 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. ~ 
 Thus we are brought to deliberation, the more conscious I 
 weighing and balancing of values consideration. We are apt I 
 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 
 doing 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. 
 Particularly is this the case so far as our character is imma- 
 ture; 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- I 
 hension of other ends, now expresses the self. It is the com- I 
 pleted self under the given circumstances^ The appearance of * 
 an ideal in the mind and the final selection, or determination, I 
 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! 

 
 I 
 
 30 
 
 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 
 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 passing 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 oJ 
 impulse, apart from its content). One of these emotions is sc
 
 31 
 
 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 emo- 
 tion, 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 v 
 within which the original activity is arrested, while the induced Y 
 impulses which arrest have not yet gained sufficient force to y 
 determine the act. It is a period when the impulses are striv- 
 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 op- 
 position 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 OR TENSION. 
 
 According to this statement, effort is simply the conscious- 
 ness of the critical moment in the development pf 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 A 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 aud the induced, to 
 repeat once more. Moreover their temporary separation and 
 the resistance which one phase of the activity offers to the
 
 32 
 
 other is itself a factor of great positive importance in the evo- 
 lution of a truly rational practical conclusion, 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 there- 
 fore 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 
 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 mediated 
 relationship.* 
 
 * 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.
 
 33 
 
 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 
 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.
 
 34 
 
 
 
 The fact that sometimes the self seems to be inducing 
 experience and sometimes the induced, shows the absurdity of 
 setting up a 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; 
 in courage in the inducing, etc. 
 
 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 is 
 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, 26-40, 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 destina- 
 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
 
 35 
 
 % 
 appetites and impulses; this furnishes the actual material of 
 
 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; 144-47). 
 
 (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 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. 160-62, 178-188, 202-204; 
 Works, Vol. II, 136-48; 308-309; 329; 336-38. 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
 
 36 
 
 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 example, a 
 flower, it takes account neither of the impulses of seeing, of 
 reaching, touching, smelling, etc., which make the flower into 
 an object in consciousness nor yet the additional value, aesthe- 
 tic 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 completes 
 the analysis of reality experience begun by physical and 
 biological science. It does not introduce a new and opposed 
 set of ideas. (Koyce, 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 conceive of the 
 " physical" world as a fixed thing, as, indeed, a limitation, due 
 to our "finite nature," instead of the intermediate 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 
 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 in- 
 tellectual or prudential value attaches to the consideration of 
 consequences. Types, Vol. II., 255-56. With a fixed ideal, 
 they must lie outside, be mere means, and moral meaning 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 
 interest, or attention, is rightly distributed. Prolegomena,
 
 -38 
 
 317-25. 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. 180-3; 206-7; 
 233-34); or (with Martineau) that there is an original 
 fixed scale of higher and lower in our impulses. But 
 experience 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 process 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 the 
 immediate and the mediating phases of action. It gives posi- 
 tive meaning to the opposition the deepening of conscious- 
 ness. (See Alexander, 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
 
 39 
 
 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 im- 
 pulse in its relation 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 conceived as foreign forces, it is natural to draw the 
 inference that the strongest force determines the will over- 
 looking 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 
 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. (Abott'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. 
 Responsibilities not virtues, increase. The increase, that is, 
 of knowledge of the bearings of an impulse makes care in
 
 40 
 
 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. 218-31). The ideal has no self-ex- 
 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 direcive 
 and effective. A mere ideal, or unrealized ideal, is a contra- 
 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. 31725, 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 which defines specific acts. (Green 
 attempts to meet the need by reference to the past institutions 
 in which the ideal is embodied; cf. Prol. p. 180; 207-8; 393- 
 4. 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
 
 41 
 
 theory meets this need, because the ideal is nothing but -the 
 definition or mediation of the immediately acting, or impul- I 
 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 
 realization or expression of impulse, moral value b>eing 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 
 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 the hedonistic (from 
 the Greek, fjdtivrj 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 
 
 * See note to p. 147 of Murray's Introduction to Ethics; also- 
 Mill, Utilitarianism, 348-9; Bain, Moral Science, p. 27.
 
 42 
 
 future at the end of au infinite time according to Kant and 
 Green. The good of one school is reason, that of the other 
 feeling. * 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 
 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 empiri- 
 cists) 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, independent of the individual's own immediate propen- 
 sities. Hence the ideas of spectator, disinterested, 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, f 
 
 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; 
 
 *" Reason is and must be the slave of passion " Hume. See 
 Treatise on Human Nature, B'k II, P't 3, Sees. 3 and 4. 
 
 t Hence Lotze's hedonistic tendencies. See Practical. Phil- 
 osophy, pp 15-20.
 
 43 
 
 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, moving 
 according to its own law and principle, becomes objectively 
 conscious of its value in the ends which it^ 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 
 right in so far as it asserts that feelings (or pleasure and 
 pain) are mere abstractions apart from the objects (or rational 
 contents) which give them their quality, while empiricism is 
 right in asserting that an end which is not felt (that is, 
 appreciated as part of the agent's own being) has no moral 
 validity or claims. 
 
 SECTION XXIII. FEELING AS END OK 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. 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
 
 _44 
 
 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 
 image so distinct that it is itself pleasurable, or it will be 
 a 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 these two alternatives exhaust the pos- 
 sibilities. 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 cer- 
 tain amount of accompanying pleasure. But neither actually 
 experienced pleasure, nor a consideration of the objects which 
 afford enjoyment is pleasurable feeling as an aim of action^ 
 This latter is a psychological 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 usually presented in connection with 
 a theory of desire. (For the notion that pleasure is the object 
 of desire see: Mill, Utilitarianism, 354-5; Bain, Emotions and 
 Will, Part II, ch. 8; Senses and Intellect, 338-344; Spencer, 
 Data, pp. 26-44; Sully, Outlines of Psychology, pp. 574-589, 
 Human Mind, Vol. II, 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-/63, is noteworthy for the clear- 
 ness with which he shows the confusion in ordinary hedonism 
 as to the end, while still himself holding that pleasure is- 
 motive ).
 
 45 
 
 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 
 synonornous terms; evil, pain, that to which we are averse 
 mean the same experience. Substituting 'happiness' for 'pleas- 
 ure', 'misery' for 'pain', we agree Unreservedly to this state- 
 ment, and yet insist that it does not mean that pleasure is the 
 object of desire, or aim of action. It is true that good (hap- 
 piness) 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 is 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, 
 p. 168) the hedonists make the "mistake of supposing that 
 a desire can be excited by the anticipation of its own satisfac- 
 tion." 
 
 This identity of happiness with satisfaction of desire is the 
 reason for substituting 'happiness' for 'pleasure'. Pleasure 
 and pain 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 satisfaction and 
 dissatisfaction, in the way of pleasure and pain, result in all 
 these instances; yet common speech agrees with sound theory 
 in holding that any one or all of them may become parts of 
 either happiness or misery, weal or woe, according to the re-
 
 46 
 
 lation assumed towards them by the dominant desires (that is 
 character) of tne individual* (see Alexander, Moral Order, 
 pp. 212-218). 
 
 SECTION XXV. THE NATURE OF DESIRE. 
 
 The hedonist, then, gives the following account of desire. 
 Admitting 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 mem- 
 ory of the feeling occuring afterwards 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 memory 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 
 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, 
 passively 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 action, but in eliminating it. As a matter of 
 fact, even a child is actually engaged from the outset and all 
 the time in activity. He has his own impulses, or lines of 
 
 *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 of satisfaction, and that 
 common speech is quite aware of their difference.
 
 47 
 
 discharge, 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 sup- 
 poses that the desirable quality, the power of inciting activity, 
 resides in the object entirely independent of the activity of 
 the organism. 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 consti- 
 tutes the practical meaning of that object. 
 
 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, experiences gratification in the thought; an 
 engineer, trying to express his engineering capacity, thinks of 
 a new machine and experiences 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. There is no image
 
 -48 
 
 of a past pleasure once experienced 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 com- 
 plete agreement, or co-ordination. (It is the same condition 
 as that already noticed as effort. ) Desire is not excited or 
 aroused by any eiid, whether pleasure or anything else. It is 
 a phase in the growth of valued, or rationalized, 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 goes, it is action, and hence pleasurable; but as partial, 
 it is painful. Desire is neither complete activity aiming at 
 a state outside itself, nor a condition of sheer emptiness.* It is 
 conflicting 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 farther 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 
 
 *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).
 
 49 
 
 acting in ways which must be mediated, or transformed, there 
 is conflict and dissatisfaction. The pleasure-pain condition of 
 desire reports, in other words, the existing state of action; it 
 does not initiate it. 
 
 In any account of desire, there are three elements to be 
 dealt with activity, object of desire (end thought of as satis- 
 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 sub- 
 jectively appreciated; it is equally true, on our theory, that 
 the object is no independent thing, but is the activity pre- 
 sented to intelligence is the content of action, the statement 
 of the conditions involved. The thought of food is the defini- 
 tion, in objective terms, of hunger; a complex set of commer- 
 cial relations (a plan of business) is the objective definition of 
 the impulse to assert one's self in nature; the conception of con- 
 ditions of political power the objectifying of its special 
 impulse, etc. ' Object ' and pleasure-pain feeling are thus 
 the correlative phases, objective and subjective, of activity. 
 
 The fundamental fallacy of both perfectionism and hed- 
 onism is thus the same. Both assume value as something 
 presented to the self, and awakening and measuring activity. 
 In truth, value is constituted by activity. (An interesting 
 form of the assumption of a fixed system of goods or values 
 (not hedonistic) towards which activity sLould be directed 
 will be 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, Proleg., pp. 163-177; Bradley, Ethical Studies,
 
 50 
 
 pp. 226-235, and Mind, Vol. 13, p. 1; Sidgwick, Methods of 
 Ethics, pp. 34-47, Mind, Vol. 2, p. 27, and Contemporary 
 Eeview, 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, 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. 14-37, 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, 9, schol., and 39, schol. 
 
 AX/I 
 SECTION JSfJjFf PLEASURE AND MOTIVE. 
 
 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 identification of the real concrete ideal with the impelling 
 spring to action. Unless the aim or ideal itself becomes a 
 moving force, 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 con- 
 crete image of pleasure that is, itself a pleasure. In neither 
 case is it a motive. In the former case, it is simply an 
 Abstract idea, without practical efficiency; in the latter case, the
 
 51 
 
 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 v 
 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- j 
 tion or thought; but as such, as intellectual, it simply gives r 
 definiteness and coherency to the content of the induced self. I 
 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) 
 and overt action. From the side of the expenditure of energy, 
 the sole difference between thought and action is in the 
 external, 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. 
 
 *Stepen, Science, p. 51, holds that pleasure means per- 
 sistence in given state, pain change. So also Ward, Psychic Fac- 
 tors of Civilization, p. 54, who goes to the extreme of holding that 
 all desire is pain, while still defining it as representation of pleas- 
 ure as well as pain (p. 52).
 
 
 52 
 
 Physiologically, the entire friction of thought consists in trans- 
 forming the vague, diffuse and non-valued (valuable, but not 
 defined or measured as to value) activity of infancy into defi- 
 nite, 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 
 pleasure-pain, the intention is the consequences aimed at.* 
 
 We assert that both intention and motive are the self in 
 action, and the sole difference is that motive is intention com- 
 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 re- 
 venge, is a soldier in war, or is engaged in defending himself 
 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 
 
 * Mill, " The intention is what the agent wills to do, the motive 
 is the feeling that makes him so will to do."
 
 53 
 
 own markmanship. The "killing another" is simply part of 
 the intent, of the whole aim. It is necessary to dis- 
 cover intention 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 sayi 
 revenge, ambition, avarice, patriotism is the motive to murder, 
 this sense of motive is a mere sentiment, an abstraction (and 
 hence incapable of inducing action), or it means an active 
 attitude toicards certain ideals and this is simply the con- 
 crete aim. Suppose Napoleon's motive was ambition. Many 
 men are ambitious ; why do they not do what he did ? If 
 ambition is a mere feeling, it will never induce action at all ; 
 it will not define or suggest 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 C?esar, and yet the killing of Cresar was not part of his 
 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-
 
 54 
 
 expression, was tbe impelling force. As to the second instance, 
 Brutus did not intend simply to kill 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 kill- 
 ing 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 forgetting 
 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 reveal- 
 ing himself, reveals his true intent and gives the lie to his pro- 
 fession. 
 
 The impossibility of really judging the conduct of others, 
 as maintained by Kant (Theory, pp. 23-24) and by Green 
 (Proleg., 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
 
 -55- 
 
 in ichat 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 consist- 
 ent 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 
 expressing the controlling lines of activity.* o. ^r 
 
 The distinctions of interest from mere feeling, or passive " "3 
 
 ^^ \Jv 
 
 affections are : U^j$^ V.* 
 
 ( 1 ) Interest is active, projective. We take interest. In- 
 terest is demand, insistence. Whenever we have an interest i 
 
 in any thought, we cherish it, cling to it, endeavor in all ways y~* 
 to realize or fullfil 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 
 "interest" 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 inter- 
 action with character. Because of this difference, mere feel- 
 ing 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 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 
 
 * Common speech often uses feeling to denote impulse. 
 Hoefi'ding, Psychology, seems to use feeling in a dynamic sense 
 which brings it close to impulse, and yet pp. 23o-3t>, he makes 
 impulse a derivation from feeling.
 
 56 
 
 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. 
 Confirmation, 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 sub- 
 ject with which they have really dealt is not the psycho- 
 logy 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 connect, through the instru- 
 mentalities of pleasure and pain, these ends with the individ- 
 ual's own welfare that they shall become identified with his 
 conception of himself. In other words, their practical as- 
 sumption is not that feeling as such is motive, but that feeling 
 may be so used as to make certain aims, otherwise lying out- 
 side 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. 2'i and 25; Bentham, Principles, Chs. 8 and 10, p. 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, Proelg., pp. 315-25; Inter- 
 national Jour. Eth., Vol. IV., pp. 89-94 and 229-38, and refer- 
 ences there given.
 
 -57- 
 
 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- 
 ever, that the ideal, or thought, might awaken present pleas- 
 ure, and so the question arose whether this present pleasure 
 might not be impelling motive. We were obliged to deny it> 
 on the ground that mere feeling ends in itself, or has no 
 dynamic power, and because concrete feeling, as actually 
 experienced, (a) depends upon the activity already going on 
 (instead 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 uo 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) which a given individual takes 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 act, 
 but the kind of act which affords pleasure determines the 
 worth of an agent. That is, ice measure the worth of a given 
 experience of pain or pleasure by reference to a standard of
 
 -58- 
 
 character, by reference to the moving ideal which calls it 
 forth* 
 
 But the hedonist himself contends that it is 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 sentient 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 pleas- 
 ures 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 any- 
 thing whatsoever, may have any end we please to suggest 
 and the character of that end has nothing whatever to do with 
 the morality of his act. The whole process of forming inten- 
 tions, of defining ideals, of discussing aims, has absolutely no 
 moral value. It is true that Mill (Util., p. 27, note, Eng. Ed. ) 
 
 *See Plato, Laws, II., G53-4, Aristotle, Ethics, Book II., ch. 3; 
 Laws, II., 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. 
 
 fTermed by Sidgwick, universalistic hedonism, as distinct from 
 individualistic, but commonly called utilitarianism.
 
 59 
 
 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 
 paius 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 conceivable stretch of language can this be interpreted as 
 meaning that pleasure is the test of morality; it makes the 
 .diameter of 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 
 reversal is of all modern utilitarianism, though it seems, in 
 the main, to have escaped the critics. The only hedonistic 
 view is that which measures an act, after it has been per- 
 formed, by its results in pleasures and pains. Every utilitar- 
 ian has substituted a criterion for the formation of right 
 ideals. It says to an agent: Before you act, consider as thor- 
 oughly 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 upon the act which prom- 
 ises to bring a balance of pleasure, your act is right. 
 See, for example, the "hedonistic calculus" as explained by 
 Beutham, Principles (p. 16), noting such expressions in the 
 memoriter verses as "sttc/t pleasures sec.k" "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 criterion 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 (denned 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
 
 60 
 
 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 of 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 
 pleasure, is, according to the hedonist, always good. (Ben- 
 tham, 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, 
 immediately 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 
 meanm g to those who accept it will be found well stated in 
 Bowne, Principles of Ethics, pp. 39-40. The best assertion 
 
 *It would seem as if "pain operating in a certain manner" 
 ought logically to be bad. But if Hentham 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 
 holding, at one and the same time, that pleasure as motive is 
 good, and yet that motive is good only by its effects.
 
 -61 
 
 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., p. 489 and 499-502.) According to this distinction, 
 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 mora? experience by makirg it possible for a good man to 
 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-refer- 
 ence, 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 pleasures and 
 pains which may result from any act depend so much upon 
 circumstances lying outside both the ken and the character 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 pain- 
 ful 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, sonieiinng which set the minimum and
 
 62 
 
 maximum limits. But the pleasures and pains which may pro- 
 ceed from an act are so remote from the intrinsic nature of the 
 act that there are no assignable values in the problem; it is 
 indeterminate 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 consequence 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 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 criti- 
 cisms 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; Martineau, Types, Vol. II., pp. 308-334; Leckey, 
 History of European 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 
 demands attention. Its explanation is found, I think, in the 
 fact that while nominally the utilitarian has been insisting upon 
 happiness as an ideal and standard, really he has been engaged 
 
 *See, for example, Amer. Journ. Psy., Vol. I., pp. 222 and ff, 
 especially p. 238.
 
 63 
 
 (i) in working out an ideal and standard of happiness of a 
 wide, free and, often lofty nature; (ii) has insisted that every 
 individual, without respect of birth or 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 
 education be employed 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 is, 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 constituted the power of the doc- 
 trines, while their entanglement in the individualistic psychol- 
 ogy 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 happiness 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 pro- 
 tected 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 contribute, or their practical serviceableness. Now as 
 against this view, Bentham testified that every idea and insti
 
 6-1 
 
 tution 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 individual or belonging to a class. Hence the 
 two war-cries of utilitarianism, " the greatest happiness of the 
 greatest number," and, in its computation, " everyone to count 
 for one and for only one." Here we have the standard, which 
 is, in practical 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. 
 
 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 from earlier 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, ih 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
 
 65 
 
 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 wel- 
 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 ob- 
 jective 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 cur- 
 rent psychology and current political economy denied to Ben- 
 tham, 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 
 psychology. John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), his son, while 
 continuing 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, du- 
 ration, fruitfulness (as to further pleasures) and purity (or 
 freedom 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 preference of those who have experienced both^ 
 
 *Criticisms of the conception of greatest sum of pleasures, show- 
 ing 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.
 
 66 
 
 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 hed- 
 onism. 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. 
 
 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. , setting up associations in the mind of the agent between 
 his own happiness and that of others. Mill saw clearly that 
 an identification resting only upon association is artificial, 
 and likely to dissolve through the force of intellectual analy- 
 sis (which happened in his own case, leaving him with a feel- 
 ing of isolation. Autobiog., p. 136), and that there must be 
 some intrinsic connection. This is the social unity of man- 
 kind; the nature of the individual is so thoroughly social that 
 he cannot conceive himself " otherwise than as a member of a 
 body." He, therefore, comes to identify happiness with har- 
 mony with his fellows. (Mill, Util., 343-47.) Here the 
 social value of the individual is made the criterion of the 
 moral worth of happiness. This thoroughly socialized ideal 
 of happiness is the most characteristic feature of Mill's 
 ethics. It is noble, but it is not hedonism.
 
 67 
 
 Spencer marks the final stage in the transformation of 
 happiness as pleasurable sensation over into the accompani- 
 ment of certain objective 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 dependence of pleasure upon the laws not of society alone, 
 but of the universe which conditions the life of society 
 and of the individual. (See his criticisms of the older utili- 
 tarianism, 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, ichat kinds of action 
 necessarily tend to produce happiness." And to derive per- 
 fect moral laws, we must postulate the case of a "completely 
 adapted man in a completely evolved society," denning, there- 
 fore, man "in terms of the conditions which his nature ful- 
 fills." (See pp. 179, 275, 280 of Data.) Under present con- 
 ditions, pleasure is not an adequate test of morality; we 
 make it so only by reference to the thought of the com- 
 plete relation of individual to environment. At present, pleas- 
 ure and Tightness conflict in at least three respects. (1) We 
 have to do things through sense of obligation only, with con- 
 straint, 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 manner, 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-
 
 68 
 
 tive conditions have finally encroached more and more upon 
 the "agreeable feeling," and have made it only a very thin 
 shell upon a very solid core. 
 
 Hoeffding, Ethik, compare also Monist, Vol. L, 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. 
 XL, p. 324, article by Coit on Ultimate Moral Aim, and Int. 
 Jour. Ethics, Vol. L, 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 first, in the life 
 of the child and of the race, the ideal or aim is comparatively 
 particular it is to do this or that thing. As the ideal is 
 formed before, and with reference, to a given act so the criterion 
 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, intention 
 or ideal is also undefined, acts resulting from custom or 
 
 *Curious survivals of the early point of view are still found in 
 the procedure of admiralty law, relating to libelling of ships. 0. W. 
 Holmes, Jr., Common Law; the same book contains a careful analy- 
 sis of the legal view of motive, showing that law, in its practice, 
 identifies motive not with feeling, but with foreseen consequences 
 as inducing to action, and that " malice " is inferred wherever the 
 consequences aimed at or assumed are not of a kind a standard 
 character would aim at.
 
 69 
 
 instilled habit rather than from tension of habit and intent. 
 But with further 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 judged 
 beforehand as well as afterward; the agent asks not simply 
 whether the act is good, i. e., satisfies impulse, but also 
 whether it is right, i. e., whether the impulse itself meets the 
 requirements of 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 simply in the unconscious, underlying habit, but is 
 the relation of this or that act to a more general aim. The 
 aim becomes comprehensive, 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 
 consequences develop, it is seen that they are not one lot of ex- 
 perience 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, 
 ways of forming ends, etc. ; in short, the consequence is the 
 mediation, not of this or that impulse, but of the entire actual 
 self. The mediation of the particular impulse has mean- 
 ing 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
 
 -70 
 
 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. 
 The individual always has his criterion with him, because it is 
 himself. It is nothing more nor less than the thought of the 
 consequences of the act with reference to his own efficiency as 
 an agent in the scene in which he participates. The formula- 
 tion 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 in- 
 dividual's own moral life; it is always putting two and two 
 together; doing the best possible with the material avail- 
 able. Its terms 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 never translate into 
 terms of the individual's own needs and powers; it will uot 
 connect. 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 liv- 
 ing actuality. It is relative, in that it is not an abstract rule 
 excluding all difference of circumstance, but applies to the 
 iconcrete relations of the case. It is permanent or identical,
 
 71 
 
 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, . -o 
 the expression, of the agent herself, the criterion is VT 
 one thing, its application 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 variation according to circum- 
 stance. The fatal weakness of encouraging the agent to con- 
 sider how far the rule may or may not apply to this special 
 case comes in. With complete, or organic, mediation as criter- 
 ion, the case and the standard are really one; it is always a 
 question of what the case really is, when looked at not par- 
 tially, but in the light of the agent as a concrete, effective 
 agent in his vital relationships. Moreover, fixed, external cri- 
 terion encourages fixity of condemnation. A man is condemned 
 because he does not come up 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 accord- 
 ing to the meaning the act has for him. The external stand- 
 ard means always a false complacency, a fixed self-congratula- 
 tion whenever we conform to the rule. A criterion which is 
 nothing but 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 external 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,
 
 72 
 
 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 persons 
 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. a, 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 conscious action is the process of appro- 
 bation involving the development of a general standard of 
 reference and its translation into definite terms. In all this it 
 is implied that the act measures the agent, and that the act 
 tests the standard as well as the standard the act. It is this 
 implication to which we now pass.
 
 73 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 SECTION XXX. REFLECTIVE APPROBATION, OB 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 
 abstraction, in intention, comes from the fact that charac- 
 ter, 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 meas- 
 ure 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. Before, the act was defined, or measured, in terms of 
 the objective conditions involved in its performance; now, it is
 
 74 
 
 measured, or appreciated, in terms of its significance for the 
 self, one's own individuality. It is this fuller value, in its rela- 
 tion 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 
 substantial, no matter how trivial the outer occasion. As 
 Aristotle says (Ethics, Bk. I., ch. x., 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 conscious- 
 ness. Hence the joy, the feeling of full life, and the peace, 
 the feelipg 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 
 instinctively recognize that there is something unhealthy in
 
 75 
 
 over-conscious morality. There is a Pharisaic paradox, as 
 well as a hedonistic one. As pleasure can be got only by aim- 
 ing 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 conscious- 
 ness of goodness 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 get- 
 ting a certain experience). Attention to the act is, of neces- 
 sity, 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-satisfac- 
 tion," he seems to me to make the moral life absolutely meaning- 
 less, (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 contin- 
 ual dissatisfaction. Healthy interest in work for its own sake, the 
 only genuine and self -persisting form of morality, is rendered impos- 
 sible. 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 use 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
 
 -76 
 
 of self-realization when self is conceived as remote, or is presup- 
 posed as in any way existing outside the definite act. There is no 
 alternative apparently save choice of a self-satisfaction which 
 is exclusive and, really, hedonistic, or a devotion to objective ends 
 which does not mean self-satisfaction in reality, asceticism or self- 
 sacrifice. All this, because it is not seen that devotion to objective 
 ends (i. e., the mediation 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 consciousness 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 sat- 
 isfaction 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 mis- 
 understanding, already dealt with, to suppose this means that 
 he does the act for his satisfaction; he does it as his satisfac- 
 tion. 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 r 
 Psy., Vol. L, ch. 10.) 
 
 SECTION XXXI. MOEAL 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
 
 77 
 
 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 
 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 unreality, 
 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.
 
 78 
 
 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 is, for the first time, the experience 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 
 existing standard of good, and does the deed as good; after- 
 ward, the deed, in its full content, reveals his own character, 
 and thus measures the standard. 
 
 It is implied that the very condemnation, the conscious- 
 ness 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 is its own badness manifested. The reaction of the deed 
 into character, in other words, brings that character to con- 
 sciousness; it shows character its own powers and require- 
 ments, and thus enables it to pass judgment upon, i. e., 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 
 'io some extent the self is moving more organically does it 
 realize the disorganic character of its past efforts. Only the 
 man becoming good recognizes evil as evil. 
 
 From this appears the duty of the agent with reference to 
 Iris 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 and shortcomings just 
 enough to get the meaning, the instruction, the mediation of
 
 79 
 
 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 
 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 has 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 dilettanter, come to njoy 
 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 
 unworthiness 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- 
 
 *The doctrine of ' salvation by grace,' as expressed in the writ- 
 ings of St. Paul, with the immense meaning attached to it, seems 
 to have for its ethical content the first historical consciousness, on 
 the part of humanity, that sin, when it becomes a consciousness of 
 sin organically referred back to character, means also a conscious- 
 ness of a good which can take that evil up into itself and so con- 
 quer it, which, in fact, has already begun so to do.
 
 -80 
 
 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 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 care- 
 lessness, than he regrets the earthquake of Lisbon. He may, 
 do infinitely 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 Compensation. The view regarding the essential defect 
 of the Puritanic morality, viz., that it aimed at the moral conscious- 
 ness by itself, has been very forcibly expressed in the various writ- 
 ings 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, 
 accordingly, for theory to attempt to narrow the word to some 
 technical 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
 
 81 
 
 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 
 "categorical imperative." Here is clearly indicated the 
 authoritativeness of any act recognized as moral. 
 
 SECTION XXXIII. CONSCIENCE AS THE MOEAL 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 connec- 
 tion 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 limitation 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 projec- 
 tion of the self, and the moral emotion is simply the realiza- 
 tion by an individual of the value "of the projected act for him- 
 self as an individual. The thought of every act must have, 
 therefore, its own peculiar, qualitative, emotional accompani- 
 ment. We are somehow affected towards 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
 
 82 
 
 feelings are evidently no adequate criterion of the act. On the 
 .contrary, they depend upon that which needs judgment indi- 
 vidual character and vary with it (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 is the one with tender or acute conscience; it is nat- 
 ural 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 sensitiveness 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 plamor of his own "conscience," or 
 hiding scenes of sin and misery from himself because they pain 
 him so grievously. 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 
 
 *As some writers, naming it " moral sense," have considered it.
 
 88 
 
 emotional response of conscience a criterion in itself, instead 
 of recognizing that it is a part of conduct to which the same 
 responsibility 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 
 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 
 drainage project, etc. It must be remembered that every 
 deflection or defect of interest as to the deed itself, means lack 
 of attention to it, and means diversion of thought in some 
 other direction, and hence, of necessity, something slighted, 
 scrimped or distorted in the act itself. Completeness of action 
 and complete possession of consciousness (full interest) by the 
 thought of the act are synonomous 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 pro- 
 
 *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.
 
 -84 
 
 duct, qua product,* 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 suffi- 
 cient interest in his performance to give it the care and atten- 
 tion it demands. A fortiori, any interest which looks beyond 
 the objective 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. 
 
 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 
 considerations 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 disintegration 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 busi- 
 ness, 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 ex- 
 perience 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 
 
 *".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.
 
 85 
 
 nay ir(f rein ply PD enlargement cf himself. The 
 shock has acted as a stimulus to call his attention to matters 
 previously ignored; it has revealed to him his own implication 
 in that which had previously seemed external. So a man may 
 first be awakened to the public's need of improvement of tran- 
 sit 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 inter- 
 est serves as a connecting link in giving a stimulus to atten- 
 tion." 
 
 This principle gives a basis * for judging concerning the 
 moral value of rewards and punishments; of appeals to do a 
 deed because of the profit it will bring self, or because it will 
 please parent or friend or God to have the act done. So far 
 as these ends tend to become 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 r 
 in so far the effect is moral provided always these instru- 
 mentalities are the most efficient ones, under the circum- 
 stances, in effecting this end. 
 
 Our general principle enables us to ceal 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- 
 
 * 
 
 *See, again, James, Psychol., Vol. I, pp. 317-329, especially pp. 
 325-27. 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," maybe 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.
 
 86 
 
 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 Tightness means to do it for its own sake; 
 the Tightness 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. Brightness 
 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. Brightness 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 page 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. 
 
 Yet there can be no doubt that conflicts arise, times when 
 interest in the act itself and interest in right as such 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 de- 
 mands that the act be done, and yet the act, in itself, is de- 
 cidedly a bore or even repulsive. Or we feel that an act which 
 
 *When Green says (Works, Vol. II., pp. 335-36) "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 
 contemplated as good for some other reason than that which con- 
 sists 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.
 
 87 
 
 has all the argument of attractiveness on its side must be fore- 
 gone simply for the sake of right. Moreover, it is precisely at 
 such junctures that moral fibre is made. Only through such 
 discipline is character other than wishy-washy. Only at such 
 periods 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 sub- 
 ject the meaning of ' Right ' in general to analysis. The 
 conflict then turns out to be not between interest or self, and 
 moral law or principle, but between two selves, between an 
 interest in the act narrowly viewed, and an interest in the act 
 more fully realized. My interest as a momentary being, 
 with capacities for enjoyment, may be in some self-indulgence; 
 my interest 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. 
 In other words, the Bight which demands loyalty to itself in 
 spite of the inducements of immediate interest, is not some 
 Bightness at large; it 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 Bight, it will be found 
 that the lower self, the interest, is a partial, passive, posses- 
 sing self; the higher self, the Bight, 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
 
 88 
 
 ideal and act have for the self have by their very nature psy- 
 chologically.* 
 
 SECTION XXXIV. NATURE or CONSCIENCE AS MORAL KNOW- 
 LEDGE, f 
 
 The intuitional theory 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 smpiricism, 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 
 
 * 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 3:J6-417. On " moral sense," Mackenzie, Manual, pp. 49-52 
 and references there given. Also references in next section. 
 An interesting 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 doc- 
 trines 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 Mor- 
 ality. 
 
 t This is to be interpreted as knowledge of right and wrong, not 
 of obligation. To that, a further section is devoted.
 
 -89 
 
 experience, 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 is the law of gravitation. It 
 will be found upon careful reading of most modern intuition- 
 alists 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 distinction are made known. 
 
 A good historical sketch of intuitionalism will be found in 
 Sidgwick, History, pp. 167-200, 213-224. The same author gives a 
 theoretical analysis in Methods, Bk. I. chs. 8 and 9, and Bk. III. 
 The following will indicate the positions of some of the modern 
 intuitionalists. Martineau, Types, Vol. II, Part II., Bk. I, especially 
 pp. 17-64; Calderwood, Moral Philosophy; Maurice, Conscience; 
 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 
 b.een shattered by a series of objections which may be 
 summed up as follows: The intuitional theory, instead of 
 saving the necessary and objective character of moral distinc- 
 tions, swamps them all in the merely subjective consciousness. 
 An appeal to "intuition" as final means in reality an appeal 
 to purely individual opinion, to the dogmatic deliverance, or 
 the unproved sentiment of this or that man. If we go outside 
 the "intuitions" 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, intuition- 
 alism 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 neces- 
 sary intuition.'' * 
 
 * 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.
 
 90 
 
 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 no room for belief in any faculty of moral knowledge 
 separate from the whole process of experience, and cuts the 
 ground out from under any store of information given directly 
 and immediately.* The modern standpoint and method in 
 psychology also make it almost impossible to attach any intel- 
 ligent meaning to the thought of a special faculty of know- 
 ledge. 
 
 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 of character, a certain 
 spirit and method 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 
 
 *The first objection is generally met by intuitionalists by hold- 
 ing that certain ultimate principles 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 connec- 
 tion with the theory of evolution, Spencer's contention that it 
 restores a modified intuitionalism (empirical for the race, intuition- 
 al, by inheritance of consolidated experience, for the individual) is to 
 be noted. Data, pp. 123-124.
 
 91 
 
 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. 
 
 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. 
 
 The term 'intuition' has a popular as well as a philo- 
 sophic 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 
 whole, in a single and almost instantaneous survey, a complete 
 group of circumstances. It is the power to read off at a glance 
 the meaning of a given situation. It is opposed not to exper- 
 ience, but to abstract logical reflection. It is the outcome, on 
 the theoretic side, of habit on the practical side. A custom of 
 dealing with a certain sort of facts and conditions often gives 
 an almost incredible facility in coming to an immediate conclu- 
 sion. When the quality is largely temperamental, we term it 
 (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 the form of intuitions. The demand for 
 quick appreciation of conditions for action in general is much 
 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 
 
 *See Dewey, Psy , pp. 344-46.
 
 92 
 
 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- 
 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 inter- 
 ests -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 intuitive sides, as between conscious aim and habit. 
 (See pp. 18-19. ) The intuitive side means quickness, cer- 
 tainty, 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; uncertainty, 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 immediate knowledge of right and wrong, either as to 
 particular acts or general principles, but that such knowledge 
 is the outgrowth of continued experience. Logically, this is 
 all the empirical theory is required to mean; and in this strict 
 sense, empiricism seems to be true. The theory, however, 
 has no special meaning, until there is a further analysis of 
 
 *Emerson has stated the intuitive character of moral knowledge 
 as a result of the individual's own activity more clearly than any 
 moralist. See, for example, his Essay on Self-Reliance.
 
 93 
 
 what experience is. In general, the saying that "knowledge 
 results from experience" is a meaningless one; the point of 
 interest is always in the question how experience gives birth to 
 knowledge. 
 
 The force of this general statement is apparent when we 
 note that historically the ethical empiricist has gone far beyond 
 tbe harmless statement above made, and insisted that moral 
 knowledge couies from a calculation of the consequences of the 
 act, those consequences lying outside the content of the act 
 itself. In other words, the empiricists have, as a rule, been 
 hedonists, and have interpreted their empiricism as meaning 
 that moral quality isjyitrinsic 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 intuitional ist has sustained his by denying that moral 
 quality is found in considerations alien to the act's own 
 structure. Both have failed in interpreting the positive sig- 
 nificance 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 accidental, externally variable, incapable of being 
 foreseen, tending to produce either undue laxity or undue anx- 
 iety in general, unusable. 
 
 On the ground of the principles hitherto advanced, exper- 
 ience is precisely the mediation of impulse; the execution of 
 impulse brings it to consciousness, shows the meaning for life 
 as a whole of that impulse in particular. By reaching in a 
 certain way (that is, in connection with other impulses of ear 
 or eye) we find out what this impulse means, its value, in 
 terms both of the content of the impulse, the object (ball, or
 
 -94 
 
 hot 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 meaning of our 
 impulses, of our acting selves. As such, there must be all the 
 regard to consequences in forming aims, and using standards, 
 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 Sec. XII. A most suggestive illustra- 
 tion and formulation of this principle will be found in Vol. I, 
 No. 6 of Philosophical Review, Article by James).
 
 95 
 
 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 my 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 ne- 
 cessity (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 agent and ideal; 
 the one being in a condition of lack and effort, and the other 
 expressing satisfaction, and a completed act. But both terms 
 of the relation are in the same line of movement. The im- 
 mediate self is striving to attain the good; the good is this 
 striving satisfied. But in duty, the distinction between pres- 
 ent 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 de- 1 
 mand, an exaction, if not a coercion. It stands over 
 against the agent and utters the "categorical imperative ''|| 
 (Kant), 'thou shalt,' 'thou oughtst,' instead of drawing the^ 
 agent on by its own intrinsic attractiveness. 
 
 Were the relation one of sheer compulsion or coercion, 
 however, 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 su- 
 perior 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 ob- 
 ligation is not the sense of a stronger alien force bearing down ; 
 it is rather the sease that the obligatory qct is somehow more
 
 -96 
 
 truly and definitely one's self than the present self upon 
 
 I which the obligation is imposed. ' I ought to do this act,' 
 implies that 'this act' is really "I''; 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. 
 
 We thus have before us, in a descriptive way, the main feat- 
 ures 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 cer- 
 tain profession. The activities corresponding to these latter 
 engagements are stimulated by the former, and are, indeed, 
 necessary to their normal psychological completion. Never- 
 theless, the person has now, as we say, " assumed the obliga- 
 tions " of a new condition or occupation. He cannot possibly 
 continue his former habits unchanged; they must, moreover, 
 not only be modified here and there, in pieces, but must be 
 subordinated, readjusted to the new aims. Here we have the 
 psychical 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 im- 
 portant, from the moral standpoint (as well as necessary from 
 the psychical) that they should do so. If the habits are en-
 
 tirely resolved, or disintegrated, there is no efficient instru- 
 mentality by which the new aims may realize themselves. 
 The person relapses into a moral pulp. What is wanted is 
 not the destruction of the old habits and desires, but their 
 utilization in new directions. Now, just in the degree in which 
 the habit is definite 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, and become, through its co-ordi- 
 nations with other habits, a subordinate factor in a more com- 
 prehensive 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 
 conflict 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 of moral progress 
 appearing in so far as an intention or ideal demands the trans^ 
 formation of impulse and habit, by adapting them to instru- 
 ments of its own realization. Without the new ideal, the habit 
 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
 
 98-- 
 
 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 developed 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 divipion of labor; yet, 
 as such, it gets a certain independence and tends to isolation; 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 homogeneous as to parts and organs. 
 
 The problem here arises, in other words, from the very 
 nature of progress. Progress demands definite individualiza- 
 tion, specific organization. It requires effective instruments, 
 and 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 
 thousands of physical shapes, sizes and materials. Every 
 instrument then, as instrument, must assert its own specific, 
 
 *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 se, or on its own credit.
 
 -99 
 
 differentiated character, or relapse into uselessness. But, on 
 the other hand, it is the nature of progress to require that 
 instruments be truly instrumental, that they serve for ideas, 
 for ends. The instrument must be flexible, must be contin- 
 ually readjusted to meet new needs and requirements. This ^ 
 antithesis between differentiation, definition (stability) andi * 
 coordination, interaction, (flexibility) gives, once more, the^***^ 
 conditions 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 seeing, and not attempt, upon occasion, to hear or to 
 reach. There is, therefore, a continued tendency to isolation, 
 a continued tendency merely to see. The healthy organism 
 keeps this differentiated 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, 
 on basis of organic unity, of structure (organ) and function. 
 The individual agent, as present self, is so much immediate 
 impulse and 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 partial; 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 always be a re-form, a readjustment of the existing habits
 
 100 
 
 giving 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 when- 
 ever 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 
 immediate discharge on the basis of their own past; thus they 
 tend to resist readjustment, 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 con- 
 ditions, ought to have been performed. But it by no means 
 follows that because every moral act is dutiful (i. e., right) that
 
 -101 
 
 it should be accompanied 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 attention, 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 maintained simply by reflection 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 reconstruc- 
 tion of ends to demand any such consciousness, 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 
 suspicious of this view as of the other. Analysis reveals 
 the reasons. The steady affection, the direct outflow of inter- 
 est, 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 character
 
 102 
 
 without sense of obligation is inadequate, slippery and wishy- 
 washy. The practical point is that there is no occasion to be 
 continually stirring up the feeling of obligation, to be remind- 
 ing one's self of it ab extra. Interest in work is the normal 
 condition, and the ooen 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 vit- 
 alized free. The great underlying contradiction, the lie, in 
 modern moral methods, is the assertion of individuality in 
 name, and the denial of it in fact. Duty always expresses a 
 r elation between the impulses and habits, the existing struc- 
 tures of a concrete agent, and the ideal, intention, purpose 
 
 * The theories which have made so much of ' relativity ' in eth- 
 ics seem lo me, without exception, to stop half way. The very idea of 
 relativity implies that there is still somehow a single, abs lute stand- 
 ard and duty for all, but that owing to circumstances 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 onoe 
 the standpoint of the individuality of conduct, and the whole rela- 
 tivity 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.
 
 103 
 
 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 
 man of real self-control is no more conscious (save at critical 
 junctures) of the duty of temperance than the thief is consci- 
 ous 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 ' is,' 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 exceptions; 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
 
 104 
 
 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, "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 
 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 counsels of 
 prudence provisions for securing happiness. 
 
 Beside the universal, independent authoritative character 
 of duty, its important feature is its relative opposition to 
 immediate inclination. The notion of duty, says Kant (p. 13 
 of Abbott's trans.), implies certain subjective restrictions and 
 hindrances. In other words, it is imperative, 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. f 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 external to self or will, but 
 is the self or will in its universal nature. Obligation is a rela- 
 tion holding between will in one aspect, that of universal 
 rationality and validity, and will in another aspect, individual 
 preference (Willktihr), not between will and any external end 
 or power. Kant insists strenuously upon this point, terming 
 
 *" There is an imperative which commands a certain conduct 
 
 immediately, without having as its condition any other purpose to 
 
 I be attained by it. This imperative is categorical. . . . This impera- 
 
 l tive may be called that of morality." Abbott's trans., p. 33; see 
 
 whole passage, pp. 30-39; also pp. 112-144; 119-121; 125-127; 153. 
 
 t This aspect comes 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 pre- 
 sents itself not as law or duty, but simply as good. This is a con- 
 
 I dition to be always striven for, but never attained by " finite " 
 
 / beings, like man.
 
 105 
 
 true obligation 'autonomous,' while false theories make it 
 ' heteronomous.' (See Abbott, pp. 50-54; 57-59; 72; 180- 
 181). 
 
 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- 
 imposing self to the immediate agent something which excludes 
 any natural underlying identity of the two. 
 
 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 qualifaction. 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
 
 I, 
 
 -106 
 
 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 per se, yet as suggesting itself to the 
 will as its motive, its controlling power, it is the great antag- 
 onist which 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 latv 
 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 
 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 pedant.* (For 
 this account see Abbott's trans., pp. 9-20; 54-56; 105-116). 
 
 Kant's position evidently involves two questions, questions 
 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 
 this 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 
 
 * 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 pleas- 
 ant 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 valetudinarian. 
 There can be no doubt that upon occasion of wreckage 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 worth while in life not merely to live from a sense 
 of duty.
 
 107 
 
 of specific volition, of particular acts required; how can the 
 'form' get concrete tilling? 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 con- 
 sciousness that duty is duty, to the consciousness that truth 
 telling, that purity, etc., are duties? How do we get to the 
 consciousness that my duty, in the present situation, is just 
 thus and so? The second question is: how can the conscious- 
 ness of duty get sufficient hold upon the agent to interest him, 
 to move him to act for its realization ? This problem is par- 
 ticularly acute in the Kantian ethics, because it is through the 
 agent as instrument, in any case, that the law must be executed, 
 and Kant has reduced the agent, qua agent, to a mere seeker 
 for happiness as already given in experience. 
 
 I. According to Kant, instruction as to concrete acts pro- 
 ceeds from the very universality of the law. Universality, even 
 in its most formal interpretation, means self-ideutity, non-con- 
 tradiction. 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; 161- 
 162). 
 
 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
 
 -108 
 
 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 maxim of this act be 
 universalized? 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- 
 clined to develop them. Can he make the maxim of such con- 
 duct a universal law? He cannot will that it should become 
 universal. "As a rational being, he must will that faculties 
 be developed." 
 
 (d) A prosperous individual is disinclined 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,
 
 -109 
 
 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, iiniversality, found in the co-ordination, the reduction 
 to a harmonious unity of the impulses and desires ? Admit- 
 ting that the moral life involves, as one of its features, a cer- 
 tain 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 helpful to 
 test a proposed line of conduct by reference to the capacity of 
 its motive to be universal law, are we to understand universal 
 law in the sense of uniformity, of bare likeness among differ- 
 ent circumstances, or is the universal law found in the organi- 
 zation of the different conditions ? To sum all these questions 
 up in one: Are we to do an act in its universality, or because 
 of its universality ? 
 
 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 a balance of harm. 
 Contradiction enters only when there is postulated a system of 
 nature, in which the 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.
 
 -110 
 
 So in the other cases. A social system and the impulse to bet- 
 ter one's self through the assistance of others would both contra- 
 dict 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 devel- 
 
 * 
 oped, 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 sys- 
 tem. Presuppose such a system, and it is simply a matter of 
 adequate detailed knowledge to discover whether a given line 
 of action will tend to reinforce or to disintegrate it. The 
 criterion 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, ma* 
 terial self consistency 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 
 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- 
 i form principle of action. I can only be willing that where all 
 relevant circumstances are the same the same principle be fol- 
 lowed. In other words, ! could wish 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-
 
 Ill 
 
 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 al- 
 ways involves specification into .some definite requirement is 
 precisely 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 de- 
 sire 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 moves to execution; how does it be- 
 come a motor, become dynamic? 
 
 Kant's solution maybe 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 (i. e., outward 
 conformity to duty) but not morality, because not springin 
 from a purely moral motive. " The essential point is that the 
 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 pa- 
 thological) 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 
 equivalent to a feeling of respect, reverence for law.'' "Hu-
 
 112 
 
 miliation on the sensuous side is an elevation of the moral es- 
 teem for the law itself on the rational side" (p 171). Rever- 
 ence is thus not simply a motive to morality, " it is morality it- 
 self 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; seethe 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 operation 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, it is sheer assumption that the sensuous 
 impulses may be adequately described under the heading of 
 self-love, in any sense in which self-love is equivalent 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. 
 
 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
 
 113 
 
 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 diffi- 
 culty. If the moral law can transform itself into feeling; if 
 reason can become an impulse, then feeling and impulse can- 
 not be so depraved as Kant has already defined them to be. 
 When Kant says (p. 170), the agent "can never get enough, 
 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. 171) 
 is to admit that reason already possesses an active, self -realiz- 
 ing 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 approach- 
 ing the question. Failure cannot be due to lack of authorita- 
 tive presence of the moral reason that is always there. It 
 
 * 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 power, the active impulses, (spiritedness), to bridge 
 the gulf.
 
 114 
 
 cannot be due to the mere presence or agency of the sen- 
 suous impulses they are always present and always selfishly 
 urgent. There is absolutely no connecting link by which to 
 indicate any explanation 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 character 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 preeminence over motives like patriot- 
 ism, manliness, desire for community esteem and recognition; 
 that when it did appear it took, until the development of spec- 
 ialized 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 Phar- 
 isaism which must deny morality to the vast masses of man- 
 kind, and permit it only to a few who have attained a cer- 
 tain stage of intellectual abstraction. 
 
 Upon the whole question, positively, it may be said : ( 1 ) 
 The truth in Kant's main contention is adequately recognized 
 in the statement that an action is to be done as duty, that is, 
 for its own intrinsic meaning independent of any reflex advan- 
 tage, but not for duty. The latter makes an abstraction of 
 duty, reduces the act to a mere means, and thus introduces 
 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-
 
 115 
 
 tially, by the nature of each, but historically that is, when 
 the appearance of a more comprehensive and organic end de- 
 mands 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 functioningself as_agaJst a 
 partial habit, which in its narrow self-assertion, tends to be- 
 come 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. 
 Beverence 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 them, but the relative opposition between differen- 
 tiation 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; Muir- 
 head, 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 lat- 
 ter, the main difficulty is in showing how the consciousness 
 of law, proclaimed by reason, should come into working rela- 
 tions, intellectual and motor, with desire, so great is the as- 
 sumed opposition. For the hedonist, the difficulty lies in get- 
 ting enough opposition to desire to subject the latter to author- 
 ity* or in getting that kind of opposition which should give 
 rise to a feeling of duty rather than of coercion. Upon the 
 basis of hedonism, it may be said that it is to an agent's profit 
 or advantage or superior interest to take such and such a 
 
 *Bentham felt this difficulty that jitWished to banish the very 
 term ' duty ' from ethical discussion. \* 
 
 r
 
 116 
 
 course, but how 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, presents 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 satisfac- 
 tion of a desire which, in itself, would give pleasure.* 
 
 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 au- 
 thority (command) and obedience are correlative. The lesson 
 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 
 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 
 
 * 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 his 
 father's Analysis of the Human Mind, Vol. II, pp. 324-326 and Utili- 
 tarianism, ch. V. It should be remarked, however, that Mill's ac- 
 count only touches the question why we judge the conduct of 
 others from the standpoint of duty; it does not answer the question 
 why a man conceives something as obligatory upon himself.
 
 117 
 
 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 super- 
 ior 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 men- 
 tioned above seems, from Bain's 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 
 entirely transformed" (E. and W. p 288). The form of au- 
 thority and subjection remains, although the authority is no 
 longer imposed from without. Conscience becomes an "ideal 
 resemblance of public authority" (E. and W. p 264; the refer- 
 ences are all to the third ed. , London, ] 888) ; " it is an imita- 
 tion within ourselves of the government without us" (p. 285). 
 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 are changed 
 
 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 41^3). 
 
 CBITICISM. Now just as we did not question the principle 
 of generalization, but simply the way in which Kant interprets
 
 -118 
 
 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 any 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 pres- 
 sure 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 necessary, 
 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 irrita- 
 tion and anger, duplicity and slyness, (c) There is the use 
 of punishment to draw positive attention to a content otherwise 
 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
 
 119 
 
 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 itself. 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 consci- 
 ence, 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 
 some practical phases of this discussion, see the Aug. '94, No. 
 of the Pop. Sci. Mo., article on Chaos 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 trickiness or a mixture of all three. The 
 question is still untouched: What is that which constitutes 
 the value of the proposed idea so supreme that it is authorita- 
 tive, and gives some rational assurance that punishment, 
 judiciously used, will assist the growth of conscience?* In 
 
 *In strict logic, the term 'judiciously used' cannot be employed 
 in Bain's theory. Everything falls back upon the mere punishment, 
 apart from its relations and attachments; there is no duty as
 
 120 
 
 lack of a better, our previous answer must still stand; because 
 the act proposed stands for the active, the functioning and 
 thus the ivhole self, while the agent to whom it appears obliga- 
 tory, or authoritative, 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 orginates 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 
 accompaniments, and attaches to the gold per se. The indi- 
 vidual learns to connect the forseen evil effects resulting 
 intrinsically from the satisfaction of a given present impulse 
 or desire with the feeling of compulsion, and this representa- 
 tive association suffices to restraint the urgency of the desire. 
 
 The " essential trait in the moral consciousness is the con- 
 trol of some feeling or feelings by some other feeling or feel- 
 ings." (Principles of Ethics Data p. 113). In general, 
 and upon the average, the feelings which control are related 
 to those controlled as the compound to the simple, the remote 
 
 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.
 
 121 
 
 to the proximate, the representative to the preservative (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. 127-28). 
 
 CBITICISM. Insofar 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 anti-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 
 operate 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 im- 
 moral 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 use 
 or appeal to the sense of obligation ; that, from the outset, we 
 should strive to prevent the growth' of this feeling, instead of
 
 122 
 
 encouraging it through punishment, blame, etc. ? Or, other- 
 wise stated, if Spencer's conclusion is correct, we must con- 
 demn 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 representativenes 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 control. 
 Carlyle's 'do the thing that lies nearest' is just as valuable 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 comprehending 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 difficulty is only increased when we remember that, upon 
 Spencer's theory, the postponement or checking of a desire involves 
 pain and the sacrifice of pleasure, and thus, absolutely is, bad, even 
 if relatively right. Data, pp. 183-84; 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 ab- 
 sorbed into a habit, but not absolutely. It reconnects itself with 
 those other ends, which, for any reason, demand readjustment of 
 habits.
 
 ;i23 
 
 (the example given by Spencer, p. 110) the former may be 
 more, not less, complex than the latter, and is more complex 
 whenever its fulfilment 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.
 
 124 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. FREEDOM AND RESPONSIBILITY. 
 SECTION XXXVIII. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF FREEDOM. 
 
 The volitional has been denned and developed as the med- 
 iation of activity, at first impulsive or direct. It has been 
 shown that the ideal (intention), 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 
 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 focussed, 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-
 
 125 
 
 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 showHhe limit, 
 external and internal, of the activity. 
 
 (2) This culmination of activity is complete coordination 
 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 tha* 
 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 pyschological 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 reference to a whole the self. The deed expresses the 
 attainment 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 supression of desire or 
 habit, but one of directing, using it making it a tributary fac- ^ 
 tor. Physically, outwardly, the deed is a selection of one im- 
 pulse 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-
 
 -126 
 
 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. Preference f brings 
 out the definiteness, the individuality of the conclusion. So 
 also does determination, with the added shade of wholeness 
 in its idea of firmness and certainty; decision and resolution 
 name it considered both as the outcome of a complex, tangled in- 
 tellectual process and as indicating the single volitional atti- 
 tude assumed for the future. All 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 later stage deliberation (intellectual) and 
 
 * 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 compre- 
 hending the 'sacrificed' end within the act performed. It is still 
 ^ there, asserting itself on its own isolated account. Paradoxical as 
 i the phrase may sound, the fact that it is felt as sacrifice shows that 
 I the sacrifice is not yet made. On any basis save that of the text, 
 j 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. 
 
 t 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 snould prefer otherwise. But with things 
 as they are, the agent prefers what he chooses. Preference, how- 
 ever, undoubtedly has more reference to the natural, unmoralized 
 (unmediated) aspect. We prefer things; we choose acts or lines of 
 action.
 
 -127 
 
 S 
 
 effort (emotional). It i^b thus opposed to those conceptions 
 
 which regard all that goes on before as non- voluntary, and re- 
 gards choice alone as act of will. The latter makes will, self, 
 personality, an entity existing outside of the operations of im- 
 pulse, 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 assuma 
 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 intermin- 
 able discussions, in fact, which since the time of the scholastics 
 have haunted the problem of freedom of will. No justification 
 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.
 
 128 
 
 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, made up our mind to act in a certain way, at 
 a distant period that choice is not doing but getting ready io 
 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 
 anticipation or prior rehearsal which gets the various relevant 
 conditions 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 which are not intellectual preparations, choice is 
 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, at once, act differently than I would otherwise, and this 
 different way of acting is an actual part, under the circum- 
 stances 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
 
 129 
 
 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 im- 
 aginable 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 RESPONSIBILITY* 
 
 The ethical conception 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 the act foreign or alien to the 
 agent's self; it is himself 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 rejection of the ideal as meas- . 
 uring and controlling impulse is self. The entire voluntary '[ 
 process is one of self-expression, of coming to consciousness of I 
 self. This intimate and thorough going self ness of the deed / 
 constitutes freedom. 
 
 Ethical writers have distinguished 'formal' and 'sub- 
 stantial ' freedom ; and have claimed that only right acts are 
 really free. This claim involves this truth: Every conscious 
 act is free in the sense that it expresses the self; it is psychol- 
 ogically 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. 
 Its execution depends upon the co-operation of reality; it must 
 fit into the forces which really make up the course of events.
 
 -130 
 
 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 seeins, 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 
 individuals. 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 responsibility. One is 
 liable, accountable, held responsible for his acts, because they 
 are himself. This is formal responsibility, and may coincide 
 with moral irresponsibility. 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 is unstable, we can never be sure of him, he is not sure of 
 himself. Yet this is consistent with formal responsibility. He 
 is capable of forseeing consequences, and of having these fore- 
 seen consequences influence or modify his conduct. The 
 person who fails in one respect or other of these factors is
 
 131 
 
 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 coming 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 1 
 deed into the agent, arousing him to consciousness of certain J 
 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 forseen conse- 
 quences is a habit we have substantial responsibility. 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 ' 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 re- 
 sponsible unless at the time when he acted he could equally 
 well have acted otherwise than as he did act, and th's with- 
 out any change of character and motive. We are told that 
 self- blame, remorse, etc., are inexplicable without this free- 
 dom 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 himself 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-motiva- 
 tion ^is substituted for absence of external compulsion. 'I 
 might have done otherwise' 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 other- 
 wise, 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 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 bad- 
 ness; this is my blame. 
 
 The whole problem arises because the objector insists upon 
 carrying the dualism between agent and deed which he him-
 
 -133 
 
 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. 
 In the desire to magnify the self, the indeterminists deny the 
 specific, real self, which is in and through action, and erect 
 an abstract, outside self, reducing freedom to an irrationality, 
 and responsibility to 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 abilitj r to 
 have acted otherwise. Martineau has attempted a more de- 
 tailed statement (Study of Religion, Vol. II, Bk. Ill, Ch. 2, 
 esp. pp. 210-227). An analysis of this shows that the real 
 origin of the doctrine of indifference is not the need of justify- 
 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 
 
 * The ' determinism,' in other words is a logical determinate- 
 ness, and not an external pre-determinism. See an article in the 
 Monist, Vol. Ill, p. 362, The Superstition of Necessity.
 
 -134- 
 
 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 incompatible springs of action; (2) Your own past, 
 i. e., a certain formed system of 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 duplica- 
 tion of the ego into the objective, that contains the felt and predi- 
 cated phenomena at which we look, or may look, and the sub- 
 jective, 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 char- 
 acter. That he .is able to make them the objects of examination, 
 comparison and estimate, places him in a judicial and authoritative 
 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 them- 
 selves; 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 logon an advancing and retreat- 
 ing wave; but address yourself to an active handling of their pre- 
 tensions. * * * * You yourself, as a personal centre of intelli- 
 gent- 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 
 motive on one side, and of character on the other. These 
 abstractions being erected into fixed things, some other power 
 has to be brought in to make up for the omitted elements and
 
 135 
 
 to bridge the gulf: Martineau's third factor, or self in which 
 alone selecting power resides. If motive and if character were 
 what Martineau 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 consti- 
 tuted 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 constitu- 
 tion 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. 
 
 (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, 
 
 * Martineau afterwards recognizes this much (p. 229), but with- 
 out reconstructing his theory of motives at all. They still remain 
 objective, phenomenal, etc., etc.
 
 136 
 
 formation is equivalent to fossilization and organization 
 to a static arrest of development. When one reflects that 
 the difference 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. Habit is no final, rigid 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 -revela- 
 tion 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 Martineau 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.' The 
 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 of the 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 character 
 and deed. It is the flagrant symbol of the failure to recognize 
 that the deed is the concrete agent, the self in functional (that 
 is, definitive and co-ordinated) activity.
 
 137 
 
 The truth of the matter is that Martineau (and so with all 
 the other indeterminists) 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 Dens ex Machina, a Free Will. This 
 is the reason the contests between indeterminists and deter - 
 minists (in the causational, not logical sense) are so futile 
 and unending. Both have the same premisses, the product of 
 inadequate psychological analysis. The only way to 'rescue' 
 freedom 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 indeterminist holds equally, therefore, 
 against the determinist, 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 indeterminism, see, besides 
 the above reference to Martineau, his Types, Vol. II, pp. 34-8; 
 Lotze, Practical Philosophy, and James, Unitarian Review, Vol. 
 XXII, p. 193; Dilemma of Determinism (James's refutation of Pre-
 
 138 
 
 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 determinate- 
 ness. Much the same may be said for Gizycki, Introduction, ch. VI. 
 Green, Prolegomena. Bk. II, ch. i, would be in substantial agree- 
 ment with the view above stated were it not for his abstract view of 
 the Self, whick 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. 336-41, 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, preference 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, 224, is also excellent). Bradley's 
 Ethical Studies, I, is a thorough-gcing statement of the identity of 
 freedom and responsibility, as they are valued by the popular con- 
 sciousness, with concrete Selfhood. Muirhead, Elements, pp. 50-54; 
 and Mackenzie, Manual, pp. 140-50, are in accord with the text, but 
 hardly adequate upon the psychological side.
 
 139 
 
 CHAPTER IX. VIRTUE AND THE VIRTUES. 
 
 SECTION XLI. THE Two-FoLD STATEMENT OF VIRTUE. 
 
 It is implied in 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 
 responsibility, of flexible, properly adjusted, interaction the 
 adequate intellectual recognition of, and adequate emotional 
 interest in, 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, 
 organization freedom. But as coordination, it implies the 
 reciprocal adjustment of the various stt&ordinate activities in- 
 volved responsibility. 
 
 It is because the unity of will is a functional, a dynamic 
 unity, because deed is simply self in full activity, that freedom 
 and responsibility are the correlative phases of virtue. Every 
 organic function is maintained through the co-operation, the 
 working together of a number of organs, and the higher the 
 specialization of the function (the definiteness 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, until it is spontaneous self-movement 
 from sheer inclination; that every sign of struggle, of effort, 
 
 * The principle, it may be observed, is formal in statement, just 
 because it is so full of detailed content in actuality.
 
 140 
 
 of constraint, must be eliminated.* 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 
 of the readjustment of the original, or isolated, tendency, of 
 the part, involved in its membership in the whole. It thinks 
 of the re-construction, 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- 
 
 * See Aristotle, Ethics, Bk. II, ch. Ill, and still more expressly, 
 Emerson, Spiritual Laws.
 
 141 
 
 eating that it is not work but play. So, after all, there is no 
 inconsistency in the statement that it is not easy to be vir- 
 tuous, and that yet we are not virtuous till it is easy. 
 
 SECTION XLII. THE CLASSIFICATION OF VIRTUES. 
 
 Virtue being the wholeness of self, the full and definite 
 manifestation of agent in act (the adequate mediation of 
 impulse), 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-control), 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 
 abstractly; 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- 
 yiction 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
 
 
 142 
 
 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- 
 edge 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 
 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 intel- 
 ligence. 
 
 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
 
 143 
 
 the present felt pleasure is apt to be connected with the imme- 
 diate impulse, representing as that does some assured satisfac- 
 tion of the past, we seem here to have a struggle against pleas- 
 ure, 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 tha is impos- 
 sible, minimizing, desire itself. The continual assumption has 
 been that appetite itself is evil. In reality, the negative phase 
 of temperance is but 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 v clearly embod- 
 ied in 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 
 
 * 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.
 
 144; 
 
 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- 
 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 catalog 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 cer- 
 tain end or idea. Our failure to recognize these traits as true 
 virtues 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,
 
 145 
 
 may be approached by reflection upon the mutual dependen- 
 cies existing between wisdom, temperance and courage. Wis- 
 dom 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 our.- 
 selves fairly and squarely to the import* of our own deeds. I 
 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 miracu- 
 lous intervention which shall come between our deed and 
 its legitimate fruit. (See James, II, pp. 563-4, for an excel- 
 lent statement). Wisdom is equally dependent upon temper- 
 ance. To follow the lead of appetite, of passion, is the same 
 thing as not to think. . The checked impulse, the arrested 
 habit, is reflection commenced. The self-denial of prejudice, 
 of hasty t assumption, of one-sided opinion, of cherished tradi- 
 tion 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 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 depen- 
 dencies are inexplicable, 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 organised doing: whose organic members are wis- 
 dom, the will to know; courage, the impulse to reach, control, 
 the acquired power to do.
 
 146 
 
 Justice is the habit of maintaining function, concrete 
 individuality, in its supremacy and of giving every impulse, 
 desire, habit its value according to its factorship in this func- 
 tion. Justice conveys so fully, in the very term, its meaning 
 of regard for the whole, but for the whole maintained by the 
 positive maintenance 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, Bk. 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 require- 
 ments, the good man. In the other sense, it means fairness, 
 equity; the just man being he who demands simply his share 
 in an apportionment. 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 in fusing them than Aristotle 
 in separating them. It seems, again, to be a case of consid- 
 ering the organization of self in action, the co-ordination of 
 impulse and habit, from the standpoint first of the co-ordin- 
 ation as such, of the whole, and then of the process of 
 co-ordering the constituent 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 distrib- 
 utes his attention, giving to each impulse and habit precisely 
 its place, neither more nor less, in the whole function. Be- 
 cause 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 adjustment, the fitting in of 
 one part to another. But co-ordination both as effective organ- 
 ization, and as mutual adjustment of parts according to the 
 claims of each (equity), is goodness as a whole; the differ- 
 ence is simply one of emphasis. If justice as obedience to 
 moral law is severed from justice as equity, as due attention
 
 147 
 
 to every aspect of one's nature, it becomes external, the law 
 is no one knows what, and obedience is mere conformity. If 
 justice, as due sharing in the distribution of a whole, is 
 severed from justice as law-obeying, it loses all standard; 
 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 (Bk. V, chs 3 and 4). The former 
 is sharing in the distribution of an evil (i. e., punishment), 
 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., positive 
 goods; and its law is not arithmetical equality, but geometrical 
 (that is, proportion, not simply equality of sums). It is fair, 
 (equal) that the better citizen should received 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 
 constitution 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 jus- 
 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 mo- 
 mentous 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-
 
 148 
 
 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. 
 
 Ke-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 
 character is activity; it has the whole self implicit in it, and 
 that self is an urgent, on-going power, not a finished perform- 
 ance, or a settled accomplishment. What is due the self is 
 that it be made aware of itself in its deed, be brought to full 
 consciousness 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 re-flection of the ' consequences ' of the deed back into im- 
 pulse and 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
 
 149 
 
 as the pain is normal, and not pathological, it is reform. 
 Stated in the abused antithesis of current language, all punish- 
 ment is re-tribution,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 aud 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, 
 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
 
 150 
 
 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. But 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 fuHest 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- 
 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 and 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, Bks. Ill, Chs. 6-12; IV, V, 
 VI. Modern ethics has been so occupied with the problem of duty
 
 151 
 
 in its metaphysical and practical aspects as to be 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 individual 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 psy- 
 chological statement. Since a certain type of character, since the 
 right activity of will, is confessedly the goal of all practical endeavor, 
 the slighting of this goal in the theoretical treatments, as if it were 
 a mere incident or corollary, is the more fatal. The following refer- 
 ences will serve to indicate the various methods of treatment: 
 Sidgwick, Methods of Ethics, Bk. Ill, Chs. 2-5; 9-10; Bk. IV, Ch. 3; 
 Spencer, Principles of Ethics, Vol. II, especially, pp. 3-34 and 263- 
 276 (Justice is public; Beneficence private, and either negative or 
 positive); Stephen, Science, Ch. V, courage, temperance, truthful- 
 nessindividual, 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 psycho- 
 logical classification, holding 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, Bk. 3, Sec. 4, and Inquiry, Ap- 
 pendix 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.
 
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