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 Philosophica Introduction to ethcs: an 
 
 3 1924 029 070 394 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
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 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029070394 
 
A PHILOSOPHICAL INTRODUCTION 
 TO ETHICS 
 
 AN ADVOCACY OF THE SPIRITUAL PRINCIPLE 
 IN ETHICS FROM THE POINT OF FIEfT- OF 
 PERSONAL IDEALISM . 
 
 BY 
 
 W. R. BOYCE GIBSON, M.A. 
 
 Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of London 
 
 London 
 SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO., Lim. 
 
 PATERNOSTER SQUARE 
 1904 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The series of lectures of which this book is 
 composed was in the first instance delivered as 
 an Inter-Collegiate Course at Westfield College, 
 University of London, during the Michaelmas 
 term, 1903. Apart from an occasional rearrange- 
 ment of the subject-matter the lectures remain 
 practically in the forai in which they were 
 originally given. 
 
 My sincerest thanks are due to Prof. G. F. 
 Stout for kindly reading through the proof- 
 sheets and for suggesting some important im- 
 provements. 
 
SYLLABUS 
 
 Subject : A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics ; an 
 advocacy of the spiritual principle in Ethics from 
 the point of view of Personal Idealism. 
 
 Lecture I. : Introduction. 
 
 " The Problem of Conduct." Prof. Taylor's re- 
 jection of the spiritual principle in Ethics, 
 
 Lectures II & III. "The Problem of Conduct" con- 
 tinued. The Scientific and the Philosophic 
 points of view. Prof. Taylor's position in the 
 light of concrete idealism. 
 
 Lecture IV. "The Prolegomena." — Green's defence 
 of the spiritual principle in Ethics. Expository 
 statement. 
 
 Lectures V & VI. "The Prolegomena" continued. 
 Formal Epistemology and the concrete analysis 
 of experience. 
 
 Lecture VII. " The Prolegomena " concluded. Criti- 
 cism of Green. Self-consciousness. The Eternal 
 Self. The " Otherness " of God. 
 
 Lecture VIII. The spiritual principle in Ethics. Con- 
 structive Statement. Pragmatism as Concrete 
 Personal Idealism. 
 
 Lecture IX. Constructive Statement continued. The 
 true Prolegomena of Moral Philosophy : a philo- 
 sophical logic and a philosophical psychology. 
 
 Lecture X. Constructive Statement concluded. Ethics 
 and Metaphysics. Absolute and Personal Ideal- 
 
PREFACE TO INTRODUCTION 
 
 Does Ethical Science render superfluous a Philosophy 
 of Morals? No, for the spiritual element in any moral 
 fact, though pre-supposed by Ethical Science, is yet 
 necessarily ignored on methodological grounds. In 
 Moral Philosophy, on the other hand, the spiritua 
 element is duly recognised as the dominating factor in 
 conduct. From the point of view of Personal Idealism 
 it is the individual's own inviolate spiritual experience 
 which is the central fact in Moral Philosophy and in our 
 human philosophy generally. 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 In the following pages an attempt is made to justify the 
 existence of a Moral Philosophy. Ethical Science, in the 
 opinion of many distinguished writers, renders superfluous 
 any philosophy of Morals. The metaphysically-minded 
 gleaner — so we are bidden believe — who counts on what 
 the inductive reapers in these fields of research can 
 legitimately spare, will find nothing but chaff at his 
 disposal, and had better spare himself the ungrateful 
 labour. 
 
 This repudiation of the metaphysician by his inductive 
 colleague is no doubt extremely genuine, nor has the 
 latter as a rule any inkling that like the proverbial dog 
 
vi Introduction 
 
 in the manger he is warning the former off material he 
 can never utilize himself. Is there any fact of morality, 
 argues Mr. Leslie Stephen, outside the scope of a pure 
 science of Ethics, and do not these facts possess in them- 
 selves a definite moral significance which is quite inde- 
 pendent of whatever ultimate meaning may be attributed 
 to them by metaphysicians. "The great forces which 
 The Science &°^^''" human conduct," he eloquently writes, 
 of EtWa' " ^^^ *^ ^^™^ ^'^^^ '''^y always have been and 
 5j always will be. The dread of hunger, thirst and 
 cold ; the desire to gratify the passions ; the love 
 of wife and child or friend ; sympathy with the sufferings 
 of our neighbours ; resentment of injury inflicted upon our- 
 selves—these and such as these are the great forces which 
 govern mankind. When a moralist tries to assign any- 
 thing else as an ultimate motive, he is getting beyond the 
 world of realities." These are forceful words, and were 
 the metaphysical moralist really seeking for a substitute 
 that should replace our human fears and loves, our 
 sympathies and resentments by motives more desirable 
 and more potent, his would indeed be a hopeless and 
 superfluous quest. But even though there be nothing 
 else, nothing to add to the list of moral motives. Phil- 
 osophy has yet, in the same field as Science and upon 
 the same material, its own important task to perform : 
 that namely of strengthening and deepening the import 
 of these same facts by pointing to the spiritual element 
 present in them all, but beyond the self-limited purview of 
 scientific insight. When the fact puts on its invisible 
 cloak. Science detects no difference, and can therefore 
 never suspect that the cloak makes any difference to the 
 fact. A philosophical analysis is needed to prove that 
 the fact in its invisible vesture is a fact transfigured, 
 snatched from the realm of mechanism into that of 
 teleology, and from the outwardness into the inwardness 
 of our individual experience. 
 
 It is in truth the supreme function of philosophy to 
 give a worthier meaning to the facts of life by revealing 
 within them the presence of Spirit. It aims primarily at 
 detecting and elaborating certain instruments called 
 Categories, the more potent of which when applied to 
 the interpretation of facts have precisely that transfiguring 
 
Introduction vii 
 
 influence over them which has just been referred to. To 
 what extent it succeeds in thus enriching the meaning of 
 life, and thereby justifying its suzerain's claim over the 
 science of conduct, must be left for the sequel to disclose. 
 
 The term " Spiritual principle " as used in the pages 
 that follow stands primarily for the unifying agency in 
 personal experience, and should in all cases be teleologi- 
 cally understood as an end or ideal which, as expressive 
 of the person's inmost nature, tends to regulate and con- 
 solidate the whole developing life. It is that final cause 
 in immediate personal experience which is so constitutive 
 of it that to deny its felt presence is precisely to deny the 
 possibility of such experience. We leave it to the context 
 to elucidate any more specific and derivative meanings 
 with which the term may be invested. 
 
 One more jjoint comes within the legitimate scope of 
 this Introduction. The philosophical standpoint adopted 
 has been identified with that of Personal Idealism and 
 this may need a brief word of explanation. Defining 
 Idealism generally as the doctrine which finds the ultim- 
 ate reality of the universe in spiritual life, and its end in 
 the perfecting thereof, the differentia of Personal Idealism 
 is its insistence that such ultimate reality can be sought 
 or reached in and through our own personal experience, 
 and in no other way. It lays emphatic stress on "the 
 infinite significance and value of the ethical life," and 
 claims, in the words of one of its most distinguished 
 representatives, that "here only in the life of ethical 
 endeavour is the end and secret of the universe to be 
 found." Its view-point is personal, teleological, con- 
 crete — concrete in the truest idealist sense, and such is 
 the view-point maintained, and developed throughout 
 the present volume. 
 
 With regard to the disposition of our argument, we 
 may characterize it as the dialectical attempt to reach a 
 constructive solution through a critical consideration of 
 the various) difficulties which the subject-matter naturally 
 offers. This criticism centres round two typical and 
 opposed views concerning the problem of the philoso- 
 phical idea in Ethics, the views developed in the " Pro- 
 legomena to Ethics " and the " Problem of Conduct " 
 
viii Introduction 
 
 respectively. Of these, the former stands to the con- 
 structive sequel rather as a prop, the latter rather as a 
 foil. The argument is thus developed partly through 
 opposition, partly through sympathetic elaboration. I 
 hasten to add that my radical disagreement with Prof. 
 Taylor's main contention in no way diminishes the 
 respect I feel for his work. The "Problem of Conduct" 
 is a book that commands, and will continue to command 
 attention and respect, through the directness and sincerity 
 with which all the most vital issues are faced, the ability 
 with which these issues are handled, and the clear, fresh 
 and interesting way in which they are presented to the 
 reader.* And it has the additional attraction to the 
 present writer of coming from the pen of an old school- 
 fellow and class-mate. 
 
 As regards the attitude taken towards the author of the 
 "Prolegomena," it is essentially that, of the Personal 
 towards the Absolute Idealist, an attitude, in the main, of 
 friendly though emphatic difference. What the difference 
 precisely amounts to, will, I hope, be made clear as the 
 argument proceeds. 
 
 As it is always well to hear an opponent's case first, 
 I have opened the enquiry by considering Prof Taylor's 
 unambiguous rejection of the spiritual principle in Ethics. 
 
 *Cf. especially ch. viii., on " Beyond Good and Bad." 
 
LECTURE I 
 
PREFACE 
 
 Prof. Taylor maintains in his 'Problem of 
 Conduct' that ethics neither requires nor per- 
 mits of a metaphysical basis. 
 
 Being a departmental science, ethics no more 
 requires such a basis than does astronomy or 
 biology. In so far as it is rooted elsewhere than 
 in its own specific facts, it is in the facts of 
 psychology and sociology. 
 
 The fallacy in Prof Taylor's argument here 
 lies in his inadequate conception of ' Moral 
 Experience,' as something that can be com- 
 pletely studied by inductive methods and from 
 the abstract scientific standpoint. Its true in- 
 ward character can be grasped only from the 
 concrete, more inclusive standpoint of philosophy, 
 and in the light of a teleological method. The 
 fundamental question here is, in a word, the 
 following : — What are we to understand by ' a 
 fact of experience ? ' We say fundamental, for 
 
4 A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 the datura determines both method and point of 
 view. Philosophy and science are essentially 
 distinguished by the way in which this * datum ' 
 is conceived. 
 
 The helplessness of philosophy when it adopts 
 the scientific point of view from which to 
 philosophize is well illustrated by Dr. Mac- 
 Lennan's theory that ideas are mere symbols 
 and are regulative over experience without 
 being constituents in it. This conclusion is in- 
 evitable if the fundamental conception of a 
 ' fact of experience ' is understood, as it is by 
 Dr. MacLennan, in the scientific sense. From 
 this abstract point of view thought-systems are 
 mere symbolic languages that serve indeed an 
 interpretive function but do not share the reality 
 of that which they interpret. They stand to the 
 concrete sense-reality much as the circles of lati- 
 tude and longitude stand to the earth itself. But 
 once the philosophic view-point is accepted, 
 meanings and values and the principles which these 
 illustrate are recognised to be no longer symbolic 
 but real — no longer merely regulative in function 
 but essentially constitutive of the experience they 
 control. Another instance of what essentially 
 amounts to the confusion of the philosophic and 
 the scientific points of view is given by Dr. 
 Hodgson's review of the status and prospects of 
 
Lecture 1 5 
 
 philosophy in his recent Presidential Address 
 before the Aristotelian Society. Dr. Hodgson, 
 starting with the simplest sensations as the 
 ultimate data of experience, and philosophizing 
 upon these data, ends in an attitude towards the 
 spiritual marked both by theoretical agnosticism 
 and blind practical belief. These consequences 
 lose their cogency however, once philosophical 
 experience is studied in the light of its own 
 appropriate categories ; since the philosophical 
 datum, the datum, that is, as revealed to the 
 insight dominated by the category of conscious- 
 ness, includes the spiritual principle which Dr. 
 Hodgson, from his abstracter point of view, dis- 
 cards as a flatus vocis.* 
 
 In the preceding discussion we have assumed 
 the legitimacy of a philosophical treatment of 
 ethics. This assumption, argues Prof Taylor, 
 is invalid. 
 
 2° Ethics does not permit of a metaphysical 
 basis. For an ethics founded on metaphysics, 
 i.e., on absolute truth in formal outline, would 
 be an ethics in whose conception no root 
 of self-discrepancy existed. But there is a 
 radical discrepancy between self-service and 
 others' service, the fundamental ethical distinc- 
 
 " A further discussion of this crucial distinction between the 
 scientific and the philosophical datum is given in Lecture III. 
 
6 A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 tion. Hence ethics cannot be based on meta- 
 physics. 
 
 The fallacy here, to be considered in a later 
 lecture, lies in a complete misconception of what 
 idealism means both by "metaphysics" and a 
 " metaphysical basis." Idealistic metaphysics is 
 not the most formal but the most concrete of all 
 sciences, and by ' metaphysical basis ' is essenti- 
 ally meant the philosophic datum, the fact of 
 experience integrally conceived. Advocacy of 
 this concrete datum is at the same time a 
 vindication of the spiritual factor as the guiding 
 principle in conduct. 
 
 Attacking Prof Taylor finally on his own 
 ground as a representative of scientific ethics, we 
 would point out, in answer to his moral pessimism 
 that the inductive moralist cannot abandon the 
 guiding postulate of uniformity without tran- 
 scending his inductive enquiry. Moral uni- 
 formity should be an article of scientific faith. 
 To dispute it is to dispute the power of ethical 
 science to deal adequately with the facts of 
 morality. 
 
LECTURE I 
 
 "THE PROBLEM OF CONDUCT" 
 
 In "The Problem of Conduct"* Prof. Taylor 
 considers the relation of ethics to metaphysics and 
 endeavours to prove that ethics neither requires nor 
 permits of a metaphysical basis. 
 
 In briefest outline Prof. Taylor's argument runs as 
 follows : — 
 
 " If ethics is rightly regarded as a body of infer- 
 ences from finally true and valid metaphysical 
 principles, we ought to fiiid in all the diversified 
 forms of moral conduct the coherent and systematic 
 development of a single type of behaviour. But what 
 do we find ? The study of the origins of human con- 
 duct reveals to us the presence of two classes of in- 
 stinctive acts with divergent tendencies, the one set 
 developing in the direction of egoistic sentiment, the 
 other in the direction of altruism. 
 
 A critical discussion shows that we have here two 
 different aspects of the good which are perpetually 
 tending to diverge from one another, consequently a 
 
 * " The Problem of Conduct : A Study in the Phenomenology 
 of Ethics," by A. E. Taylor. Macmillan & Co., 1 901. 
 
8 A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 radical cleft in the moral ideal which cannot be 
 radically healed. The moral ideal as a principle of 
 
 action is essentially a compromise ; ' moral 
 ' progress is progress towards the realisation of 
 an ideal built on compromise — an ideal that falls to 
 pieces the moment it is subjected to serious and honest 
 philosophical analysis.' And the compromise consists 
 in a persistent attempt to adjust the demands of egoism 
 
 and altruism. This is the only solution and 
 
 P- 309. . . r \ • 
 
 It IS a mere arrangement for workmg purposes. 
 ' To live for self-culture in real earnest is to discover 
 in the end that you have worn yourself out in the 
 pursuit of a chimsera. To devote yourself to dis- 
 interested public activity is to create suffering as 
 well as to relieve it.' There is no single self- 
 consistent type of moral behaviour. Hence as 
 moral ideals, far from being self-consistent and 
 harmonous, are riddled with self-contradictions, the 
 science of ethics cannot be based on metaphysics. 
 Ethics is a science resting entirely upon a basis of 
 everyday generalisation from experience, and its 
 hypotheses are purely provisional. It is a mere 
 departmental science and should be treated as such. 
 Prof. Taylor's main point has been stated as con- 
 cretely as possible, so as to make its purport the more 
 readily intelligible. We must now consider his whole 
 argument more closely. It has a positive or con- 
 structive as well as a negative or critical side. Our 
 author's aim is to show not only that ethics cannot 
 be based on metaphysics, but also that without any 
 
Lecture I 9 
 
 help from metaphysics, an adequate science of ethics 
 can still be worked out. 
 
 I. It will be convenient to deal first with Prof. 
 Taylor's positive contention that a science of ethics 
 can be worked out without any help from meta- 
 physics. 
 
 On this positive constructive side, our author ap- 
 proaches us in the spirit of Hume and Avenarius 
 urging the claims of a ' pure experience.' " Our 
 main philosophical contention " [on its positive side], 
 
 . we read, " is indeed identical with that of 
 p. 367. 
 
 Hume; like him we have urged that in so 
 
 far as a proposition is true, it must directly or indirectly 
 be a statement about Erlebnisse — things which either 
 actually form the contents of an experience, or would, 
 under definitely known conditions, form the contents 
 of an experience, and that concepts which cannot 
 stand the test of reduction to such a statement, 
 must contain a greater or less amount of ' illusion of 
 the mind.' " 
 
 The purport of the ideal as thus enunciated is to 
 purify the conceptions and phraseology of science of 
 every non-experiential element. But what is meant 
 here by ' experience ? ' If ' experience ' were used 
 in a perfectly unrestricted sense so as to ■ cover such 
 experience as develops itself under ' philosophical ' 
 insight, the ideal of a 'pure experience' might be 
 unconditionally accepted. As used by its exponents, 
 however, it presupposes the narrower view of experi- 
 ence to which we are confined in physical science, as 
 
10 A Philosophical Jntrodudion to Ethics 
 
 consisting exclusively of facts that can be objectively 
 handled and experimented upon and form a touch- 
 stone of scientific verification. It therefore requires 
 the elimination of all conceptions that do not corres- 
 pond to facts of experience so conceived. Concep- 
 tions that sin against this requirement of pure ex- 
 perience are termed ' symbolic,' e.g., v -i and the 
 circular points at infinity in mathematics, and in the 
 concreter sciences such concepts as ' force,' • causa- 
 tion,' ' activity,' ' free-will,' ' unconditional obligation.' 
 
 As Prof. Taylor handles this principle of pure ex- 
 perience, it fulfils at least two functions : — 
 
 I. It furnishes the positive ideal of scientific ex- 
 planation in the departmental sciences. ' In so far as 
 
 any science falls back in its search for ex- 
 p. 19. 
 
 planations upon . . . mere symbols of unknown 
 
 processes, it falls short of the true ideal of scientific 
 
 explanation, and its account of phenomena fails to 
 
 reach the level of "pure" experience . . . Science, 
 
 in fact, at its different levels is nothing more 
 p. 25. 
 
 or less than experience in the process of 
 
 becoming fully consistent with itself and free from 
 all admixture of " symbolical " or non-experiential 
 hypothesis.' 
 
 2° It is presented as furnishing the ideal which 
 a critical metaphysic sets before itself in its after-work 
 upon the assumptions of the various sciences. 
 ' 'As a critical discipline, the business of 
 metaphysics is to test the various theories and pro- 
 positions which pass for true in our everyday thinking 
 
Lecture I ii 
 
 or our sciences by comparison with the standard of a 
 " pure " or perfect experience.' 
 
 Science and critical metaphysics are thus repre- 
 sented as regulated by one and the same ideal, that 
 of 'pure experience,' and the distinction between 
 phenomenology and metaphysic reduces itself to one 
 of scope and generality only. 
 
 Herein lies an essential defect. Science is surely 
 not self-critical even in the interests of pure, experi- 
 ence. The main business of science is to explain 
 facts, whence its characteristic subordination of the 
 interests of system to that of fact, its ready accept- 
 ance of any working hypothesis, however symbolical, 
 provided it works well. It may be that the hypothesis 
 works better in proportion as it is 'purer,' but the 
 point is that what science is primarily concerned with 
 is the fruitfulness of its application and not the 
 purity of its expression. If a symbolically expressed 
 hj^othesis such as that of the undulating ether admits 
 of deductions being drawn from it that can themselves 
 be so expressed as to satisfy all the necessary conditions 
 of verification, the symbolism of the original hypothesis 
 will be a matter of very secondary importance to science. 
 
 This tendency to represent science as primarily and 
 essentially concerned with its systematic coherency 
 and purity is no doubt natural to the philosopher, who 
 is apt to lay first insistence everywhere on the claims 
 of system and the laws of thought, but it surely results 
 in misrepresenting the ideal of science, except of 
 course in scientific text-books where the preference 
 
12 A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 is given to system over fact in the interests of mere 
 exposition. In its heuristic work however, science 
 consistently subordinates system to fact, and is tolerant, 
 on principle, of the working hypothesis. This tolerance 
 in fact is the very expression of its phenomenalism. 
 
 The best positive use to which our author has put 
 his guiding principle is, we think, to be found in his 
 skilful attempt to express the concepts of ethics in 
 purely experiential terms. Indeed we accept Prof. 
 Taylor's chapter on ' the Roots of Ethics ' as a most 
 interesting contribution to ethical science. Prom the 
 evolutionary point of view he develops in an excellent 
 way the significance in terms of pure experience of the 
 concepts of obligation, conscience, right and wrong, 
 responsibility, moral personality, merit.* 
 
 And yet we cannot consider that these analyses, 
 excellent as they are, really go to the heart of the 
 
 * I think, too, that in insisting on the greater importance 
 for scientific ethics of the moral sentiment or the moral judg- 
 ment of approbation and disapprobation over the act of will 
 orthe motive inducing it he has done good service to ethical 
 science strictly so-called. The standpoint of ethical science even 
 in Introspection being external, that of the spectator not that of 
 the inward experiencer, the expression of approval or disapproval 
 is far more definite a subject of investigation than the motive. 
 We know whether we approve or disapprove, we rarely know 
 our own true motives. Further, as Prof. Taylor points out, the 
 approvals and disapprovals of primitive communities are em- 
 bodied in a large number of popular generalisations, and form an 
 indispensable starting-ground for a critical science to operate 
 upon, which would be lacking were the * motive ' the 
 phenomenon insisted on. 
 
Lecture I ij 
 
 moral problems they deal with. Prof. Taylor has 
 not proved that the^// significance of the ethical facts 
 has been seized by the application of his principle ; he 
 has not proved that if you go to the moral facts with 
 your insight controlled by the idea of a spiritual whole 
 you will not see the facts more truly and more deeply. 
 We would maintain on the contrary that inasmuch as 
 Prof. Taylor's view of a 'fact of experience' does 
 not rise beyond the requirements of the inductive 
 level, the process of purifying experience really comes 
 to purifying experience of what is deepest and most 
 inward in it, — that much that is to him ' symbolic ' is 
 ' symbolic ' only from the restricted point of view of 
 natural science, but ceases to be so when one's grasp 
 of facts is widened by philosophical reflection. 
 
 This criticism has been excellently developed by 
 Dr. Bosanquet in a paper entitled ' Recent Criticism 
 of Green's Ethics' recently delivered before the 
 Aristotelian Society.* Dr. Bosanquet would admit 
 with Prof. Taylor that so long as one remains at the 
 level of common sense — the level of the scientific cate- 
 gories — the facts are as Prof. Taylor describes them, 
 but insists that in proportion as philosophical insight 
 is brought to bear upon this sphere of common sense 
 the area of ' facts ' widens, and much becomes ' fact ' 
 which was previously a merely symbolic notion. The 
 scope of 'facts' depends on the ideas which go in 
 search for them. Once you have a grasp of what is 
 
 * Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society. New Series. —Vol. 
 ii. p. 2S sq. 
 
14 A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 meant by a true organic whole, an identity in diflference, 
 a true unity of self, you will thereby be en- 
 ' abled 'to observe and analyze experiences 
 which without these ideas cannot be noticed or re- 
 corded.' Common sense has no organs for 
 such experiences. ' Common sense, or, in 
 technical language, the categories of the natural 
 sciences, are unable to apprehend these elements, and 
 when confronted with them simply report a blank. 
 So that, unless you have recourse to some of the more 
 concrete ideas or standpoints furnished by philosophy, 
 you have not the eyes to see the objects of your study.' 
 This transcending of the facts of ordinary experience, 
 far from implying a lessened vision of fact, a 
 skeletonizing of life's flesh and blood, means an en- 
 riching of experience. It means starting the in- 
 vestigation of fact with a completer conception of what 
 a fact of experience is than is possible to the inductive 
 scientist, to whom nothing that implies a relation of 
 subject to object — a relation not to be understood at 
 all in the light of a scientific category such as that of 
 causation — can be a possible fact of experience. The 
 meaning of fact is wonderfully deepened when one 
 catches sight of the ?«ze/ar^ aspect of facts of experience, 
 an aspect not amenable to inductive treatment, and 
 therefore unseen in the light of the inductive ideal. 
 
 The distinction we are here concerned with between 
 the two meanings of 'a fact of experience,' the 
 scientific and the philosophical, is so important and 
 so far-reaching in its consequences, that it will be 
 
Lecture I 15 
 
 worth our while to spend some time in pointing out 
 what some of these consequences are. This we can 
 perhaps best do by considering certain recent examples 
 of philosophy's attempt to do itself justice by erecting 
 its philosophical superstructure upon the scientific 
 interpretation of a datum or fact of experience. 
 
 We may take first a recent discussion by Dr. 
 MacLennan on the function of ideas in experience. 
 ('Mind.' Jan. 1903 'Existence and^Content'). Dr. 
 MacLennan's main point, which is developed in a 
 most lucid and instructive way, is that this function 
 is essentially ' symbolical.' Ideas, we are repeatedly 
 told, are mere symbols that are in no way constitutive 
 of real experience. They are the instruments by 
 which we control our concrete, i.e., our sensational 
 experience, but they are no real part of that experience 
 itself. Experience is not made more concrete through 
 their effective presence and service. Dr. MacLennan 
 presents us with a world of sense-feeling-experience on 
 the one hand which is real, and a world of meanings, 
 of systematised symbols with a purely regulative 
 function on the other, which is not real, i.e., not a 
 constituent factor of real experience. Meaning is 
 essentially, inherently regulative, and is in no way 
 constitutive of reality. 
 
 These conclusions appear to me to exemplify most 
 clearly the results which philosophy inevitably reaches 
 when it accepts the abstract view of what constitutes 
 a fact of experience as its starting-point, and as the 
 given concrete, completed reality, requiring not to 
 
1 6 A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 be enriched through philosophic insight but simply 
 rendered more determinate. It is the sure condition 
 for making philosophy the minister of science, and 
 knowledge the slave of feeling and sensation. For 
 since reality is taken as already ^Ww in what is experi- 
 enced, it follows that whatever additional factors are 
 brought in to explain it, are not in themselves real. 
 As a matter of philosophical history they have come 
 to be termed ' symbolical.' Nor can they be constitu- 
 tive, for real experience is substantially complete with- 
 out them, and they can but render it more determinate, 
 not in any sense more concrete. But what is neither 
 real nor in anyway constitutive of reality must obviously 
 serve the interests of what is real or disappear into the 
 phantom world from which it has been rescued solely 
 in virtue of the regulative function experience requires 
 it to fulfil. Ideas are not regulative in their own right, 
 but mock-rulers, like the queen-bee in a hive. They 
 are instruments, not principles of control; they are 
 of the shadow, not of the substance. 
 
 It is in this light that Science regards its working 
 hypotheses, and the sciences themselves qua systematic 
 structures. A science is an organised symbolism for 
 the proper determination and control of facts. And 
 for science to so regard its system of explanation is both 
 reasonable and inevitable. For the experience that 
 science professedly studies and endeavours to under- 
 stand does not include the meanings whereby it is under- 
 stood. Such meanings simply symbolize scientific fact 
 in the form of theory more or less systematised, but 
 
Lecture I 17 
 
 permanently and exclusively symbolical and extra-real 
 in character. Science is Just the symbolical language 
 of real fact. And from this point of view we can see 
 clearly why it is that science surbordinates system to 
 fact. Fact is real, system symbolical, and the symbol 
 is surely subordinate to that which it symbolises. 
 
 Now if we but take our stand on the fact of experi- 
 ence, philosophically understood as including the 
 subject-object relation in every item of its developed 
 structure, all these conclusions are at once overborne 
 and transfigured. Ideas are no longer symbols but rec£ 
 powers: symbols for science, they are unifying principles 
 for philosophy ; they are no longer regulative only, * 
 but essentially and fundamentally constitutive. It is 
 true that meaning, even from the philosophical point 
 of view cannot constitute reality, but it can and must 
 be a constituent factor of reality.! It is true that 
 philosophy cannot dispense with symbols, but for 
 philosophy words, not ideas, are symbols. For science, 
 both words and ideas are symbolic, and this double 
 symbolism is just the inherent limitation which philo- 
 sophical insight can alone remove. If we 'change 
 regulative principles into constitutive en- 
 ' ■ ^" " tities,' argues Dr. MacLennan, we ' destroy 
 their significance." For science, yes, not for philosophy. 
 From the concrete view-point of the latter, we first see 
 
 * They are regulative of course only on the understanding that 
 they are conditioned by what they regulate. 
 
 t For a. luminous discussion concerning the philosophical 
 significance of ideas of. Prof. Henry Jones's First Article on 
 "Idealism and Epistemology"Mind. N, S. ii., 1893, p. 294-306, • 
 
 2 
 
1 8 A Philosophical iHtroduction to Ethics 
 
 regulative principles aright when we apprehend them 
 as the most intimately real factors in the experience to 
 which they intrinsically belong. 
 
 The distinction between the two standpoints, the 
 scientific and the philosophical, — is thus emphatically 
 the fundamental distinction apart from which there is 
 in philosophical study nothing but repeated vexation 
 of spirit. The comparison between the theoretical and 
 the moral consciousness — a. favourite philosophema — 
 leads as a rule to self-contradictory results simply because 
 •theoretical consciousness 'is made to stand indifferently 
 for ' scientific consciousness ' and ' philosophic con- 
 sciousness.' We can accordingly hardly emphasize too 
 much the importance of clearly grasping what we mean 
 by a fact of experience philosophically conceived. 
 
 In Dr. Shadworth Hodgson's presidential address, 
 read before the Aristotelian Society (Nov. 2, 1903), we 
 have another illustration of the pass to which philo- 
 sophical thought is brought when it starts from that 
 inadequate conception of experience as equivalent to 
 the experienced which characterizes the standpoint of 
 science and common sense. Dr. Hodgson fitly and 
 rightly maintains that human speculative knowledge 
 cannot extend to worlds beyond that for which human 
 experience gives us data. Speculative activity is limited 
 
 by its data. What then are these data, for 
 p. 13* 
 
 that IS the philosophic crux ? Our ultimate 
 
 data, we read, are ' the simplest sensations.' They 
 
 are in fact data as science conceives them. Starting 
 
 from this basis we find, logically enough, that such 
 
lecture I 19 
 
 concepts as * substance, power, agent, agency, subject, 
 self are mere 'summaries of classes or 
 series of human experiences,' i.e., the 
 flatus vocis of nominalism, and further that a specu- 
 lative theory of the universe cannot be more than 
 vain imagining. And then, with logical consistency, 
 if the reductio ad absurdum of an abstract philosophy 
 with all its inevitable contradictions can be called 
 logical — the practical consequences of these conclu- 
 sions are interestingly developed. We are to experi- 
 ence in the first place the great relief of never thinking 
 any longer beyond a certain point, for the attempt to do 
 so has been shown to be radically incapable of lead- 
 ing to any theoretical knowledge whatsoever. 
 'To be finally relieved from following up 
 attempts to frame a speculative theory of the universe, 
 attempts which from the nature of the case are fore- 
 doomed to failure, is surely to be counted a gain, a 
 benefit, an advantage to human thought.' 
 
 In the second place, the surrender of all such meta- 
 physical effort finds us taking up with regard 
 to the universe a practical instead of a 
 speculative attitude. The inevitable scepticism of 
 philosophy when it philosophizes from the scientific 
 standpoint is relieved by the sheer will to believe in 
 the trustworthiness of the unknowable. Theoretical 
 scepticism is- transfigured into blind practical faith. 
 
 Dr. Hodgson seems to think that humanity will 
 settle down thus to the inevitable and be no more 
 troubled by speculative disquietudes. But he fails to 
 
20 A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 see in the first place that the 'practical attitude' 
 recommended, which he alludes to in his con- 
 cluding words as ' a certain kind of practical 
 attitude towards the speculatively unknown and un- 
 knowable regions of the universe ' could never be a 
 satisfying attitude, for the simple reason that it is not 
 practical. How can faith in the unknowable be 
 termed a practical attitude ? And he further fails to 
 realise that the metaphysical nisus is fundamentally 
 the mind's legitimate aspiration after self-knowledge, 
 simply because his view of what constitutes our 
 'philosophical' experience is so abstract. It may 
 readily be admitted that were such experience reduced 
 to the dimensions required by the nature of the data 
 we are limited to by Dr. Hodgson, we should soon 
 settle down contentedly, so far as theoretical enquiry 
 goes, to our scientific aspirations for no deeper aspir- 
 ations could intelligibly characterize such experience. 
 It is true that Dr. Hodgson believes that the 
 constituents of a genuine philosophical experience will 
 still remain to us. It will remain to us in the 
 shape of 'phenomena of human feeling, 
 emotion, desire, action, and practice, the nature and 
 justification of the conception of moral right and 
 wrong, and the grounds, if any, which man's practical 
 and moral nature affords for his entertaining ideas 
 concerning his relations to those unseen portions of 
 the universe, a speculative knowledge of which he 
 has surrendered as unattainable ; ' but he fails to see 
 that the very reason which renders such speculative 
 
Lecture I 21 
 
 knowledge visionary and unattainable precludes the 
 existence of a philosophic standpoint altogether. 
 Given the data just enumerated, the possibility of a 
 philosophy is given with them, but as the spiritual 
 principle is with Dr. Hodgson entirely unknowable^ 
 there is no other course open but to study them 
 scientifically. With these data we may frame a science 
 of ethics, but not a moral philosophy. 
 
 But granted that we have come to feel the presence 
 of the spiritual principle in our lives, and the presence 
 of its unifying function, how shall we then be able to 
 refrain from philosophising in ways that would cancel 
 as inadequate all Dr. Hodgson's conclusions ? When 
 we ask the forbidden question we shall then feel that 
 it is "the pressure of the answer" that urges the 
 question itself into existence. 'Console-toi,' says 
 Pascal's God in answer to Pascal's troubled prayer. 
 "Tu ne me chercherais, pas si tu ne m' avals d^jk 
 trouv^." And what is the itpSnav ^eSSos underlying 
 all this dismal stultification of philosophic interest 
 and purpose ? I find it in Dr. Hodgson's inadequate 
 view of what constitutes a "fact of experience," or 
 to express my objection in a form Dr. Hodgson 
 would prefer, I consider that what renders his 
 reasoning philosophically defective, is the covert 
 assumption that experience can be taken as a datum 
 of philosophical study apart from any adequate 
 Epistemology or Theory of the Categories. A datum 
 or fact per se is general and abstract. The concrete 
 datum is the datum - in - relation - to - a - category - of- 
 
22 A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 explanation, datum = datum-in-relation-to-category. 
 The philosophical datum is the datum-in-relation-to- 
 philosophical-categories such as that of Spirit or Self- 
 consciousness. The real battle between the physical 
 and the metaphysical philosophies, between Natural- 
 ism and Idealism centres round the categories. 
 ; 3. We pass on now to Prof. Taylor's main 
 point as outlined at the beginning of the lecture, his 
 direct attempt at proving that ethics cannot be based 
 on metaphysics. 
 
 Prof. Taylor defines the function of metaphysics 
 as nothing more mysterious than the com- 
 plete and consistent description of the facts 
 of experience as a whole in the purest and simplest 
 terms possible. And at the same time it cannot aim 
 at being more than a purely formal science. Meta- 
 physics on its constructive side can only hope to 
 
 , discover the formal conditions of experience 
 
 cf. p. 29. . 
 
 m general. 
 
 We have here two characteristics emphasized, the 
 " descriptive " and the " formal," and the requirements 
 are surely incompatible. For in becoming formally 
 descriptive, metaphysics becomes descriptive in name 
 only. A description with all detail missed out, a 
 description in outline only, a mere abstract of ex- 
 perience, how can this be called description ? Prof. 
 Taylor, however, lays little stress on these two 
 attributes, but emphasizes rather the further fact that 
 metaphysics, if it can be said to exist at all — and 
 the metaphysical moralists of course presuppose its 
 
Lecture I 23 
 
 existence — must in its own formal way give the 
 " absolute " truth. " If it is possible to discover with 
 certainty even the most general and formal charac- 
 teristics which would belong to the contents of a 
 ' pure ' or completed experience as such, the science 
 which deals with these characteristics, though far 
 from being identical with ' the absolute truth about 
 the world,' would at least be a kind of knowledge 
 which, unlike any other, was so far final that its 
 outlines would be in need merely of filling 
 
 p. 20. . . JO 
 
 in with detail, and not of actual alteration, 
 in order to make them the ' absolute truth.' " 
 
 Metaphysics then, according to Prof. Taylor, 
 must be not only "descriptive" and "formal" but 
 " absolutely true " so far as it goes. 
 
 Had Prof. Taylor laid greater stress on what 
 he firmly believes to be an inseparable attribute of 
 metaphysics, namely its purely formal quality, I 
 cannot but think that the most natural and consistent 
 proof he could have given of his main thesis would 
 have been somewhat as follows : — " Constructive 
 metaphysics is essentially formal. Hence, if ethics is 
 deducible from metaphysics it must also be of a 
 purely formal character. But a formal ethics is 
 
 impossible, for all formal ethics, i.e., meta- 
 
 physical theories of ethics, are practically 
 Kantian in character and the logical impotency of 
 
 these has been made abundantly clear by 
 ' ^' •" ■ the critics of Kant from Hegel downwards. 
 Therefore ethics cannot be based on metaphysics." 
 
24 A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 Once the formal character of metaphysics is con- 
 ceded, I cannot see how this brief argument can 
 be met. Prof. Taylor would then naturally have 
 devoted his main energies to substantiating his views 
 concerning the essentially formal character of meta- 
 physics — the speculative science that is " beyond the 
 good and the bad" — in which case it would have 
 enabled us to point out that once the change was 
 made from a formal to a concrete metaphysics the 
 difficulty of recognising a metaphysical basis of 
 ethics might in principle be already overcome. 
 
 The line of criticism which Prof. Taylor actually 
 adopts, is founded, however, on the third of the 
 three characteristics of metaphysics already alluded 
 to. When Prof Taylor refers to the basing of 
 ethics on metaphysics he means, by metaphysics, the 
 absolute philosophy in its formal outline. Unless 
 there is " insight into ultimate truth," and that of the 
 metaphysical kind, i.e., pure and all-compre- 
 hensive, there can be no talk of basing ethics 
 on metaphysics, for there is simply no basis to start 
 from. " Is ethics capable of being based on meta- 
 physics ? " simply means " Is ethics capable of 
 ' ■ being based on a genuine metaphysical 
 knowledge of the ultimate character of 
 reality as a whole ? ' If so, it should show traces of 
 its absolute origin. Ethics should prove on analysis to 
 be "a body of systematic and coherent deduc- 
 tions from a single principle," consequently 
 perfectly free from all self-contradiction. It must show 
 
Lecture I 25 
 
 itself to be a perfectly self-consistent and a perfectly 
 defined whole. Prof. Taylor furnishes a whole 
 
 array of other requisites, but self-consistency 
 I is the essential. As sharing the nature of 
 
 the absolute it must be non-contradictory. 
 The line of criticism thus marked out, our author, 
 guided still by his empirical ideal, proceeds to show 
 with great thoroughness and in ample detail that once 
 ethical concepts and ideals are properly purified and 
 empirically understood, they afford by their inherent 
 inconsistencies, when pressed beyond a certain point, 
 a multiplied disproof of the metaphysical assumption 
 of a single supreme good. Were this " supreme good " 
 a metaphysical fact, moral experience should not pre- 
 sent us with these insoluble problems, but show us 
 the moral Ufe as the working out in detail of a single 
 principle. In particular, as already indicated, there 
 would be no irreconcileable duality between our 
 egoistic and altruistic ideals, no necessity for working 
 compromises. In realising ourselves we should at the 
 same time lose nothing. Self-assertion and self- 
 sacrifice would be converging, not diverging ideals of 
 
 conduct. Whereas, as a matter of fact, " the 
 id. p. 307 
 
 moral ideal, so far as it is practicable at all, 
 
 is essentially a compromise. From beginning to end 
 
 the assumptions of ethics are arbitrary and conflicting 
 
 and its conclusions only satisfying so long as you do 
 
 not think too closely about them." " It were 
 
 ■ "■ " scarcely less bold to assert that the English 
 
 constitution can be deduced from the principles of 
 
26 A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 ultimate metaphysical science, than to say the same 
 thing of our convenient practical assumptions about 
 self-realisation and self-sacrifice, culture and benevo- 
 lence." 
 
 It seems strange that Prof. Taylor should not 
 have realised what all this argument amounts to: 
 simply to this, that moral experience, as it is, is far 
 from satisfying the postulate of perfection. This is 
 perfectly true. But it does not justify the conclusion : 
 The ideal of a Summum Bonum is therefore a 
 delusion. 
 
 We may give a sharper point to this objection by 
 translating it into the abstracter language proper to 
 the inductive level. Moral experience, we repeat, 
 may indeed be far from satisfying the postulate of 
 moral uniformity, but we ask whether the scientist who 
 meets with apparent contradictions in his attempt to 
 understand Nature is justified in abandoning his 
 guiding principle of uniformity as the simplest way 
 out of the difficulty ? The suggestion is absurd, but 
 the postulate of uniformity is surely as indispensable 
 in ethical inquiry of the strictly inductive kind, as 
 in any other branch of ' Natural ' science. 
 
lecture: II 
 
PREFACE 
 
 Prof. Taylor's simultaneous renunciation of 
 the principle of moral uniformity and of the 
 philosophical factor in ethics leaves him, logically, 
 no ground to stand on. But his method betrays 
 his true position. Not only is it anti-inductive 
 as we have seen, but it is positively and essenti- 
 ally philosophical, as we hope to show in the 
 next lecture. Prof. Taylor's own dialectic drives 
 him into the philosophical position. 
 
 Theteleological point of view, characteristic of 
 true moral philosophy, is well represented by 
 its dominant question : How do facts express, 
 not " natural law " — this is the inductive ques- 
 tion, — but "spiritual purpose?" Prof Taylor's 
 teleology is not so concrete or so explicit as 
 this, but, as we hope to show, it is formally 
 implied in his whole method of criticism. 
 
 Reverting to Prof Taylor's main argument^ 
 we see that it resumes itself in the follow- 
 
3© A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 ing challenge to the philosophical moralist : 
 first, make quite sure of absolute truth in 
 formal outline, develop then your body of 
 ethical doctrine from it, convince me that it is 
 entirely free from self-discrepancy, and I will 
 admit your contention that ethics is rooted in 
 metaphysics. The whole stress is laid here on 
 the outward form, and the true contention of the 
 philosophical moralist ignored ; namely, that 
 what is wanted in ethical theory is not an arid, 
 futile perfection of lifeless form — "splendidly 
 null, dead perfection, and no more," but the 
 recognition of the effective in-dwelling of the 
 idea of perfection as the one standard and ideal 
 of moral conduct. 
 
 In his masterly defence of the spiritual idea 
 as the practical standard which we can effec- 
 tively apply to all cases of conduct,* Professor 
 Bosanquet meets Mr. McTaggart's objection 
 that the idea of perfection is useless as a criterion, 
 and in particular maintains the dignity of the 
 supreme good as the sole ultimate standard. 
 
 The standard with which every action is 
 compared is the insight of our systematised 
 convictions into the individualised situation. 
 Such insight may be justifiably intuitional. If 
 our habits and associations have throughout 
 their formation been informed with the spiritual 
 
 * The idealist substitute for casuistry and its moral code. 
 
Lecture II 31 
 
 idea, they will have earned the right to represent 
 for the individual concerned, at any moment, in 
 the appropriate circumstance and in their own 
 intuitional way, that accumulated and organised 
 wisdom which, as functional and directive in his 
 conduct, is, for him, the Summum Bonum. 
 
LECTURE II 
 
 We may take it that every investigator who has 
 facts to deal with and wishes to treat them 
 scientifically, will postulate that the phenomena he 
 investigates are free from such caprices as would 
 baffle the attempt to bring them under law. " I will 
 go on the assumption," says the investigator, "that 
 the facts are expressive of rigid law, and I will make 
 it my business to discover what these laws may be. 
 If I find what seems to be an exception to a well- 
 established law, I will accept the omen as pointing 
 not to a freak of free agency on Nature's part but to 
 an ignorance on mine of what the laws of Nature 
 precisely are." Progress is made in the inductive 
 sciences, not by abandoning at any stage the guiding 
 idea of unbreakable law, but by such loyal adherence 
 to that idea as compels us to assume that the apparent 
 exception does not mean deviation from law but 
 deviation from theory. 
 
 I should accordingly be only too ready to insist 
 that in so far as moral facts are attacked with the 
 
Lecture II 
 
 33 
 
 inductive weapon, a similar attitude should be 
 observed towards them as is observed by the 
 astronomer in dealing with the movements of planets 
 and stars. Let the attitude be duly marked by a 
 supreme faith in law, let the demon of free agency be 
 impressively ignored, let the whole investigation, in 
 short, be marked by the profound regulative belief 
 that the harmonious systematization of the moral 
 facts under law is only a matter of time and 
 patience, and that apparent exceptions, far from 
 being grounds of despair, are the opportunities for 
 deeper insight into the meaning of law in the moral 
 world. 
 
 There is no pessimism possible so long as ethical 
 science is true to its inductive spirit. And even 
 when the persistently refractory nature of its material 
 induces a suspicion of its regulative principle, nothing 
 less becoming is called for than a little scientific 
 modesty. The conclusion may indeed be reached 
 that there is something in a "moral fact," that the 
 inductive methods cannot attain to, that the " fact," 
 is actuated by an "ideal," and that in the dim 
 recesses of the fact there is an incalculable demon 
 of freedom to be reckoned with; but the resources 
 of reason are happily not exhausted when one 
 method gives way in dealing with a certain type of 
 fact. If the fate of reason were conceived as bound 
 up with that of the inductive method in such a way 
 as to yield to the irrational, just in proportion as 
 the latter yields up the supremacy of its guiding 
 
 3 
 
34 -4 Philosophica„ Introduction to Ethics 
 
 principle, then pessimism could never be far off from 
 the open-eyed student of morals. 
 
 Prof Taylor's pessimism accordingly leaves him 
 in an awkward position. As inductive moralist, 
 he has no right to be pessimistic and in so far as he 
 loses faith in his science and the inductive postulate, 
 he exposes himself to the just remonstrance of the more 
 loyal and logical devotees of the method. But in so 
 far as he acknowledges the limitations of the method 
 in matters moral, his further advance must take him 
 in our direction. For to be thus pushed towards 
 some point of view that transcends the inductive 
 standpoint with its proved inadequacies, is to admit 
 that the attempt to understand moral facts eventually 
 necessitates a critical revision of the resources of our 
 reason, in order to discover what this transcending 
 point of view may be. And this is to move out of 
 ethical science into moral philosophy. 
 
 How shall we picture to ourselves a transition of 
 this kind ? It would be misleading to liken it to 
 movement up a height whereby more extensive views 
 are commanded in proportion as one ascends, for it 
 is not the horizon that is extended but the significance 
 of the facts at one's feet. But it would be still more 
 misleading to liken it to a total change of view-point 
 in the sense that the field of vision in the one case 
 differed entirely from that in the other, as though it 
 meant moving from one side of a mountain to the 
 other. 
 
 What is gained in the transition is depth of insight. 
 
Lecture II 35 
 
 Science has no right to say to philosophy: "The 
 facts are in my possession, you can have what's over. 
 You may, if you so please, suggest ultimate ends and 
 categorical imperatives, it is for me, as sole custodian 
 of fact, to test whether your suggestions are approved 
 by the facts." For in any such statement there lurks 
 the fallacy, the fundamental fallacy, of supposing 
 that science with its inductive postulate or Avenarian 
 conception of experience can possibly see the facts in 
 such a way as to justify philosophical insight. The 
 facts cannot be sieved through the inductive apparatus 
 and retain the characteristics impressed upon them 
 by philosophy, for it is the avowed function of such 
 machinery to purify away all unmanageable trans- 
 figurations of the facts with which it deals. 
 
 It would take us too far from our main track were 
 we to endeavour to substantiate forthwith, and in 
 adequate detail, our view of philosophy's contribution 
 to ethics. We content ourselves here with the 
 following brief indication that in recognising the 
 philosophical idea of perfection as indispensable 
 for conduct, we conceive it as a teleological 
 ideal, the question asked from this new view-point 
 being no longer, as on the inductive level : how does 
 this fact express natural law? but the teleological 
 question : how does this fact express spiritual 
 purpose ? 
 
 The teleological point of view, more especially 
 characteristic of moral philosophy, is at once the more 
 inward and the more complete point of view, the 
 
36 A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 point of view which transcends that proper to induc- 
 tive enquiry by taking an inward and concrete instead 
 of an external and abstract view of its object, a view 
 of moral action, that is, which includes its self-deter- 
 mination in accordance with an ideal as absolute 
 as is our own spiritual nature. When we talk 
 then, somewhat loosely, of transcending experience 
 as we pass from the point of view of science to that 
 of philosophy, what we mean is the transcending of 
 an abstract conception of experience by taking in 
 neglected elements, the neglected elements being 
 the more inward and in that sense the more essential 
 elements. 
 
 There is no opposition between the inductive and 
 the teleological methods. The inductive method is 
 applicable to all classes of fact, but only in the case 
 of facts that are not " products of experience " can it be 
 said to be an adequate method. The teleological 
 method can be applied only where a system is con- 
 ceived as in process of self-articulation, when an 
 experience is held as developing in the light of some 
 guiding ideal, conceived as a supreme good. Where 
 both methods are applicable, the facts dealt with by 
 the former gain all their ultimate meaning and value 
 from the facts as conceived by the latter. 
 
 We must not lose sight, however, of Prof. Taylor's 
 main argument, which, as we have seen, ran briefly 
 thus : — " If ethics were founded on metaphysics, 
 it would be capable of being developed as an exact 
 science that never falls into contradiction with itself. 
 
Lecture II 37 
 
 for to have a metaphysics at all is to have absolute 
 truth in formal outline. As it is impossible, however, 
 to find a Summum Bonum that is void of self-discrep- 
 ancy, this shows that the Summum Bonum is not a 
 metaphysical idea but an empirical notion raised to 
 the rank of an ideal and under no form capable of 
 fulfilling its supreme office." 
 
 We can hardly fail to notice that Prof. Taylor has 
 so stated his case as to be from the outset certain 
 of victory. He requires that the philosophical 
 moralist shall accept his own definition of metaphysics 
 as already giving absolute truth in form complete. 
 To establish ethics on a metaphysical basis one must 
 proceed, according to Prof. Taylor, from a system of 
 unshakeable certainties and deduce therefrom one's 
 system of ethics in formal outline. Such a claim 
 might with some decency have been made on the 
 Cartesian Rationalist, but to press it on the Concrete 
 Idealism of to-day is preposterous. The contention 
 of the latter is not that ethics is a deduction from an 
 achieved metaphysic but that some kind of philoso- 
 phical enquiry — which we may provisionally agree to 
 refer to as metaphysical — is imperative if we are to 
 justify the indwelling presence of a spiritual principle 
 in the moral Ufe. 
 
 Prof. Taylor has indeed weighted us with a task 
 fit for omniscience ! What mortal can hope to preface 
 his treatise on morals with a completed metaphysics 
 which he can guarantee to be in outline absolutely 
 true ? Surely an unachievable ambition, and quite as 
 
38 A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 useless as it is unachievable. For from a formal 
 metaphysics none but a formal ethics can be de- 
 duced, and a formal ethics is, on Prof. Taylor's own 
 confession, impotent. Hence even if the philoso- 
 phical moralist could prove what Prof. Taylor re- 
 quires of him, he would, in establishing ethics on 
 its metaphysical basis, have systematised a set of 
 principles essentially inapplicable to the facts of the 
 moral life. 
 
 Prof. Taylor in fact confuses formal outline with 
 inward essence in his statement of the relation between 
 the two sciences. If ethics is based on metaphysics, 
 there should be, in his opinion, no uncertainty of any 
 kind as to the boundary-^xas.% of the science. 
 P- 3 • « "pjjg sphere and subject-matter of ethics 
 should be defined with exceptional exactness.'' 
 
 But it is upon the inward essence that the idealist 
 contention turns, upon the effective presence of the 
 spiritual idea in life, upon the part played by that idea 
 in the practical guidance of conduct. Can the postu- 
 late of perfection or principle of a supreme good really 
 dominate conduct ? Can it efficiently play the part of 
 a standard or criterion of right action ? These are the 
 fateful questions, and if we can answer them in the 
 affirmative, we shall have given the true and the 
 relevant answer to Prof. Taylor's denials. 
 
 On this crucial question we have an excellent and 
 very recent statement by Prof. Bosanquet,* and I will 
 try and develop his main point. It is the attempt to 
 
 • ' Hedonism among Idealists ' — Mind, April and July, 1903. 
 
Lecture II 39 
 
 explain the sense in which a metaphysical principle 
 enters into the concretest possible relations with the 
 actual moral life as an immanent regulative principle, 
 and continues to play the part of a supreme moral 
 standard throughout all the vicissitudes of moral 
 development. 
 
 The two articles taken together, as readers of 
 Mind will know, are intended as a criticism of a 
 chapter in Dr. McTaggart's book, " Studies in 
 Hegelian Cosmology." The chapter is entitled " On 
 the Supreme Good and the Moral Criterion. 
 
 Dr. McTaggart believes in a Supreme Good, and is 
 thus fundamentally at one with Prof. Bosanquet in 
 maintaining the philosophical idea in Ethics ; * but 
 he contends, , strangely enough, that the Supreme 
 
 * This belief in a Summum Bonum is apparently not shared by 
 all idealists. In a spirited article in Mind (July 1900) Mr. Sturt 
 mercilessly criticises the conception of a highest end. ' That 
 unfortunate doctrine of a Summum Bonum ' is, we are told, a 
 recrudescence of Faganisni, and its supporters blinded by an 
 excessive admiration for the age of Pericles. And yet it is hard 
 for the reader to convince himself that Mr. Sturt is not himself 
 a perfectionist, since he holds that the realising of the Social self 
 is a perfectly legitimate end of moral action ( id. p. 382). The 
 Summum Bonum is surely conceded. What is not conceded is 
 a certain conception of the moral end. The cult of character, 
 the self-regarding ideal, these are identified by a converse 
 fallacy of accident with the Summum Bonum, and the Summum 
 Bonum made to bear the brunt of an attack that only affects one 
 of its formulae : that of self-realisation in one form or another. 
 I should like therefore to think that perfectionism is still 
 logically justified in claiming Mr. Sturt as a supporter. 
 
40 A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 Good may be one thing and the criterion of morality, 
 another. The practically operative criterion of 
 morality he asserts to be hedonic. We have, there- 
 fore, as the operative moral standard, not the supreme 
 good, but pleasure, the idea of perfection being too 
 abstract and remote from everyday issues to give us 
 the guidance that we need. We have here three 
 main points : — 
 
 1. The moral criterion may be other than the 
 
 Supreme Good itself, i.e., other than the idea 
 of perfection. 
 
 2. The idea of perfection is useless as a criterion. 
 
 3- The hedonic computation of pleasures and 
 
 pains does give us a definite criterion, right 
 
 or wrong. 
 
 Prof. Bosanquet's first article is mainly devoted 
 
 to the criticism of the third of these three points, 
 
 the second article deals mainly with the second 
 
 point. The first point is touched on in both articles. 
 
 We shall briefly consider it first and then turn 
 
 our attention exclusively to Prof. Bosanquet's 
 
 criticism of the alleged uselessness of perfection as 
 
 a criterion. 
 
 A good criterion, argues Prof. Bosanquet, must 
 be essential, not extraneous. " It is a very serious 
 matter indeed for the mind to be preoccupied 
 throughout its practical deliberations with ideas which 
 are not of the essence of what it really aims to 
 achieve," since these extraneous ideas tend in 
 such case to assume that essential influence over 
 
Lecture II 41 
 
 one's conduct to which they confessedly have not a 
 just claim." Moreover if the moral life is to be fruitful, 
 analogy shows that it is the essential element which 
 should be kept as a type or pattern before the mind, 
 and not the accessory factors. " Ideas become fruitful, 
 - say in law or politics or science, just in pro- 
 
 portion to the precision with which essentials 
 as opposed to concomitants are retained before the 
 mind." Thus if pleasure were really the moral end, it 
 would be absurd to argue with Mill that the way to 
 attain it was to look away from it, as it is only truly 
 found by those who don't go in quest of it. Mill's 
 recipe for finding happiness is no doubt an excellent 
 one, but this only goes to _ prove that pleasure is not 
 the moral end. The moral ideal should be kept in 
 the apple of one's eye, at the focus of clearest vision 
 and not at the blind spot. Only in this way can it 
 have its full effect upon the life, become a nucleus for 
 emotions, memories and associations, and the con- 
 trolling power in one's destiny. I do not see how 
 we can help agreeing with Prof. Bosanquet when he 
 points out that in all intricate matters of conduct, 
 e.g., in law or politics, where varying and important 
 emergencies press upon us, it is of the very first 
 practical importance to keep the right principle and 
 not the wrong one before the attention, and that the 
 habit of so doing makes constantly the whole 
 ^ ■ ■ difference between good and bad work.* 
 We conclude then that the moral criterion 
 and the Summum Bonum must coincide. The 
 
42 A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 Summum Bonum once granted, it cannot take 
 a second place in the moral life. 
 
 There seems little doubt that if Dr. McTaggart had 
 clearly seen how the idea of perfection could play the 
 part of a practical criterion of moral conduct, he 
 would not have suggested this separation of the 
 kingly function from the kingly office. If the rightful 
 ruler is impotent, his viceroy must represent him, but 
 if his rule can be shown to be powerful, persistent and 
 actual, there is no possible reason for transferring the 
 reins of government. This brings us to the main 
 point in Prof. Bosanquet's criticism. 
 
 Prof. Bosanquet admits at the outset that if the 
 use of the idea of Perfection as a means of guid- 
 ance is to consist in a mere comparison between 
 the perplexities of some particular situation on the one 
 hand and the dictates of an abstract rule of perfection 
 on the other, Dr. McTaggart is right ; the comparison 
 is futile, and the idea of perfection an ineffective 
 counsellor who speaking a universal language, the 
 language of all time and of all men, has yet no word 
 that can reach to the heart of the individualised 
 situation. 
 
 The fallacy hes, as Prof. Bosanquet clearly points 
 
 out, in taking the principle apart from the stages in 
 
 whichitsnatureis revealed, instead of seeingitembodied 
 
 though imperfectly, at every stage of our 
 
 p. '306. experience. The idea of perfection must 
 
 be conceived, not as hovering over our 
 
 experience but as working within it. Above all, it is 
 
Lecture II 43 
 
 absurd to conceive of it as a pure principle revealing 
 at every stage to the inner eye that looks to 
 it for guidance the radiance of ultimate reality. " The 
 shape it takes would not do for ultimate reaUty," but it 
 J is just as true, as the writer pertinently adds, 
 
 that the shape it might take for ultimate 
 reality will not do for the given stage of experience. 
 We are bidden remember that what might appear 
 inadequate from the point of view of life's realised 
 whole may be perfectly adequate to the part. 
 
 The idea of perfection, then, is to be considered 
 as active, relatively to the capacities of our imperfect 
 experience, whatever they may be, and not, as an 
 empty form, but as the meaning of the gathered 
 moral experience which at a given moment and under 
 given conditions, embodies it. A French writer of 
 the Revolution, Rivarol, has spoken of nature as 
 working from within outwards, the various forms 
 taken by her being just the limits which this inner 
 working has temporarily reached. So Professor 
 Bosanquet, in respect of the moral ideal. The shape 
 of the moral life at any moment, he writes,* 
 '"is the idea of perfection working in ex- 
 perience down to that moment, as a striving after 
 the completest harmony possible under all the 
 conditions." 
 
 It would be misleading then to say that our moral 
 life is realised under the light and inspiration of a 
 changeless ideal, for the progressive realisation of 
 moral life is the progressive realisation of the 
 
44 A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 meaning and power of the Supreme Good. Prof. 
 Bosanquet quotes from the Republic, 505 E, 
 a passage which he interprets in this very sense. 
 " The good, which every soul pursues, as the end 
 of all its actions, divining its existence, but per- 
 plexed and unable to apprehend satisfactorily its 
 nature ; " — a passage implying that the Good is 
 our guide throughout, but changes as we pursue 
 it. 
 
 Prof. Bosanquet gives a concrete illustration of 
 his point which may help us better to realise and 
 fix his meaning. Dr. McTaggart had maintained 
 that the schoolmaster's idea of his station and its 
 duties did not teach a schoolmaster how to deal 
 rightly with a particular boy on a particular occasion. 
 Prof. Bosanquet remarks that Dr. McTaggart is 
 here reducing the idea of one's station to a general 
 conception of one's place in society as distinct from 
 
 other places, and this, he affirms, " is a very 
 II.p.313. . 
 
 poor idea of one's station." "Who says 
 
 ' schoolmaster,' says a ' walking theory and practice 
 of education.' This is ' what it is to be ' a school- 
 master. His conception of his position as 
 distinct, say, from that of the clergyman and 
 the parent, is just the outline of an idea which 
 theory and experience have filled in and adapted 
 in detail, till his position involves for him a distinct 
 conception of his individual duty to each individual 
 boy who is entrusted to his charge, and this 
 again carries with it the reaction of his trained 
 
Lecture II 45 
 
 nature upon every occasion and situation which 
 arises." 
 
 We are prepared to see now what a vital difference 
 , there is between the abstract and the concrete 
 'conceptions of the Supreme Good. "By 
 recognising the idea of perfection only in the abstract 
 shape which presents itself as the result of [formal] 
 metaphysic, and failing to insist that this abstract 
 shape is imperfect until charged with the life and 
 power of all reality, the idea of perfection is made a 
 particular instead of a universal. It becomes a hard 
 atom, which takes up an attitude of exclusion to the 
 world whose core it should be." 
 
 On the other hand by recognising the idea of 
 Perfection in its concrete shape we are able to see 
 the true inner significance of Mr. Bradley's conception 
 of "My station and its duties," to understand how 
 the Supreme Good may penetrate one's view of 
 morality, and realise the living sense in which 
 the idea of Perfection, individual in its application, 
 may abide with us as the permanent standard of 
 moral action. "The application of a cri- 
 terion to actual moral conduct must always 
 be of the same nature as the application of scientific 
 principles to the solution of a highly individualised 
 problem. Such a solution is ' universal,' because it 
 brings to bear the spirit and content of a highly 
 organised system upon a single point ; but it is not 
 'general' in the current sense of the word. The 
 criterion, therefore, as applied, must be a concrete 
 
46 A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 system, according to which solutions are framed to 
 satisfy complex individual groups of con- 
 'ditions." — "The idea of perfection is for 
 conduct what the idea of system is for science." 
 
LECTURE III 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The distinction between the inductive method 
 of Science and the teleological method of Phil- 
 losophy is primarily determined by the difference 
 between two ways of conceiving a fact of ex- 
 perience. If the fact of experience is identified 
 with the object known through the experience, 
 we are in a position to treat it by inductive 
 methods. We can get outside it and so observe 
 it, experiment with it, theorise upon it and verify 
 our theories by appeal to it. Thus our object, 
 the sense-world, confronts us as a system of facts 
 subsisting in permanent independence of the 
 theories tentatively superinduced upon them in 
 the attempt to explain them. Such theories must 
 aim at expressing natural laws, for theories 
 concerning spiritual purpose in this sense-world 
 of nature are incapable of verification. We may 
 be able to prove that a certain group of facts 
 behaves as if it expressed a certain purpose, but 
 
 4 
 
5o A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 we can never verify the existence of the 
 spiritual purpose itself as we can verify the 
 subordination of matter in motion to rigid 
 law. 
 
 But if we take the fact of experience concretely 
 as including the relation between ourselves, who 
 experience, and the objects experienced, we have 
 in the spiritual factor in that experience the very 
 presence of purposive activity, so that to take 
 experience in its integrity necessitates our 
 treating it teleologically. 
 
 From this difference in standpoint other 
 differences follow. Science appropriately sub- 
 ordinates the interest of system to that of fact. 
 Hypotheses must correspond with facts or be 
 condemned as untrue. Philosophy, on the 
 other hand, gives the primacy to system, account- 
 ing no end achieved save in so far as it brings 
 harmony and cancels contradictions. Thus the 
 postulate of the systematic unity of nature is a 
 philosophical postulate, involving a teleological 
 conception of the Universe, whereas the true 
 inductive postulate is the postulate of unifor- 
 mity, of nature's uniform obedience to rigid 
 law. 
 
 The contrast between the two points of 
 view may be exhibited as follows in tabular 
 from : — 
 

 Lecture III 51 
 
 
 SCIENCE PHILOSOPHY 
 
 I. 
 
 2. 
 
 3- 
 
 The postulate of uni- i" The postulate of syste- 
 formity. matic unity. 
 
 The test of correspon- 2. The test of consistency 
 dance. and harmony. 
 
 The principle of verifi- 3. The principle of realisa- 
 cation. tion. 
 
 4- 
 5- 
 
 The supremacy of ^c/. 4. The supremacy of jyj&w. 
 Inductive method. 5. Teleological method. 
 
 The principle of non-contradiction once ac- 
 cepted as the formal principle of all teleological 
 method, it follows that its exclusive use by Prof. 
 Taylor as a test of truth implies his acceptance 
 of the teleological point of view as authoritative 
 in ethics. Prof. Taylor's whole treatment of 
 conduct thus presupposes the philosophical idea. 
 
 As regards Prof Bosanquet's teleological 
 handling of the problem of conduct, it is, as we 
 have seen, far more concrete and explicit than 
 Prof Taylor's. We do not however consider 
 that the logic of the Self as he conceives it does 
 justice to the fact of Personality. To see to it 
 that such justice is done is the avowed purpose 
 of Personal Idealism, in whose eyes Monism " and 
 " The Absolute " stand out essentially as 
 problems still awaiting a satisfactory solution. 
 
LECTURE III 
 
 These last citations from Professor Bosanquet's 
 articles have introduced an analogy between morality 
 and science on which the writer lays stress throughout 
 I have purposely refrained from pressing it in my 
 development of his apologia for the Summum Bonum, 
 partly because I do not agree with the way in which 
 it is pressed, but mainly because a separate discussion 
 of it at the present juncture may serve to shed 
 additional light on the vital distinction between the 
 teleological method of philosophy and the inductive 
 method of science which we have already noticed. 
 
 The natural tendency of the human mind in quest 
 of explanation is to seek for it in the direction of 
 means adjusted to ends. To explain a thing, in the 
 most fundamental sense of the term, is to point out 
 the purpose which it serves. Hence the anthro- 
 pomorphic tendency in the primitive explanation of 
 natural phenomena. With the Greek, too the prevail- 
 ing tendency was to look upon phenomena not as 
 expressive of law but as expressive of purpose. The 
 
Lecture III S3 
 
 essential discovery of modern science is that its ideal, 
 the thorough understanding of nature, can be reached 
 only by subordinating the idea of end entirely to that 
 of law. Even in the biological sciences where the 
 notion of function is so predominant, sole stress is 
 laid on the mechanism of function. In the " atom " of 
 biology, the protoplasmic germ-cell, biology recognises 
 a complex mechanism the details of whose structure 
 and function are continually becoming more intelligible 
 in the light of embryological and histological research. 
 But of the " vital forces " that direct this mechanism 
 biology can say nothing beyond recognising the 
 necessity of recognising them, for biology can treat of 
 " purpose " only in so far as purpose is discoverable as 
 law. In natural history, again, on its evolutional side, 
 sole stress is laid on the mechanism of the interaction 
 between organisms and their environment, and prin- 
 ciples of explanation such as that of natural selection 
 become operative in the science — qua science — only in 
 so far as they are divested of any teleological signifi- 
 cance. 
 
 The apotheosis of law in modern science is at the 
 same time the apotheosis of fact. Respect for fact 
 and reverence for law, the two great scientific emotions, 
 have one and the same root, for if it is true that laws 
 are to be respected only in so far as they are verified 
 by the facts, it is equally true that scientific reverence 
 for fact does not extend beyond the point at which 
 fact is amenable to law. A fact that expresses a 
 purpose is no longer a scientific fact, unless it expresses 
 
54 A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 a law as well, and if it expresses the latter it is in- 
 different to modem science whether it expresses the 
 former or not. 
 
 Now it is most important to realise that the sciences 
 of nature (as opposed to the sciences of mind) are, by 
 the very nature of the case, obliged to approach their 
 subject from the outside if they wish to do justice 
 to it. Whatever life or mind may constitute the 
 inner being of so-called inanimate nature the scientist 
 cannot share it in such a way as to make any 
 knowledge of its procedure as a purposeful agent a 
 basis for his investigations. He starts with facts 
 which, as given facts, do not reveal any inward princi- 
 ples of unity, mere facts of sense-perception, so we 
 say. By experimenting with these facts he discovers 
 laws which serve to render the behaviour of these facts 
 intelligible. But as the fact itself is never in a 
 position to append its signature to the discovery of 
 these laws and affirm that what is law to the scientist 
 is, in itself, a realised fact, an experience of its own 
 being, the explanation still remains external to the 
 fact. Hence " truth " comes to mean for science 
 " correspondence of theory with fact," a theory being 
 true just in proportion as it is far-reaching in explana- 
 tory power, and the opposition between fact and theory, 
 or between fact and system remains as a permanent 
 requirement of scientific method. 
 
 The real nature of this relation between fact and 
 theory is clearly brought out in the scientific requisite 
 of verification. The paramount stress laid on this 
 
Lecture III 55 
 
 requisite by science not only evidences the subordina- 
 tion of the claims of system in science to the claims 
 of fact, but also the nature of the test of truth in the 
 sphere of science : the test, not of self-consistency 
 but of fruitfulness in accounting for fact. 
 
 In the case of the sciences of mind there is of 
 course no longer the necessity for approaching the 
 facts in this way. The scientific treatment of 
 psychological problems on the basis of the uniformity 
 principle is here subordinate to the essentially 
 teleological treatment of the same problems, 
 characteristic of the apperceptionist psychology, e.g., 
 of Professor Stout's psychology with its theory of 
 conation. This question of method in psychology 
 will come in for further handling later on. It may 
 suiBce at this point just to notice this essential 
 distinction between the physical and the psychological 
 sciences, that whereas the only fruitful way of 
 approach to the former hes through the inductive 
 method, the latter may be approached either 
 inductively as in experimental psychology and 
 ethical science, or teleologically, as in apperceptionist 
 psychology and moral philosophy. 
 
 We feel ourselves justified then in affirming that 
 the respect for system in the physical sciences is just 
 the respect given to the most economical and effective 
 means for explaining fact.* Once system comes to 
 
 * It is, I think, from this point of view that Prof. Bosanquet's 
 righteous indignation against Jevons's description of the specific 
 sciences as "special logics" \Essls. of Logic, p. 4S-47] receives 
 
5 6 A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 be respected for its own sake we have abandoned the 
 inductive ideal for that of teleology, the inductive 
 criterion of verification for the teleological criterion 
 of self-consistency, and the inductive postulate of 
 uniformity for the teleological postulate of a 
 harmonious whole, a systematic unity. 
 
 Now the uniformity principle is the principle of 
 science just in so far as it is inductive and non- 
 teleological. It is the postulate of inductive method, 
 the stipulation that if Nature is to be grasped scienti- 
 fically at all it must be studied on the assumption 
 that its facts are in minutest details amenable to law. 
 It presupposes that external attitude of the theorist 
 to his facts which we emphasized at the outset as 
 imposed upon the physicist by the very nature of 
 his material; for it is just the essential impossibility, 
 due to this external relation between fact and theorist 
 of directly investigating and developing the facts of 
 nature as expressive of inward purpose, that forces 
 upon the scientific investigator the conviction that 
 his chance of understanding nature depends on 
 nature behaving according to law. Hence the 
 deterministic postulate — that Nature's facts express 
 
 its most natural justification. For to refer to a science as a 
 "special logic" is precisely to give the impression that it is 
 essentially concerned with thinking consistently in its own 
 sphere whereas its true concern is, not with itself as a logical 
 system, but with the facts and their adequate explanation. As 
 such its function is essentially not that of a special logic. It is 
 aiming at material truth, not at formal consistency, nor indeed, 
 directly, at systematic coherency of any kind. 
 
Lecture III 57 
 
 changeless uniformities — is the natural, the inevitable 
 working principle for regulating a research that 
 approaches its facts tentatively from the outside. 
 The postulate of "uniformity," the test of "correspond- 
 ence," the principle of "verification," the supremacy of 
 " fact " over " system," the use of " inductive method " 
 — these are all features of one and the same system 
 of requirements imposed on the investigator who is 
 precluded by the very nature of his facts from 
 approaching them teleologically from within. 
 
 It is of course profoundly true that science's fidelity 
 to fact has always shown itself to be the condition of 
 its own systematic development. Fact, by its very 
 nature, compels a systematic interpretation, so that 
 to be controlled by the facts involves, being shaped 
 into systematic coherency through the essential 
 coherency of fact itself. But to aim directly at being 
 systematically coherent would be to forfeit the true 
 objective system to which fact is the one and only 
 key, and to win partial systematizations of a hope- 
 lessly subjective kind. The common aim of both 
 Science and Philosophy is to give the objective 
 supremacy over the subjective. This requires of 
 Science that it should put fact before system, and of 
 Philosophy that it should put system before fact; 
 and this difference in requirement depends again on 
 the characteristic . difference between the respective 
 points of view of Science and Philosophy, the 
 mechanical, namely, and the teleological. 
 
 The idea of " system " assumes the primacy so 
 
5 8 A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 soon as the teleological method is justified and 
 adopted. For the notion of a systematic whole is the 
 starting-point, ideal and criterion of every purposive 
 adaptation of means to ends. In so far as a science 
 is governed by this ideal of systematic unity it is a 
 philosophical science with a teleological method, and 
 its supreme test is no longer the now impossible 
 one of "verification," but the simple one of self- 
 consistency, a test which in its most general, formal 
 aspect is that of non-contradiction; in its concrete 
 aspect, conformity to the good of the spiritual 
 whole. 
 
 It has been urged that the principle of uniformity 
 in science is not so fundamental a postulate as that ot 
 the systematic unity of Nature. This is no doubt the 
 case, but it is important to insist that the latter 
 cannot take the place of the former as the regulative 
 principle of inductive method. It is a self-consistency 
 principle, a principle of non-contradiction, not a 
 principle of conformity to fact. When therefore 
 Prof. Bosanquet suggests that the idea ot per- 
 fection is for conduct what the idea of system is for 
 science, he is stating what can only be true of science 
 teleologically conceived and governed by the idea of 
 systematic unity, whereas he is undoubtedly referring 
 to science as governed by the postulate of uniformity. 
 I cannot but beUeve that there is an important 
 confusion here between the two requirements of 
 uniformity and unity, and that the analogy between 
 the principles of perfection and of uniformity fails so 
 
Lecture III 59 
 
 soon as we realise that the uniformity principle 
 cannot, like the principle of system or perfection, be 
 conceived as a concrete universal or dialectical idea. 
 It is a demand that does not change its character 
 with the growth of inductive science, as do the ideas 
 of perfection and system in proportion as their pur- 
 pose gets more adequately realised, but remains 
 like the principle of contradiction, a demand to be un- 
 ceasingly complied with in one and the same un- 
 changing sense. It is a formal, not an indwelling 
 principle. Hence when Prof. Bosanquet refers to the 
 logical idea which works in the sciences of chemistry 
 and biology, it is surely the idea of system which is 
 meant, and not, as one gathers from the context, the 
 principle of uniformity. 
 
 If we are prepared to grant that the principle of 
 non-contradiction is the formal principle of all ideo- 
 logical method, Prof. Taylor's method of proving 
 that ethics is independent of a philosophical basis 
 appears in a curious light. 
 
 I may preface that Prof. Taylor, oblivious of the 
 
 peculiarities of the scientific standpoint and of its 
 
 radical respect for facts defines " a fact of experience " 
 
 in such a way as to commit himself to the teleological 
 
 standpoint. "A fact of experience," we read, " seems 
 
 . J to mean the contents of a true description 
 
 j2 of our experience and by a true description, 
 
 again, we mean an account of the matter 
 
 which is, so far as we can see, free from 
 
 internal confusion or discrepancy, in fact, a con- 
 
6o A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 sistent narrative. Truth is altogether a matter of 
 
 internal consistency." The adherence to the teleo- 
 
 logical point of view could not be more frankly or 
 
 loyally given. There is, it is true, considerable 
 
 hesitancy on Prof. Taylor's part as to the relation 
 
 between the two logical claims of self-consistency and 
 
 of pure experience. Prof. Taylor gives the impression 
 
 at the outset, of intending to use both 
 
 ■ "■ criteria, but it becomes quite clear, towards 
 33-34. ' ^ ' 
 
 the end especially, that the symbolic elements 
 in descriptions of experience owe their unsatisfactori- 
 ness to their formal characteristic as self-discrepant ; 
 in other words, the ideal of pure experience, as was 
 Teally inevitable on the basis of a definition of a " fact 
 of experience" as given above, passes away without 
 remainder into the ideals of self-consistency and 
 systematic coherency. Thus on p. 495 we find the 
 ideal of pure experience explicitly defined as one of 
 ■" all comprehensiveness and complete internal coher- 
 ency;" and on the preceding page, the phrase 
 " ultimately non-experiential, therefore self-contra- 
 dictory." So again p. 441. "all that metaphysics* 
 demands of the absolute world-system is that it should 
 satisfy the logical demand for comprehensiveness and 
 freedom from contradiction." t 
 
 * i.e.. The analysis of the formal characteristics of experience. 
 
 + cf. also p. 490 lines 23-30, and p. 306, where we are told 
 that what the speculative intellect demands for its permanent 
 satisfaction is "an account of facts which shall be all-inclusive 
 and finally free from internal contradiction." 
 
JLecture III - 6i 
 
 The test of self-consistency is applied by Prof. 
 Taylor throughout his work as the one supreme test 
 for deciding whether ethics has a metaphysical basis- 
 or not. As the so-called principles of ethics are all 
 found to be self-discrepant, the conclusion is that it 
 . , has not a metaphysical basis. And at the 
 
 close of the book Prof Taylor challenges his 
 critics in the following significant words : " Our refusal 
 to accord to any of the categories of ethics ultimate 
 validity or even intelligibility for metaphysics can only 
 be met in one of two ways, either by showing that our 
 analysis is false or by proving that the contradictions 
 it has detected are not really contradictory." 
 
 Prof. Taylor, then, uniformly employs the self con- 
 sistency test, and this, in my opinion, is equivalent to 
 surrendering the very point he wishes to prove. The 
 test of non-contradiction presupposes the adoption of 
 the teleological point of view, for it presupposes the 
 aiming after harmony or internal consistency, i.e., 
 perfection. Prof. Taylor's whole method of dealing 
 with moral facts presupposes therefore the presence of 
 the philosophical idea in conduct.* 
 
 * I can think of only one plausible rejoinder, the protest namely 
 that the method adopted is purely critical and in no sense con- 
 structive. But the plea, even if valid, could avail nothing. For 
 once the postulate of moral uniformity is discredited, ethical 
 science is doomed and Prof. Taylor's positive contention falls- 
 away. He is no longer proving that ethics cannot be based on 
 metaphysics but simply,that there is no such thing as ethical science. 
 For a science with an irrational, discredited postulate is simply 
 a dead science. With the flight of inductive faith goes the 
 
62 A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 One more word on Prof. Taylor's book which 
 may serve to wind up the present lecture and to 
 introduce the next. We have already seen how 
 Prof. Bosanquet's concrete conception of Idealism 
 justifies itself as against Dr. McTaggart's abstracter 
 conception of it, in the vindication of the Summum 
 Bonum as the moral criterion. The same powerful 
 conception is used by Prof. Bosanquet in dealing 
 with Prof. Taylor's more radical dismissal of the 
 philosophical idea from the sphere of morality. In 
 Prof. Taylor's case the main consequence of 
 attempting to dispense with the philosophical idea in 
 ethics is to be found in his insistence that the moral 
 life is divided into two heterogeneous halves "in 
 such a way that morality can fairly be termed an 
 unprincipled compromise, and the possibility of 
 theorising moral situations denied."* There is, 
 according to Prof. Taylor, an opposition between 
 service of self and the service of others, between 
 self-affirmation and self-sacrifice that can only be 
 overcome by a process of moral patch-work. Prof. 
 Bosanquet justly points out that this conception of 
 
 scientific spirit. In losing its postulate a science loses both its 
 method and its test of adequate explanation. It degenerates into 
 a motiveless, clueless quest " where but to think is to be full of 
 sorrows and leaden-eyed despairs," from whose hopelessness we 
 therefore take refuge in the honest attempt to give up thinking 
 about our morals altogether. And this is the logical issue of 
 Prof, Taylor's sceptical pessimism. 
 
 * Aristotelian Society Proceedings, 1901-1902, p. 51. 
 
Lecture III 63 
 
 the fundamental antithesis of the moral life is not 
 
 Mr. Bradley's. With Mr. Bradley the 
 id. p. S3 ,. . . ^ , , ' 
 
 distinction amounts to that between self- 
 
 systematisation and self-dissipation ; i.e., between two 
 forms of self-realisation, one direct, the other indirect. 
 On this view there is no ultimate disparateness 
 be'tween the two great aspects of morality, only a 
 divergence in the finite application of one and the 
 same principle. 
 
 Prof. Bosanquet adopts this view and interprets 
 it in his own way. The central interest in his view is 
 that it compels us to fall back on a larger con- 
 ception of self-hood, — that self-consciousness 
 or infinite totality "whose inmost nature is to be itself 
 and another in one." It is manifest that from this 
 Copernican shifting of the centre of self-consciousness 
 from the finite to the absolute, it follows that what 
 were otherwise, from the merely personal standpoint, 
 divergent ends or ideals of conduct, become convergent 
 means for the progressive realisation of this deep-, 
 centred self. " In all our mind, then, and 
 ■ P- 54- throughout all our actions, there will be 
 variable elements of self-affirmation and of self-nega- 
 tion, according to the situations and their possibilities. 
 When the situation involves so much contradiction 
 that the best attempt to harmonise it still denies a 
 a great part of our existing self, we may call the act 
 self-sacrifice ; when it admits of completeness and self- 
 organisation, the act will be called proper self-affirma- 
 tion or self-assertion. But in both cases alike we are. 
 
64 A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 in acting for the best, impelled by the logic of the self, 
 i.e., by the nature of the totality which has roots in 
 our actual being. It can take, in our finite lives, 
 innumerable shapes, corresponding to the variety of 
 situations in a finite world. But all of them are 
 attempts to realise our nature as a whole, in terms of 
 our working theory of the situation as it stands. The 
 logic of the self is the nature of the whole working 
 through our given mental formation and our circum- 
 stances." 
 
 And the gist of all this, the true significance of 
 this conception of the logic or dialectic of the self is 
 — if I do not mistake Prof. Bosanquet's meaning 
 — that a theory of the Summum Bonum as the phil- 
 osophical foundation of ethics presupposes a theory 
 of the absolute Self of whose irresistible dialectic we 
 finite personalities are the organs or the channels. 
 
 In this relation of self to absolute we have the 
 most fundamental of all the problems of modern 
 idealism, and the watershed between the two streams 
 of tendency known as absolute and personal idealism 
 respectively. Both types of idealism agree in being 
 typically concrete in their tendency, with a strong re- 
 spect for experience. Wherein they precisely disagree is 
 a more difficult matter to settle. Each is less a definite 
 system than it is an aggregate of tendencies. What 
 is perhaps most distinctive of Personal Idealism is, 
 1°, its psychological bias, involving an emphasis of the 
 volitional aspect of personality which is lacking on the 
 absolutist side ; 2°, its diffidence of the absolute and 
 
Lecture III 65 
 
 its experiences — by no means to be mistaken for 
 atheism — a diflSdence wh^ch in certain representatives 
 amounts to the frankest aversion. 
 
 "I take the word happiness," says Prof. 
 Bosanquet, "to be primarily the name of a /WiJ/sw." 
 As the name of a problem, Personal Idealism would 
 not only be prepared to tolerate, but, in the writer's 
 own case, at least, would welcome the word "ab- 
 solute." I would consider it, however, as a problem 
 to be approached from the standpoint of free person- 
 ality. So long as a personality philosophy means ^n 
 irreducible pluralism such as Professor James recom- 
 mends, it has indeed not finished its work. A Monism 
 seems ultimately indispensable. But to identify it with 
 the Absolute in such a way as to narrow the signifi- 
 cance of personality, b.y denying, for instance, to 
 finite persons all claims to creative initiative, and a 
 share in the shaping of destiny, is to 'accept a solution 
 that has not transcended but simply evaded the 
 legitimate contentions of a pluralistic philosophy. 
 Let us therefore, for the present at anyrate, consider 
 the terms "absolute" and "monism" as indicating 
 problems. In such an attitude as this, we may find 
 the best security for helpful co-operation between 
 absolute and personal idealists. 
 
LECTURE IV 
 
PREFACE 
 
 Green's Prolegomena is essentially a criticism 
 of the naturalistic theory that our spiritual 
 interests are derived by direct evolution from 
 our animal wants. As against this position he 
 argues both that a process of change cannot 
 give rise to a knowledge of change, and that a 
 series of wants and their sequent impulses cannot 
 give rise to a consciousness of wanted objects. 
 Knowledge and desire, to have any spiritual 
 significance at all, must be self-originated. A 
 self or spiritual principle is necessary to the 
 existence alike of knowledge and morality. 
 
 Green's critical method is essentially the same 
 as Kant's. What are the conditions, he asks, of 
 a possible experience ? This is the famous 
 transcendental question. It starts with an ab- 
 stract conception of experience as equivalent to 
 what is experienced, i.e., to nature, and proves that 
 the conception, to be conceivable at all, pre- 
 supposes the self as a unifying sustaining prin- 
 ciple. If we start with a concrete conception of 
 
70 A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 experience as including the relation between 
 the experient and the experienced, the question 
 takes another and a truer form. " What are the 
 structural factors in an actual experience ? " We 
 hope to show in a later lecture that this is really 
 the form in which Green's meaning is usually 
 expressed. 
 
 Adopting the question in its abstract trans- 
 cendental form, Green shows first that the fact 
 known necessarily implies the knowing subject, 
 and further that this knowing subject must 
 remain self-identical through all the changes of 
 which it is aware. Knowledge of sequence 
 implies the permanence of the knower throughout 
 the sequence. 
 
 That the principle of unity involved in the 
 very conception of knowledge is self-conscious, 
 Green proves from an analysis of the conditions 
 which such a principle must satisfy. Only self- 
 consciousness, for instance, can unite a manifold 
 without effacing the severalty in which the 
 manifold consists. Self-consciousness is the only 
 true principle of unity in difference. 
 
 This spiritual principle in mind and in nature, 
 the principle at once of intelligence and intel- 
 ligibility. Green identifies with the absolute 
 spirit. He conceives the relation of the divine 
 to the individual consciousness as an incarnation 
 
Lecture IV 71 
 
 whereby the divine consciousness reproduces 
 itself under finite conditions, the finite becom- 
 ing thus organic to the infinite. Proceeding to 
 characterise the eternal consciousness, the attri- 
 butes of " timelessness," "spacelessness," "im- 
 mobility," " immateriality," are inferred from its 
 spiritual function as rendering possible a time 
 and space series, a world of matter in motion. 
 That which renders the time-series possible 
 cannot be itself in time ; such is the form of 
 argument adopted. 
 
 Green's argument for a spiritual principle in 
 morality is of precisely the same kind as his 
 argument for a spiritual principle in knowledge. 
 His main attention is directed here towards 
 emphasizing the absolute difference between an 
 idea of personal good and a consciousness of 
 animal wants. The motive is just this idea of 
 personal good, so that in being determined by 
 motives, we are self-determined by our own 
 adopted idea and not in any other way. We 
 are determined spiritually not causally, self- 
 determination being in no sense a link in the 
 endless phenomenal chain of cause and effect. 
 A motive of action is the direct expression of the 
 spiritual principle in our nature, and as self- 
 governed by motives we are absolutely free. 
 
 Such is the gist of Green's criticism in Books 
 
72 A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 I. and II. of the Prolegomena. Such discussion 
 is in Green's eyes indispensable. To pass over 
 the question of our relation to nature and to 
 God is to ignore what lies at the root of ethical 
 enquiry and run the risk of wasting our labour. 
 
LECTURE IV 
 
 GREEN'S PROLEGOMENA TO ETHICS 
 
 Green opens his great work with the recognition 
 that in coming forward as the champion of moral 
 philosophy as opposed to ethical science, he is going 
 against the prevalent opinion and must therefore 
 adopt a critical and defensive attitude. He feels 
 that "he must justify his claim to have something to 
 say that lies beyond the limits of the man of science." 
 The prevalent view of moral theory which Green 
 has in view is our typically national system of ethics, 
 the ethics of moral sentiment, as maintained, for in- 
 stance, by Hume and developed in the 19th century 
 along evolutionary lines. A main thesis of this 
 national ethics had been the derivation of moral 
 interests from animal wants, the explanation of 
 morality by means of its natural history. Now so 
 long as this history had to be traced within the limits 
 of the single life it was not easy to make this natural- 
 istic theory look very plausible, but once evolutionary 
 theory had broken down the narrow bounds of in- 
 dividual and of species, and justified its theories by 
 
74 ^ Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 irresistible appeal to facts, the gulf between the moral 
 man and the greater ape seemed at last bridged over. 
 Evolutionary ethics was now prepared to give a 
 purely naturalistic account of the origin of man's 
 susceptibilities, and further to erect an art ot moral 
 practice on the basis of this natural science. The 
 laws of moral conduct once discovered, the counsel 
 was to seek our happiness by living according to 
 these laws. 
 
 It is against this latter attempt to introduce the 
 normative quality into ethical science that Green 
 applies the thin edge of that impressive criticism ot 
 naturalism which plays so important a part in the 
 Prolegomena. Can this injunction to conform con- 
 duct to the discovered laws of his own being have 
 any meaning, asks Green, on naturalistic 
 ro eg. pj.gjjji3gg3 p c< No," he answers, " to one 
 who is simply a result of natural forces an 
 injunction to conform to their laws is unmeaning." 
 The consistent naturalist, argues Green, once he has 
 reduced the speculative, philosophical part into a 
 natural science should abolish the practical or pre- 
 ceptive part altogether. He must content himself 
 with explaining how the serviceable illusion of an 
 " ought " arose. This reduction of the sentiment of 
 duty to a useful social illusion, to which the natural- 
 istic theory compels us, is however "of a 
 ' kind to give us pause." We revert to the 
 basis of the theory and enquire whether a being that 
 was merely a result of natural forces could frame a 
 
Lecture IV 75 
 
 theory of those forces as explaining himself. In 
 short, we are thrown back on an analysis of the 
 conditions of knowledge. " Can the knowledge of 
 nature be itself a part or product of nature, in that 
 sense of nature in which it is said to be an object of 
 knowledge ? " If not, then " man, in respect 
 of the function called knowledge, is not 
 merely a child of nature . . . ." We shall have 
 ascertained the presence in him of a principle not 
 natural, and a specific function of this principle in 
 rendering knowledge possible. We shall then be led 
 on to ask the further question whether the same 
 principle does not also alone render morality 
 possible. 
 
 This is Green's position m outline. "His whole 
 system," to quote the words of a distinguished critic,* 
 " centres in the assertion of a Self or Spiritual Principle 
 as necessary to the existence alike of knowledge and 
 morality.'' 
 
 The method which Green adopts in his attempt to 
 meet the naturalist is practically that created by Kant 
 for the purposes of his Critique, and known as the 
 transcendental method. To give a transcendental proof 
 of a spiritual principle in experience is to show that 
 such a spiritual principle is implied in the very 
 possibility of that experience. A transcendental 
 enquiry, far from being an enquiry that goes outside 
 experience for its facts is precisely an enquiry that 
 moves within the given fact of experience. Its aim is 
 *Fiof. A. S. Fiingle- Patterson ' Hegelianism and Personality' p. 4 
 
76 A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 just to discover the indispensable, constitutive elements 
 
 of experience, to make what Prof. Bosanquet might 
 
 call a morphological analysis of experience, an 
 
 investigation of its essential structure. What are the 
 
 conditions of a possible experience ? What are those 
 
 structural factors apart from which no such thing as 
 
 experience would be possible? The tran- 
 
 ®p scendental method is therefore essentially 
 
 , analytic, not genetic. "Taking the fact of 
 
 Person- l^'^owledge, as it finds it, it does not inquire 
 
 ality id '^"^ ^'^^ ^^"-^ ^^^ realised or came into 
 
 p_ 17 being; but, moving always within the fact, it 
 
 asks what are the conditions of its being what 
 
 it is, what in other words are its essential elements." 
 
 Green, adopting in the main this Kantian method, 
 takes the naturalistic conception of nature and 
 analyzes it with a view to discovering the conditions of 
 the conception being a possible, i.e., a thinkable or 
 intelligible one. He finds that if you conceive nature 
 as the evolutionary naturalist does, as a process of 
 change which eventually gives rise to the phenomenon 
 known as a consciousness of change, you are attempting 
 the unintelligible. For if by " nature " is meant " mere 
 nature," i.e., nature purified of all reference to 
 consciousness, " nature " becomes eo ipso inconceivable. 
 
 Proles '"■^ ^^ *^°'-'''^ ^^ admitted that matter and 
 
 motion had an existence in themselves, or 
 
 otherwise than as related to consciousness, it 
 
 would still not be by such matter and motion, but by 
 
 the matter and motion which we know, that the 
 
Lecture IV 77 
 
 functions of the soul, or anything else, can for us 
 be explained. Nothing can be known by help of 
 reference to the unknown. In other words, the 
 " nature " of the naturalist must be nature as 
 known. 
 
 Now if we ask what is the necessary condition of 
 nature being known at all — as it must be if it is to 
 mean anything intelligible — the presence of the 
 knower must be granted. There cannot be thoughts 
 without a thinker, nor a known nature without a 
 knower. An analysis of nature as a fact of knowledge 
 shows that the fact known necessarily implies the 
 knowing subject. 
 
 The main point however is to justify the further 
 step that this knowing subject must be a subject that 
 remains identical with itself through all the changes of 
 which it is aware, and to show this by proving that 
 unless this also be granted, knowledge of nature is not 
 possible. 
 
 Green gives many variations of this proof. We 
 may take the following as typical : — 
 
 Consider our consciousness of a relation of 
 succession between two objects, A and B. Since 
 consciousness of succession is not itself a succession, 
 but only a consciousness of a relation, it follows that 
 the subject which apprehends A and B as succeeding 
 each other in time does so through a single appre- 
 hension and not through a succession of these. The 
 subject therefore remains single throughout its ap- 
 prehension of the succession. 
 
78 A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 This argument obviously holds good when the 
 objects related are many and complex. The singleness 
 or unity of the subject must be correlative to the 
 
 systematic oneness of the experience. If all 
 • possible experience of related objects — the 
 
 experience of a thousand years ago and the 
 experience of to-day, the experience which I 
 have here and that which I might have in 
 any other region of space — forms a single system ; if 
 there can be no such thing as an experience of 
 unrelated objects; then there must be a corre- 
 sponding singleness in that principle of conscious- 
 ness which forms the bond of relation between the 
 objects. 
 
 Why does Green feel himself justified in referring, to 
 this principle of unity in experience or knowledge of 
 nature as a principle of consciousness ? Green draws 
 this conclusion from an analysis of the conditions 
 which such a unifying principle must satisfy. It 
 must unify its objects in such a way as not to destroy 
 the singleness of the related objects relatively to each 
 
 other. There must be no fusion of A with 
 "^- B, otherwise "there could be no relation 
 
 between them — nothing but a blank, feature- 
 less identity. There must, then, be something 
 which is both other than the manifold things 
 themselves, does not blend with, i.e., distinguishes 
 itself from them, and which further combines them 
 without effacing their severalty." " With such 
 a combining agency," Green goes on to say, " we 
 
Lecture IV 79 
 
 are familiar as our intelligence." Thought, spirit or 
 
 . , self consciousness, as Green adds elsewhere, 
 
 id. p.32 . 
 
 IS the only agent that we know as maintain- 
 ing an identity with itself throughout a series 
 of changes, or as a principle that can unite a manifold 
 without cancelling its multiplicity. 
 
 In this way Green proves that there is a self- 
 conscious principle of unity involved in the very 
 conception of knowledge. Such a principle is at the 
 same time the spiritual principle in nature, since, in 
 Kant's language, it is our understanding that makes 
 nature in the sense of enabling us to conceive 
 
 that there is such a thing at all. From this 
 p. 22. . . ° 
 
 pomt of view the dualism between nature 
 
 and knowledge disappears. It is not that first there 
 
 is nature, and that then there comes to be an 
 
 experience and knowledge of it. Intelligence, 
 
 experience, knowledge, are no more a result ot 
 
 nature than nature of them. If it is true that there 
 
 would be no intelligence without nature, it 
 
 '"• is equally true that there would be no 
 P- 37 -^ J 
 
 nature without intelligence. The principle 
 
 of intelligence is at the same time the principle 
 
 of intelligibility. 
 
 Green concludes by identifying this unifying 
 principle of self-consciousness and of nature 
 with the absolute spirit. This appears to 
 Green to follow immediately once we 
 
 recognise the absurdity of supposing that nature comes 
 
 into existence in the process by which this person or 
 
8o A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 that begins to think. There must be an eternal 
 consciousness, a single divine subject, to whom 
 nature in its completeness eternally exists, and the 
 consciousness which constitutes our knowledge is 
 just this eternally complete consciousness as so far 
 realised through the bodily conditions of our human 
 existence. Green pictures the growth of our know- 
 ledge as the gradual development in us of the 
 consciousness of an eternal order in the universe, 
 and inasmuch as this order cannot exist apart from 
 the consciousness of it, an eternal consciousness must 
 be operative in us to produce the gradual develop- 
 ment of our knowledge.* Green speaks of this 
 divine eternal consciousness as " analogous to ours," 
 though it is hard to see from his statement that it 
 can differ from our own self-consciousness in any- 
 thing but comprehensiveness of outlook upon the 
 universe. 
 
 Green himself is quite aware that this view of the 
 
 relation of the individual to the divine consciousness 
 
 is stated rather than justified. "Why the 
 
 ' ■ "■ ■ whole," he says, " should be what it is, why 
 
 the mind which the world implies should exhibit 
 
 *cf. id. p. 38. "The difference between what may be broadly 
 called — experienced world." 
 
 of. also p. 75. "We must hold then that there is a consciousness 
 also for which the relations of fact, that form the object of our 
 gradually attained knowledge, already and eternally exist ; and 
 that the growing knowledge of the individual is a progress towards 
 this consciousness." 
 
Lecture IV 8i 
 
 itself in a world at all, why it should make certain 
 processes of that world organic to a reproduction of 
 itself under limitations which the use of such organs 
 involves — these are questions which, owing perhaps 
 to those very limitations, we are equally unable 
 to avoid asking and to answer. The wonder 
 in which Philosophy is said to begin will not cease 
 when [these conclusions are] arrived at; but, till it 
 can be shown to have left some essential part of the 
 reality of the case out of sight and another conclusion 
 can be substituted for it which remedies the defect, 
 this is no reason for rejecting it."* 
 
 At the close of his first chapter on " The Spiritual 
 
 Principle in Nature," Green refers to this principle in 
 
 the following terms : " neither in time nor 
 
 ■ "■ ' in space, immaterial and immoveable, 
 eternally one with itself, the principle necessary to the 
 possibility of the world of phenomena." How does 
 Green deduce these attributes? Green's answer is 
 given in § 52. The general ground he adopts is that 
 the relations by which phenomena are determined 
 through the activity of the principle are not relations 
 
 *cf. p. 103 §100. "The old question, why God made the 
 world, has never been answered, nor will be. We know not 
 why the world should be ; we only know that there it is. In 
 like manner we know not why the eternal subject of that world 
 should reproduce itself, throus;h certain processes of the world, 
 as the spirit of mankind or as the particular self of this or that 
 man in whom the spirit of mankind operates. We can only say 
 that, upon the best analyses we can make of our experience, it 
 seems that so it does." 
 
 6 
 
82 A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 of li, but simply relations y»r it.* Thus " the relation 
 of events to each other as in time implies 
 * ■ ^" "■ their equal presence to a subject which is 
 not in time. There could be no such thing as time 
 if there were not a self-consciousness which is not in 
 time. As little could there be a relation of objects 
 as outside each other, or in space, if they were not 
 equally related to a subject of which outsidedness to 
 anything is not a possible attribute; which by its 
 synthetic action constitutes that relation, but is not 
 itself determined by it. The same is true of those 
 relations which we are apt to treat as independent 
 entities under the names matter and motion. They 
 are relations existing for a consciousness which they 
 do not so condition as that it should itself either move 
 or be material." Hence the spiritual principle in 
 our conscious life is timeless, spaceless, immobile, 
 immaterial. 
 
 In Book II, Green passes from the metaphysics ot 
 knowledge to what he calls the metaphysics of moral 
 action. But in passing from the speculative to the 
 practical point of view his argument for a spiritual 
 principle remains essentially the same. Green's 
 
 *cf. p. 59. " There is not such relation between components of 
 the consciousness as there is between the events of which it is the 
 consciousness. (They form a process in time. If it were a time- 
 process, it would not be a consciousness of them as forming such 
 a process)." 
 
 Also p. 69. Our self-consciousness "_^r which many things indeed 
 are external to each other but to which nothing can be external." 
 
Lecture IV 83 
 
 main argument, we saw, was that a process of change 
 could not give rise to a knowledge of change. As 
 adapted to moral action this argument runs as follows: 
 " A series of wants and their sequent impulses cannot 
 give rise to a consciousness of wanted 
 
 ■ ^' ' ■ objects." " The transition from mere want 
 to consciousness of a wanted object, from the impulse 
 to satisfy the want to an effort for realisation of the 
 idea of the wanted object, implies the presence of the 
 want to a subject which distinguishes itself from it 
 and is constant throughout successive stages of the 
 want." The essential element in this consciousness 
 of wanted objects is the motive, which is always "some 
 
 idea of the man's personal good — an idea 
 
 ■ P" " * absolutely different from animal want." 
 Green makes his proof of the freedom of the will 
 
 hinge on the nature of this motive. He insists 
 
 emphatically on conduct being determined, 
 
 ' determined by motives, or more generally, by 
 
 the person's character and circumstances. Everything 
 
 depends however, according to Green, on how you 
 
 interpret such determination. " That moral action is 
 
 a joint result of character and circumstances," he 
 
 writes, " is not altogether an inappropriate statement 
 
 of it. It would be better [however] to say 
 
 ' ' that moral action is the expression of a man's 
 
 character as it reacts upon and responds to given 
 
 circumstances," and to note that the character is the 
 
 man, the determinant that reacts upon circumstance, 
 
 and, as such, cannot belong to the same causal series 
 
84 A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 as that to which the circumstances belong, To be 
 determined by one's character is to be self-determined. 
 The motive through which a man's character expresses 
 itself, though it necessarily determines the act, is the 
 act itself " on its inner side." It is toto genere 
 ' different from the unadopted desires, the 
 possible motives of action, that solicit a man's pre- 
 ference ; for it \s first constituted by the reaction of the 
 man's self upon these, and its identification of itself 
 with one of them, as that of which the satisfaction 
 forms for the time its object.* It is thus the direct 
 expression of a man's self-consciousness, of the spiritual 
 principle in man, and as such is absolutely free. For 
 self-consciousness, as we have seen, cannot be, in any 
 of its expressions, a link in the chain of natural 
 becoming, but must be self-originated. It is in fact, 
 according to Green, the eternal consciousness repro- 
 duced in some individual focus, and this eternal 
 consciousness, which is the whole, cannot be deter- 
 mined by aught but itself : for being the whole, there 
 is nothing external that could possibly determine it 
 from the outside. Logically, the validity of Green's 
 defence of freedom depends on his theory of the 
 relation between the individual self-consciousness and 
 
 *cf. id. p. 148. "The important real distinction is that 
 between the direction of the self-conscious self to the realisa- 
 tion of an object, its identification of itself with that object, 
 on the one side .... and, on the other side, the mere solicita- 
 tions of which a man is conscious, but with none of which he so 
 identifies himself as to make the soliciting object his object — the 
 object of his self-seeking — or to direct himself to his realisation,'' 
 
Lecture IV 85 
 
 the absolute self-consciousness. To share the essential 
 nature of the Absolute is to share his spiritual 
 freedom. If we are satisfied with Green's theory of 
 this relation, we have overcome the main difficulty in 
 accepting his doctrine of freedom; if we are not 
 satisfied with it, we shall still continue to ask whether 
 it is we, individually, who are free and responsible, 
 or whether it is the absolute who is free through 
 us and for us and takes all our responsibility : 
 two very different aspects of the problem of 
 freedom. 
 
 It should be added that, with Green, the will is the 
 personality considered as active, not in any sense a 
 faculty of the man, but the man's inmost self. " The 
 will," says Green, " is simply the man, and an act of 
 
 „ will the expression of the man as heat the 
 id. p. 158. . .,,%.. . , . , 
 
 time IS. It IS an act in which a self-con- 
 scious individual directs himself to the realisation of 
 some idea, as to an object in which for the time he 
 seeks self-satisfaction, and the will itself, in actuality, 
 is just the self-conscious individual as so 
 '^' ' directing himself. 
 
 We have now briefly summarized the main points 
 in Green's metaphysics of knowledge and moral action. 
 Of the necessity of such discussion for an ethical 
 system Green entertains no doubt whatsoever. To 
 
 have arrived at some conclusion in regard 
 id. p. 54. , , . , , " 
 
 to the relation between man and nature, 
 
 is, he irisists, essential if we would be sure "that 
 
 any theory of ethics, in the distinctive sense of the 
 
86 A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 term, is other than wasted labour." For it is only 
 when this discussion has led to the realisation of the 
 spiritual principle in nature that we are in a position 
 to consider the question which, as Green puts it, 
 
 " lies at the root of ethical enquiry," namely 
 
 the following : " In what relation do we 
 ourselves stand to the one self-distinguishing subject, 
 other than nature, which we find to be implied in 
 natiire?" The problem of man's relation to nature 
 involves that of his relation to God. Coming to the 
 problem of conduct, and viewing it still on its formal 
 
 side, Green points out how a vindication of 
 ' man's freedom as a spiritual agent is neces- 
 sary to give any meaning to the idea of moral progress, 
 and that the essential privilege of freedom, that of 
 presenting a highest good to one's self, is the primary 
 
 moral fact on which conduct depends. The 
 ■ Summum Bonum, that is, is the source of all 
 distinctively moral activity. Finally, in Book III. 
 which deals with "The Moral Ideal and Moral 
 Progress," Green introduces us to the concrete distinc- 
 tion which, as he puts it, "must lie at the root of 
 
 every system of ethics," the distinction 
 ■"■ ' between the good and the bad will ; and 
 we enter upon those concrete discussions in which 
 the function and value of the idea of perfection in 
 moral action is more especially and more specifically 
 insisted on. 
 
 Waiving these concrete issues, we propose to follow 
 up the bearings of Green's more formal enquiries on 
 
Lecture IV 87 
 
 our main theme: the philosophical significance of 
 moral experience. 
 
LECTURE V 
 
PREFACE 
 
 Green's insistence that spirit cannot be derived 
 from Nature, whilst it seems at first sight to 
 meet the contrary contention of naturalism in 
 the most direct manner possible, proves to be a 
 mistaken line of attack. It cannot be justified 
 on any possible interpretation of the word 
 "Nature." If" Nature" be taken in that com- 
 prehensive sense in which it is inclusive of spirit, 
 Green's proposition is of course untrue. If 
 "Nature" stands for a conception of the uni- 
 verse as existing prior to the spirit which 
 naturalism claims it gave birth to, it is, as such, 
 unknowable. Again, if " Nature " stands for the 
 Nature that we know, for Nature as an object of 
 knowledge, then, standing as it does in such 
 necessary organic relation to the spiritual 
 knower, it is not non-spiritual, and Green's 
 contention falls flat. Finally, the conception 
 of Nature as a phenomenal series of " events " is 
 inadequate for the purpose, for since "events" 
 can only be known as " facts," the Nature here 
 
92 A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 in question is again not a Nature that excludes 
 the spiritual principle. That Green's retort is 
 as futile as the naturalist's view which it 
 attempts to refute, is admitted by Green him- 
 self at the close of the discussion when he 
 insists that spirit can have no origin at all. 
 
 Professor Pringle-Pattison has objected to 
 Green's making the discussion turn on the 
 origin of spirit instead of on its nature, on the 
 ground that the transcendental method em- 
 ployed in the discussion does not permit of 
 being used for such a purpose. He fails to 
 notice however that the formal character of this 
 Kantian method is not only an epistemological 
 defect, but is itself largely responsible for its 
 misuse at the hands of Green. To treat the 
 conditions of a possible experience as mere 
 logical presuppositions is to suggest that the 
 experience investigated has a certain existential 
 independence of these conditions, and so to 
 constitute it into a conceivable origin of spirit. 
 It is Green's merit that in eventually setting aside 
 the purposeless quest of the origin of spirit, he at 
 the same time gives to Kant's question as to the' 
 nature of experience, its true, concrete, philo- 
 sophical significance. Green takes experience 
 as an organic whole, and practically, if not 
 always verbally, analyzes it in its concrete 
 
lecture V 93 
 
 totality. Kant's logical preconditions are there- 
 by reinterpreted as structural, indwelling factors 
 of experience. We are thus brought back to 
 the true philosophical view-point, the function 
 of Philosophy being, not to support an abstract 
 experience with an equally abstract substratum 
 of logic, but to reveal the spiritual significance 
 of our actual experience. 
 
LECTURE V 
 
 We have just been noting what, in Green's view, 
 constitute the essentials of ethics. We have now to 
 point out that from whatever point of view Green 
 views the moral problem, whether it be man's rela- 
 tion to Nature or to God, his freedom, his self-direc- 
 tion through the indwelling idea of perfection, or the 
 fundamental distinction between the good and the 
 bad will — the vindication of man's spiritual origin 
 is his one main preoccupation throughout. This 
 question of origin is, according to Green's own ex- 
 plicit declaration, the real question at issue, as 
 between moral philosophy and ethical science. Is 
 man a spirit or a product of Nature ? Is he spiritual 
 or natural ? — that is, in Green's opinion, the essential 
 crux. Or to put it in another way, what must, above 
 all, be proved, is that a process of change cannot give 
 rise to a. knowledge of change, and it is only when 
 Green feels that he can confidently say 
 ■ "■ ' '■ that "every effort fails to trace a genesis of 
 knowledge out of anything which is not, in form 
 
Lecture V 95 
 
 and principle, knowledge itself," that he considers 
 his main position to be secured.* 
 
 That Green should make his use of the transcen- 
 dental method turn on a question of origin rather 
 than on a simple question of nature may appear to 
 involve an unjustifiable use of that method which, 
 as we saw, is an analysis of the nature of knowledge, 
 not of its genesis. Moreover, Green explicitly asserts 
 that the method upon which he founds his theory of 
 the action of a free, eternal mind in man is the 
 analysis of knowledge, in the sense of an analysis 
 " of what is implied in there being a world 
 'to be known and in our knowing it." The 
 question therefore presses itself upon us : — ' ' Was Green 
 justified in practically identifying an analysis of the 
 nature of knowledge with a vindication of its spiritual 
 origin?" How are we to reconcile the essential 
 requirement of the transcendental method, that it 
 should just analyze out the conditions which guarantee 
 the unity of the experience it analyzes, with an 
 analysis such as Green's, which apparently ends in 
 drawing an absolute hne of cleavage between two of 
 the factors of that experience whose essential unity 
 
 * Cf. Especially § 84, p. 88. " Till some flaw can be shown 
 in the doctrine previously urged," he writes, "we must hold 
 that there is an absolute difference between change and the 
 intelligent consciousness or knowledge of change, which pre- 
 cludes us from tracing any development of the one into the 
 other, if development implies any identity of principle between 
 the germ and the developed outcome." 
 
96 A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 was the very fact to be explained. We propose to 
 consider this difficulty more closely. 
 
 Green's whole argument, as we have seen, is in 
 form determined by his antagonistic attitude towards 
 NaturaUsm. The feature of that doctrine on which 
 Green tenaciously fastens, is its derivation of spirit 
 from nature. The problem is thus made to turn 
 upon the origin of spirit, instead of on its function in 
 the unity of experience, and the analysis of know- 
 ledge, in Green's hands, just becomes an exposure 
 of the absurdity of considering that the object of 
 knowledge can bring forth the knowledge of which 
 it is the object. 
 
 The evil consequences of thus mistaking the real 
 issue are apparent from the very outset. 
 
 When the naturalist argues that nature, as a 
 process of change, gives rise to spirit as knowledge 
 of change, he should mean, if his words are to mean 
 anything, that nature prior to its production of spirit 
 is nature as it would be exclusive of or without a 
 spiritual principle. And it is thus that Green un- 
 doubtedly understands the naturalist's position when 
 he argues against it and insists that spirit, on the 
 contrary, has an entirely different origin from nature. 
 For this argument is not valid if nature is conceived 
 as having anything in common with spirit. Unless 
 the nature here referred to is conceived of as non- 
 spiritual, exclusive of the spiritual, the origin of spirit 
 could not, under any circumstances, be entirely non- 
 natural. 
 
Lecture V 97 
 
 Nature then, if Green's contention of spirit's diiferi 
 ence of origin is to mean anything; must be at any 
 rate that which exists independently of spirit. But 
 as so existing, nature, as Green points out in the 
 very opening of his treatise, is simply not knowable 
 and is certainly not the nature the naturalist has in 
 view when he talks of Nature. Now this remark, 
 while it exposes a weak spot in the naturalistic con- 
 tention, takes Green's ground from under his feet. 
 For he is seen now to be contending that spirit must 
 have a different origin from that which has no 
 knowable existence at all. Hence, so long as nature 
 implies exclusion from spirit, Green's apology for the 
 non-natural origin of the soul falls entirely flat. 
 
 Green saves himself from this difficulty only through 
 
 an invalid identification of two uses of the term 
 
 " Nature." He identifies " Nature " as that which is 
 
 considered without "the inclusion of the spiritual 
 
 principle which it implies," with "the system 
 
 of phenomena as such." Nature is conceived 
 p. 57. ^ 
 
 as phenomenal, as a connected series of 
 events, and qui connected, to that extent animated 
 by a spiritual principle. Nature is taken as equivalent 
 to the time-flow of sensible experieilce. We must 
 note that Green distinguishes between events and 
 facts. The characteristic of sensible events is that 
 they are related to each other in the way of ante- 
 cedence and consequence, form, that is, a causal 
 nexus. Facts (and ads'), on the other hand, are not 
 so related. It is only in virtue of a man's self- 
 
 7 
 
98 A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 consciousness that he can be aware of facts as facts. 
 Facts are united logically (not causally), in a system 
 of mutual determination. The order of connection 
 among events is thus different from the order of 
 connection among facts. A fact is an element in a 
 system of knowledge, an event an element in the 
 system of nature. 
 
 It is of course perfectly true that, on Green's own 
 view, to know nature as an event is at the same time 
 to know it as a fact. Green does not believe in a 
 state of consciousness called "sensation" wherein 
 nature is apprehended as a series of events, and 
 another called " perception " wherein it is apprehended 
 as a system of facts. But if we are to conceive the 
 nature from which spirit cannot take its origin as 
 "nature conceived by spirit as a system of facts," 
 Green's position becomes absurd. It would be like 
 saying that spirit could not originate from spirit. The 
 nature, then, from which spirit cannot originate is 
 " phenomenal " nature, the nature of science and of 
 common sense, the object of the external and internal 
 senses, the time-flow of events whether physical or 
 psychical. 
 
 It is not to our present purpose to consider 
 whether this view of nature as an ordered phenomenal 
 series answers to anything real or not. For Green, it 
 must correspond to a definite order of existence if the 
 attempt to show that spirit could not originate from it 
 is not to be reduced to the futile occupation of showing 
 that it cannot originate from our own abstract thinking. 
 
Lecture V 99 
 
 Green has thus placed himself, by his unfortunate 
 insistence on the origin of spirit, in the following 
 predicament: — If nature be taken as excluding in 
 toto the spiritual principle, then the question of origins 
 has no point, for nature out of relation to conscious- 
 ness is absolutely non-existent for us. Can an 
 unthinkable thought give birth to the very principle 
 of thinking itself? If, on the other hand, nature be 
 taken as already in relation to consciousness, then the 
 antagonism between nature and spirit no longer 
 exists, and there is no need to justify the reality of 
 spirit by insisting on its difference of origin. 
 
 What then are we to conclude ? Simply this, that 
 in making his transcendental quest a disquisition on 
 origins instead of on the nature of the one seamless 
 fact called knowledge, Green took the wrong path. 
 There can be no doubt, judging from the after-work 
 of the Prolegomena, that had Green felt himself free 
 to attack the whole question of knowledge on its own 
 merits, instead of in antagonism to the naturalists y if, 
 that is, he had formulated the problem in the way 
 most natural to him, instead of accepting the problem 
 as formulated by naturalism, his transcendental 
 analysis would have been an analysis of the nature of 
 knowledge, an analysis precluding speculations as to 
 origin. 
 
 Indeed, Green's final answer to naturalism precisely 
 amounts to the statement he might have made and 
 defended at the very start, that the question has been 
 wrongly set by them, that it is absurd to speculate on 
 
100 A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 the origin of consciousness, since consciousness 
 cannot possibly have had any origin at all. " Should 
 the question be asked, If this self consciousness is 
 not derived from nature, what then is its origin? 
 the answer is that it has no origin. It never began, 
 because it never was not. It is the condition 
 
 ■^" of there being such a thing as beginning or 
 end." 
 
 This remark forms the natural transition to the 
 sounder concreter view of the relation of nature to 
 spirit, the view Green habitually reverts to when 
 unembarrassed by his anti-naturalistic bias. 
 
 The gist of this happier outlook upon the meaning 
 
 of experience is that experience is one organic whole, 
 
 and that no part of it can therefore be considered as 
 
 really existing in separation from the rest. "We 
 
 cannot indeed suppose any real separation between 
 
 the determinant and the determined. The 
 
 order of becoming is only an order ot 
 
 becoming through the action of that which is not in 
 
 becoming ; nor can we think of this order as preceded 
 
 by anything that was not an order of becoming. As 
 
 little, on the other . hand, can we suppose that which 
 
 we only know as a principle of unity in relation, to 
 
 exist apart from a manifold through which it is 
 
 related." Again, referring to the self-distinguishing 
 
 „ characteristic of consciousness. Green writes 
 id. p. 80 
 
 " That the unifying principle should distinguish 
 
 itself from the manifold which it unifies, is indeed the 
 
 condition of the unification; but it must not be 
 
Lecture V loi 
 
 supposed that the manifold has a nature of its own 
 apart from the unifying principle, or this principle 
 another nature of its own apart from what it does in 
 relation , to the manifold world. Apart from the 
 unifying principle the manifold world would be 
 nothing at all, and in its self-distinction from that 
 world the unifying principle takes its character 
 from it; or rather, it is in distinguishing itself 
 from the world that it gives itself its character, 
 which therefore but for the world it would not 
 have."* 
 
 This concrete view of the factors of experience as 
 mutually implicating each other is not accidental in 
 Green's philosophy, but essential to it. It is the soul 
 of his excellent treatment in Book II, Chapter II, of 
 " Desire, Intellect, and Will," and is implied in his 
 whole treatment of the function of the moral ideal in 
 moral progress. 
 
 We may then well ask in what essential ways 
 Green's results would have been affected had he con- 
 sistently adhered throughout to this conception of 
 experience as an organic unity. In two essential 
 ways. In the first place, the metaphysical problem 
 of the origin of consciousness would not have arisen 
 at all. Inasmuch as phenomenon and principle do 
 not really exist in separation from each other, 
 it is obvious that where the one is, the other is. 
 
 'cf. also §100. "Just as we hold . . . presents to itself," 
 and §91 §114, and the telling expression " provisionally called 
 natural," on p. 83, 
 
102 A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 To consider whether one factor of such an 
 experience could or could not give rise to the other 
 factor is like asking whether the object as known, 
 could give rise to the subject as knowing, or vice- 
 versa. 
 
 The analysis would, in the second place, have 
 afforded no justification for defining the nature of the 
 spiritual principle as "timeless, spaceless, immaterial, 
 immobile." The doctrine of the eternal conscious- 
 ness, for instance, could not be established by such 
 an analysis. These criticisms must be justified at 
 some length. 
 
 In his " Hegelianism and Personality," Prof 
 Pringle-Pattison has given a most lucid criticism of 
 the tendency among idealists to erect abstractions 
 into entities, and thereby, as he puts it, to give a 
 metaphysical interpretation to the results of a purely 
 formal theory of knowledge. I propose to briefly 
 consider the purport of his criticism so far as it bears 
 on our present subject. In one essential respect I 
 find myself unable to follow it, as I shall presently 
 endeavour to show. 
 
 Prof. Pringle-Pattison takes us back to Kant's 
 transcendental analysis, the main result of which was 
 to show that in analysing a process of experience in 
 general, with a view to determining the conditions of 
 its possibility, the necessity of a central principle of 
 connection — a synthetic unity of apperception, could 
 be demonstrated. Hume had failed to find such a 
 self, because in searching experience in order to dis- 
 
Lecture V 103 
 
 cover its whereabouts, he had looked for it as for a 
 
 particular among other particulars, a percep- 
 ■ tion or object added to the other contents of 
 
 consciousness. As such, it is, of course, 
 nowhere. But to the analyst who guides himself by 
 Kant's leading question, this self is found to be 
 everywhere, "the very condition of all these 
 particular perceptions, given along with each of 
 them, and essential to the connecting of one with 
 another." 
 
 As Prof. Pringle-Pattison points out, Kant is in 
 one essential respect perfectly aware of the formal 
 limitations of this critical investigation. If the object 
 of one's study is " consciousness in general," the only 
 form in which analysis can reveal the unifying 
 principle essential to it, is as a formal subject or 
 centre of reference, the necessary point of view from 
 which experience in general can be unified. As 
 
 Prof. Pringle-Pattison reminds us, "Kant 
 ^~, refuses to recognise the transcendental ego 
 
 as constituting the real self even of the indi- 
 vidual human knower," and is still further removed 
 
 from the audacity of erecting into a god, as 
 ''■'■P" Green in his opinion does, the mere form 
 
 of self-consciousness in general. The su- 
 preme condition of the possibility of knowledge is the 
 
 unity of the pure ego, but this pure ego is 
 '^ ' ^ J P' no actual knower, whether human or divine. 
 
 The self reached by the critical analysis of 
 knowledge, according to Kant, has a merely logical 
 
104 ■A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 character, and he explicitly deprecates in set terms 
 the mistake of confusing the logical exposi- 
 'g P" tion of a thought in general for a meta- 
 physical determination of the object. 
 Prof. Pringle-Pattison is of opinion that this 
 strictly logical attitude of Kant's is unimpeachable, 
 and that he has definitely mapped out the proper 
 natural limitations of a critical Theory of Knowledge. 
 I cannot however see my way to erecting this formal 
 interpretation of the critical method into a model for 
 Epistemologists. Its formalism, it seems to me, is in 
 itself a limitation, a valuable one in so far as it con- 
 duces to the simplification of the problem of Know- 
 ledge or Experience, but otherwise a mere device for 
 approaching a problem which is really extremely 
 complex and concrete in its most general, abstract form. 
 Is it essential, we may well ask, that the legitimate 
 office of a Theory of Knowledge should be merely 
 critical, "ruling out," as Prof Pringle- 
 ■ Pattison suggests it should do, certain solu- 
 tions as inadmissible. Surely the establishment, or 
 ruling in, of the unity of apperception, a distinctly 
 positive service of formal epistemology, is just as 
 valuable a service as that of ruling out the thing in 
 itself as an unthinkability. Even if its office is formal 
 it is not therefore necessarily critical and negative. 
 It may well be, and is, constructive and positive in 
 its own formal way. The real question at issue then 
 is whether in analyzing Knowledge or Experience 
 according to the transcendental method we must 
 
Lecture V 105 
 
 respect Kant's formal limitations to the constructive 
 possibilities of the method. 
 
 I should be perfectly ready to admit that if it is 
 " experience in general " that is thus to be analyzed, 
 and if such experience is understood in some es- 
 sentially abstract logical way, the conclusions that 
 can be drawn about its constitution, by the use ot 
 any method whatsoever, must be correspondingly 
 abstract and logical. Kant was limited by the 
 abstractness of his starting-point. If we are dealing 
 with formal conceptions all through, nothing but 
 formal conceptions can issue in the result. 
 
 If we abide by the terms in which the critical 
 enquiry is usually framed by Kant, the search for 
 the conditions of a possible experience, we must 
 admit that what is required of us is just an unearth- 
 ing of the "logical conditions" which underlie the 
 possibility of experience. We accordingly interpret 
 our results as " necessary presuppositions " — a phrase 
 which satisfies the logical sense, but of course leaves 
 such necessities as the pure Ego or Transcendental 
 Unity of Apperception mere logical notions. 
 
 But, I ask, is not this way of framing the funda- 
 mental query tantamount to confessing that one does 
 not expect to be able by any analysis of experience 
 to discover the actual indwelling presence of a spiritual 
 principle? I am quite aware that there was no such 
 prejudice in Kant's mind. He, like Green, had the 
 naturalism of Hume to deal with, and the critical 
 enquiry takes its form largely from the necessities 
 
io6 A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 and requirements of destructive criticism, and for 
 such a purpose it is enough to establish the necessity 
 of a unifying factor in knowledge in a purely formal 
 way ; — yet, what may be a just limitation of a method 
 under certain specific circumstances need not be its 
 just limitation under all circumstances. Let us grant 
 that in a first draft of the use of a method, a certain 
 formal simplicity is essential ; still, when the method 
 in its outline has once been well grasped and some 
 idea of its possibilities gained, we are justified, surely, 
 in seeking to develop it in the sense of rendering its 
 application less and less formal, more and more 
 concrete. 
 
 If we ask ourselves what this "experience in 
 general" can really mean, we are bound to confess 
 that it must be one's own experience, viewed as it 
 were structurally and in outline. But on such a view 
 of " experience in general," the " conditions " become 
 "constituents," and this transformation constitutes 
 the first essential step in the " concretion " of the 
 transcendental method. Instead of investigating the 
 conditions of a possible experience, we analyze the fact of 
 experience in its concrete totality, and instead of dis- 
 covering a logical principle of unity, we find, say, 
 unity and continuity of interest in an object as the 
 essential inworking element of the fact of experience 
 itself. The unifying conceptions which make experi- 
 ence possible are thus seen to be, not preconditions 
 of a purely logical kind, but forms in the Aristotelian 
 sense, factors apart from whose indwelling presence 
 
Lecture V 107 
 
 experience as we know it would be simply non- 
 existent.* 
 
 In illustration of my present meaning, I proceed to 
 point out how I would remodel the following typical 
 statement of Green's. " There can be neither proof 
 nor disproof of such necessity as is claimed for any 
 conception but through analysis of the conditions 
 which render this experience possible." I should 
 prefer to say : " There can be neither proof nor dis- 
 proof of such actuality as is claimed for any indwelling 
 principle, but through analysis of the factors which 
 constitute the fact of experience.'' 
 
 When Prof. Stout introduces a principle of 
 unity of interest into the very vitals of the processes 
 whereby associations and habits are formed, it is not 
 through an analysis of the conditions that make 
 association and habit possible, but through a deeper 
 analysis of the facts of habit and association than has 
 been previously made, and this deeper analysis implies 
 a deeper grasp of the true nature of the psychical 
 experiences concerned. Such work results in deepen- 
 ing and strengthening our grasp of facts. It reveals 
 facts to us in x;oncreter, richer form and compass. 
 
 * Critical philosophy, in my opinion, differs from analytic 
 science only in this, that its fact, experience, is taken concretely, 
 in its totality, and that, consequently, that rerification of theory 
 with outstanding fact, so essential to inductive procedure, is here 
 impossible on account of there being no outstanding facts to 
 serve as external tests of verification. 
 
LECTURE VI 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The tendency to treat the spiritual factor in 
 experience as an indispensable presupposition 
 instead of as an essential constituent results, 
 when drawn out into its logical consequences, 
 as has been recently done by Prof. Hicks, in the 
 denial that we can have any consciousness 
 whatsoever of mental activity as such. The 
 conclusion is that mental states are not facts of 
 which we are aware, but ways or modes in and 
 through which we become aware. In experience 
 there is that which is experienced and that 
 which experiences. This latter factor, argues 
 Prof Hicks, is unknowable. Mr. Bradley, how- 
 ever, accuses this view of being an absurdity. 
 The mental activity is known and known qua 
 part of the whole content of experience. It can 
 be known qua subjective activity moreover and 
 not only qua experienced object. We may put 
 the matter thus : Our awareness is of contents 
 or phenomena, but not all phenomena are objects 
 given to a self; they include felt subjective 
 
112 A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 activities as well, qua felt. Now of these felt 
 activities we are certainly aware, and to that 
 extent at least can know them. Accepting Mr. 
 Bradley's argument as valid, we conclude that 
 Prof Hicks's contention that subjective activities 
 are not knowable is disproved. Mr. Bradley's 
 vindication of the spiritual principle as something 
 that can be felt bears out, in the directest way 
 possible, our contention that the spiritual prin- 
 ciple is a real factor in experience and not a 
 mere inferred necessity. That which is felt is 
 however not the same as the mere feeling of it, 
 and the true function of the spiritual principle 
 in experience must be the discovery of philo- 
 sophy, and not of science which can only handle 
 phenomena. Prof Stout's view of mental 
 activity agrees, substantially, with the views 
 above indicated. Through his vigorous con- 
 tention, as against Professor James's cephalic 
 movement theory, that mental activity is a " total 
 activity " and cannot therefore be identified with 
 any particular component feeling or sensation, 
 he has left the critical problem of self-feeling in 
 its most approachable and suggestive form. 
 
LECTURE VI 
 
 The difficulty we inevitably encounter when we 
 endeavour to see clearly what a "purely logical" 
 discussion of experience in general really means, may 
 be illustrated by a recent attempt on the part of 
 Prof. Hicks to give it an adequate interpretation. 
 It is the most honest attempt I am familiar with 
 to give a really definite meaning (somewhat in 
 Lotze's sense), to Kant's formal procedure, but 
 it seems to me to provide a convincing instance 
 of the dangers that lurk in formal epistemology, 
 and to give the death-blow to presuppositions 
 that are not also actually constituents of experience. 
 The paper in which Prof. Hicks's views are developed 
 is modestly entitled : " A restatement of some features 
 in Kantian Transcendentalism," and was read before 
 the Aristotelian Society in May, 1903. Its central 
 theme is that the supreme condition which renders 
 experience possible is the thinking activity of the 
 subject, and that this mental activity, being in- 
 
 8 
 
114 -^ Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 trinsically subjective, is eo ipso inexperienceable. 
 We can only be aware of objects, and that which 
 is pure subject and the condition of there being 
 any objects at all, cannot itself be an object. 
 It therefore cannot be known. This is indeed pre- 
 cisely what Kant implies when he affirms that we 
 "cannot know that as an object which we must 
 presuppose in order to know any object." It follows 
 then, writes Prof. Hicks, " that in knowing we 
 
 „ „ ■ never know our mental states, as mental states, 
 Soc.Proc. , . . , 
 
 any more than in seemg we see the organ of 
 
 p. 148. sight." " Mental states are not facts of which 
 
 we are aware, but ways or modes in and 
 
 through which we become aware." . . . " It is therefore 
 
 truer to say," he adds, " that the conscious subject is 
 
 his mental states than that he has them." 
 id. p. 150. .,, , 
 
 All that we experience is content, content 
 
 apprehended, and being a content is not an existent. 
 We cannot know existence either in our subjective 
 activity or in nature. This distinction between the 
 content we are aware of, aware of in the forms of 
 meaning and of value, on the one hand, and the 
 existence or psychical mechanism through 
 ' "■ which we become aware of contents appre- 
 hended is indeed, as Prof. Hicks asserts, 
 only a distinction within a whole. Neither can be 
 without the other. There is no having such con- 
 tents or objects apart from the process of apprehend- 
 ing itself. Prof. Hicks is true to the tran- 
 scendental spirit, but the two factors are in nature 
 
Lecture VI 115 
 
 sundered by "the whole diameter of Being." "The 
 mental state exists, it occurs, and by its occur- 
 rence we are aware ; the content, on the other hand, 
 conceived of it in abstraction from the mental state, 
 is neither an existent nor an occurrence, but a 
 portion of the wider whole to which we give 
 ' the name of knowledge. 
 
 That there is an enticing neatness and simplicity 
 in such a solution I would be the first to admit, and 
 thedifficulty it endeavours to cope with is a genuine 
 one. We have but to try a little introspection, and 
 having got knower and known well together in the 
 focus of mental vision, ask ourselves " what is it that 
 knows the knower ? " in order to realise that there is a 
 genuine difficulty involved.* 
 
 I cannot do better here than refer to an article by 
 Mr. Bradley entitled " A defence of Phenomenalism 
 in Psychology," Mind, Jan., 1900, an article to which 
 I shall have occasion to refer subsequently in another 
 connection. 
 
 Mr. Bradley puts the theory we have been consider- 
 ing into the mouth of a supposed objector, and 
 compendiously sums it up as follows : — " The experi- 
 enced ... is but one aspect of experience, and the 
 other aspect consists in the activity of the self. 
 This activity is itself not perceived and does not 
 
 * The proper reply to this inevitable query would, I think, be 
 this : — The question is wrongly put, the scientific point of view 
 being presupposed in the asking of it, whereas the occasion re- 
 quires the adoption of the philosophical point of view. 
 
ii6 A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 itself enter into the experienced content, and is 
 „ not and cannot itself be made into an 
 '^■P- 38- object." 
 
 This view Mr. Bradley urges, is, in the first place 
 contrary to plain fact. Take a pleasure. This is 
 certainly felt. " But to insist that beside being felt, 
 it cannot also be made an object at all, seems in plain 
 collision with fact." "And in desire and 
 ■ P' 3"' conation the felt presence of a self, which is 
 not experienced wholly as an object, seems, really, 
 when we reflect, to stare us in the face." It certainly 
 does. "The self feels itself, and it feels itself as 
 something concrete, and it feels the presence of an 
 object or objects given to this self which is so far not 
 an object and yet is experienced. . . . But how I can 
 feel myself [to be active or passive] if I am not aware 
 of myself as something over against my objects, and 
 how I can be so aware of my self if my self is itself 
 not experienced, seems an insoluble puzzle." 
 
 Mr. Bradley goes on to show that the view simply 
 amounts to a denial of the fact of self-consciousness. 
 If the self cannot be experienced, how can self- 
 consciousness be a fact ? And yet such it surely is. 
 " We rightly or wrongly then are in fact aware 
 
 • P- jy- Qf ^ ggjf^ which self, we are told, on the one 
 hand, cannot be experienced .... But how in that 
 case we can become aware of it, and by what 
 process the idea or the motion, or whatever you prefer 
 to call it, is ever to enter into our minds, seems 
 impossible to discover. 
 
Lecture VI 117 
 
 There seems no doubt in my mind that Mr. 
 Bradley's criticism is sound and that, further, it 
 applies to Prof. Hicks. How, we may ask, can that of 
 which we are not aware be of any concern to us ? 
 What right have we to qualify it as existent, much less 
 as the sole existent? Prof. Hicks tells us that in 
 the experiences mediated by these unknowable psy- 
 chical events we have the nature of the content- 
 marks to serve as a clue to the nature of the psy- 
 chical event itself. But there can be surely no 
 sense in talking of marks, signs or symbols, unless 
 we start with some knowledge of what these are 
 to be the signs. The significate is logically, i.e., 
 by way of knowledge, antecedent to the sign. If 
 the thing signified is unknowable it must be surely 
 illegitimate to conclude that it is a psychical fact 
 at all.* 
 
 Moreover, on Prof. Hicks's rendering of the facts I 
 do not see how this inexperienceable presupposition of 
 all experience could be identified with the self, or even 
 if identified with a self, how we could distinguish 
 between the personal selves and a divine self. The 
 self in fact seems to be left as much in the background 
 as it is in all 'inductive investigation, so that the result 
 of the transcendental enquiry would seem to be the 
 justification of the purely phenomenal attitude of 
 Science as the only one possible ! 
 
 This whole discussion is so important that we may 
 *cf. Arist. Soc. Proc, 1902-1903, p. 164. "What we call ex- 
 istence," sq. 
 
irS A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 perhaps profitably recapitulate it in a more systematic 
 way. 
 
 We may distinguish three stages in the argument : — 
 
 1. Mental activity is the condition of knowledge 
 
 but in itself inexperienceable. (Prof. Hicks). 
 
 2. Mental activity cannot be known but may be 
 
 felt. 
 
 3. Mental activity may be known qua subjective 
 
 feeling. 
 From this point forward the argument takes a 
 different turn. Mr. Bradley insists that it. psychological 
 study of immediate experience so conceived, if it 
 is to be effective, must be as phenomenalistic as 
 is the study of any natural science. We purpose 
 maintaining in the sequel that the facts of immediate 
 experience will adequately support a ideological,, 
 philosophical psychology, and that such a psychology 
 is imperatively called for in the interests of philosophy 
 itself. 
 
 Stage I : We cannot be aware at all of our mental 
 activities but only of what we experience through 
 them. Prof. Hicks refers to what is thus alone 
 experienceable as the content of experience. 
 " Content," therefore is thus identified with 
 " object presented," with the object over against 
 the unknown mental activity of the self. 
 As we have seen, this view really comes to saying 
 that the abstract, scientific point of view is not 
 only a methodological, but an absolute necessity of 
 the reason. It restricts us within the agnostic 
 
Lecture VI 119 
 
 limits of the first Critique taken in isolation from 
 the second and third. 
 
 Stage II : We cannot know our mental activities but 
 they are not therefore inexperienceable, for we 
 can experience what we cannot know at all. 
 This view can be made intelligible if understood in 
 either of two senses, but in being thus rationalised 
 it loses its essential force. Thus it may be taken 
 to mean in the first place that we can feel our 
 mental activities without attending to them at all, 
 that is, that we can feel and yet not be aware 
 that we feel. This amounts to saying that we 
 can only be sub-consciously aware of our mental 
 activites, for we can, I suppose, sub-consciously 
 feel that to which we do not attend. But this 
 interpretation does not do justice to the view 
 under discussion which asserts that we can feel 
 that which is incapable of being known. Sub- 
 conscious phenomena are not incapable of being 
 known. They lie beyond the grasp, but not 
 beyond the reach of attention. They are 
 " claimants for our attention." Hence if mental 
 activities were simply sub-conscious activities, it 
 would be possible for us to do more than feel 
 them. 
 A similar objection must be made to the attempt to 
 
 identify the statement that "we can feel what we 
 
 cannot know," with the statement that " experience is 
 
 more than knowledge." 
 
 This latter contention must surely be admitted. 
 
1 20 A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 We don't know feelings qua feelings any more 
 than we know sensational qualities qua sensational 
 qualities. The blue quality we feel is not blue as we 
 know it in relation to other colours and the rest of our 
 systematised experience. So again, the feeling of 
 existence as a spiritual self is not, qua feeling, a bit 
 of knowledge. 
 
 But no idealist, least of all, Kant — would suggest 
 that the universe we experience is a mere thought, 
 structure, consisting of thoughts and thoughts only, 
 or their meanings and values. Intuition without 
 understanding, we read, is dumb, understanding 
 without intuition, blind. What must be insisted on, 
 however, is that there can be no experience of which 
 we cannot become aware. I am manifestly aware of 
 the blue sky as I experience it and such awareness is 
 knowledge in embryo ; similarly I am aware, through 
 feeling, no doubt, but not as pure feeling, of myself 
 as a spiritual existent. What I feel, I know, though 
 it be ever so true that to know is not to feel. This 
 second interpretation does not support the contention 
 that we feel what it is impossible for us to know. 
 Stage III : Mr. Bradley's view. Mr. Bradley's con- 
 tention is that our immediate consciousness of 
 experience includes, or may include, a conscious- 
 ness, both of our mental activity and of its 
 object. In both cases it is a consciousness of 
 content.* With Mr. Bradley the psychical datum 
 experienced, whether it be a subject-datum or an 
 
 * Mind, January, 1 900, pages 36-41. 
 
Lecture VI 121 
 
 object-datum, is referred to in this article as 
 £ontent. The term " object " is restricted to that 
 use of it in which it stands in antithetical 
 relation to subject, and is equivalent to the 
 object held before the mind. Hence Mr. 
 Bradley's view amounts to the assertion that 
 though all we experience presents itself to us in 
 the form of content, we are not limited to an 
 experience of objects. We may and do ex- 
 perience our subjective activities qua subjective 
 activities, and he refers approvingly 
 to Prof Pringle-Pattison's broader con- 
 ception of feeling as "no longer mere pleasure 
 or pain, but the immediate awareness on the 
 part of the self of its own being and activity." 
 It is important to notice that when Mr. Bradley 
 uses the expression "mere feeling," he means 
 "experienced feeling," " feeling of which we are 
 aware as content, though not as object." So far 
 as (a) pleasure is felt merely, it is, I agree," he 
 says, " so far not an object and does not come 
 before the mind, and to urge that in being made 
 an object it must to some extent be modified 
 is at least a reasonable contention." In the 
 mere feeling here alluded to there is no reference 
 to sub-conscious feeling and still less to that 
 inconceivable experience, the experience that we 
 cannot know. It is just a feeling of which we 
 are immediately aware. 
 
 As another instance of the view to which Mr. 
 
122 A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 Bradley's conclusions are diametrically opposed, 
 we may cite that of Dr. MacDougall \Mind, July, 
 1902. Physiological Factors of the Attention- 
 Process]. Among the reputed factors of the 
 Attention-Process, he includes a peculiar self- 
 determining activity of the soul that can, as 
 it were, give the casting vote and turn in this 
 way or that the balance of the effects of the 
 other contending factors. 
 
 " As to this last factor," he writes, " it may be 
 confidently asserted that its reality can neither 
 be established nor disproved by any expression 
 of opinion however pious or philosophical, and 
 that we can obtain evidence for or against the 
 reality of this factor by one method only, 
 namely, by the method of residues, i.e., by the 
 elucidation of the workings of all other factors 
 and the demonstration that, when in any 
 particular case their effects are fully allowed for, 
 there still remains or does not remain an inex- 
 plicable factor, through the influence of which 
 the direction of attention is other than the 
 resultant of the influences of all those known 
 factors. We may therefore profitably leave the 
 consideration of it on one side until such time 
 as our knowledge of the other factors shall have 
 made immense progress, merely keeping our 
 minds open to the possibility of its reality." 
 
 According to this view we can at best only 
 hope to infer the reality of spiritual activity by 
 
Lecture VI 123 
 
 first exhausting the resources of science. Even 
 then it remains only an inexplicable x whose 
 function it is to account for what the other less 
 microscopic factors have failed to explain. It is 
 even then a problematical particular, and doubly 
 objectionable from our point of view. For 
 spiritual activity as felt is no longer problematic, 
 and in its function as a unifying principle it is 
 not a particular but that which by its informing, 
 pervading presence makes possible our experience 
 of particulars. 
 We may take it, I think, that Mr. Bradley has 
 successfully maintained that mental activity is not 
 an unknowable. It is at least knowable, qua content 
 of experience. It was not, however, to Mr. Bradley's 
 purpose to give his readers more than a critical 
 revision of the data of Introspection as approachable 
 by the accepted methods of Ernpirical Science. But 
 he has indirectly estabUshed the very fact we are 
 endeavouring to drive home, viz., the felt presence of 
 the spiritual principle. The feeling which is "the 
 immediate awareness on the part of the self of its 
 own being and activity," is at least something ex- 
 perienced, and that this should be clearly recognised 
 is a matter of the utmost importance. For if spirit can- 
 not be in any way felt — I do not say " sensed " qua 
 kinaesthetic sensations, for instance, \)^xtfelt, in a unique 
 acceptance of the term " feeling " — then the spiritual 
 principle must sink back into its unknowability or into 
 its purely logical existence as a necessary presupposition. 
 
i»4' A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 But the feeling we have of this spiritual activity 
 of ours, the feeling we have of the unifying factors in 
 our lives, of these real universals, which, be it well 
 ■understood, are only felt in so far as they are func- 
 tionally active in giving concrete reality to the 
 particulars, the details of our experience — is not 
 the function itself. The spiritual principle is not a 
 mere feeling, however different that feeling may be 
 from mere pleasure-pain. We are not to infer from 
 Mr. Bradley's conclusion that the philosophical x 
 which so worries our natural scientists has at last 
 been equated to a mere feeling, and that the panacea 
 for all the embarrassments of Naturalism has been 
 found in this simple extension of the phenomenal to 
 the sphere of subjective activity. Phenomenalism 
 still remains the abstract Weltanschauung of science 
 and the due recognition of the function of the felt 
 spiritual principle in experience still remains the test 
 of metaphysical insight. 
 
 Professor Stout's treatment of mental activity in 
 his "Analytic Psychology" will be familiar to many 
 readers. The chapter-heading " Concept of Mental 
 Activity " is misleading, as it is the mental activity 
 qua immediate experience that is the subject of 
 discussion. Prof. Stout emphatically holds, in op- 
 position to Prof. Hicks, that mental activity is 
 knowable. " Mental activity exists in being 
 " "■ ■ felt. It is an immediate experience. The 
 stream of consciousness feels its own current." 
 Further he would admit that to feel is also to be 
 
Lecture VI la^ 
 
 aware that one feels, provided we include under 
 
 "awareness" the sub-conscious awareness 
 
 "- • '"• of the anoetic consciousness, and do not 
 
 P' v' restrict the application of the term to 
 and , , . , . ... 
 
 -Q ,j thought involving objective reference. Fi- 
 nally in his trenchant criticism of Prof. 
 James's reduction of mental activity to " a collection 
 of cephalic movements" (id. p. 162-166) Prof. Stout 
 deprecates the identifying of the activity of the 
 
 , self " with certain particular items of our 
 id. p. 163. . • ^ ,, , . 
 
 '^ conscious experience to the exclusion of 
 
 other items." To, Prof. James's assertion that it was 
 diflBcult. for him to detect in the introspected self- 
 activity any purely spiritual element at all. Prof. 
 Stout makes answer that he is looking for his 
 spectacles when he has them on. "He is seeking for 
 his own ' palpitating inward life,' the activity in which 
 his very being consists, and he expects to find it in 
 
 certain particulars, certain special contents 
 
 'of presentation, distinguished from other 
 
 contents as blue is distinguished from green. It is 
 
 like the identifying of the life of an organism with 
 
 certain functions of certain parts of an organism. 
 
 .... It is like inquiring in what part of a 
 ' body its extension is located." This objection 
 is stated however in its most fundamental form when 
 Prof. Stout informs his readers (id. p. 164) that 
 the thesis against which he is contending is "that a 
 total activity can be identified with certain of its 
 component parts." The feeling of mental activity is- 
 
126 A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 a feeling of total activity, which in the case of idea- 
 tional process becomes a feeling of the self s total 
 activity, of that total activity in which the selPs 
 conscious being consists.* 
 
 And here we are left. What this self-feeling pre- 
 cisely is, still remains a pressing and fascinating 
 subject for psycho-philosophical enquiry. Its unique- 
 ness, its unlikeness to pleasure-pain seems, prima 
 facie, to be its most striking characteristic. But that 
 the conscious function is more than the experienced 
 feeling, qua experienceable object, must be obvious 
 to anyone who does not care tojgsuppose that 
 " nothing " can be conscious of " something." 
 
 *This view connects itself interestinglyj,with Prof. Stout's 
 well-known theories of "total apprehension" and of "total 
 dispositions." 
 
LECTURE VII 
 
PREFACE 
 
 We come now to Green's own conception of 
 Experience and of the epistemological problem. 
 
 Avoiding both Kant's purely formal use of 
 the transcendental method and the attempt 
 subsequently made by Prof. Hicks to give to 
 Kant's formal argument a real interpretation, 
 Green accepts experience as an organic whole, 
 and spirit as a factor in the real of experience. 
 It is true that he terms his procedure " a formal 
 analysis of experience," but it is only formal to 
 the extent of not taking into account the dis- 
 tinction between the good and the bad will. 
 The structural factors of experience are all 
 present in the experience which Green analyzes. 
 Under risk of misconception we may state 
 Green's procedure concisely by saying that even 
 if he treats experience formally, he does not 
 treat it abstractly. 
 
 In his attempt to define in relatively formal 
 terms the nature of our spiritual experience. 
 Green insists both on its unity and its inward- 
 
 9 
 
130 A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 ness. Its unity, he maintains, can only be 
 understood as of the kind which guarantees the 
 integrity of self-consciousness, a unity which 
 maintains itself, not despite of, but in and through 
 the mutual externality of objects to each other 
 in time and space, and the self-distinction of the 
 subject from each and all of them. 
 
 As regards the inwardness of personal experi- 
 ence, it can, as Dr. Rashdall points out, be 
 understood only when we realise that the 
 essence of a person is not what he is for another, 
 but what he is for himself Green recognises in 
 his own way, this characteristic of inwardness by 
 insisting on the intrinsic inviolateness of the self, 
 and it is upon this view of the self's spiritual 
 integrity that he bases his doctrine of free will. 
 
 Green's eternal self, as Professor Bosanquet 
 rightly insists, is not to be conceived as "an 
 atomic nucleus within each finite centre of 
 consciousness." It is systematic in the pro- 
 foundest sense of the term. But Green com- 
 pletely fails to prove that it must be eternal in 
 the sense of being out of time. Such proof rests 
 on the untenable Kantian distinction between 
 the empirical and the pure ego, and loses all 
 its meaning once that distinction falls away. 
 Granting then the singleness of self, it must 
 further be insisted, in the spirit of Aristotle, that 
 
Lecture VII 131 
 
 such a self can be equipped with a time-form 
 only so far as such time-form is functional in 
 time-experience. "A mere capacity is nothing," 
 so that the picture of an inoperative time-form 
 in the self with the self itself out of time is a 
 mere fiction. Time, change, and progress, are 
 therefore not phenomenal, but real, as real as 
 self-consciousness. 
 
 With regard to Green's contention that God's 
 existence is implied in the structural facts of 
 knowledge and morality, we would readily admit 
 that Nature's independence of our finitude com- 
 bined with its permanent deperidence on mind 
 for its very existence, show that idealism means 
 Theism ; and we would further contend that it 
 implies a Theism which is not a Pantheism, the 
 " otherness " of God being guaranteed by the 
 inviolate nature of conscious existence. Where 
 there is immediate experience, there is an other- 
 ness which is both ultimate for human thinking 
 and a condition of closest organic intimacy. In 
 so far as this mutual otherness of the eternal 
 and the finite self is not respected, Green's 
 theory of a universal incarnation of God in man 
 leads logically to Pantheism. 
 
LECTURE VII 
 
 green's own treatment of the episte- 
 mological problem 
 
 I DO not know of any indication given by Green which 
 
 would lead us to suppose that he treated his critical 
 
 enquiry as one of a purely logical kind, affecting only 
 
 the relations of conceptions to each other. It is not 
 
 knowledge in general or experience in general which 
 
 he professes to be concerned with, but with 
 Proleff . 
 
 J?' "what is implied in there being a world to 
 
 be known and in our knowing it." And 
 
 when he talks of "implications" and "conditions," * 
 
 he has in mind not mere logical presuppositions but 
 
 real, concrete, active principles. Thus in §29 he 
 
 refers to the intelligence as " a factor in the real of 
 
 experience;" and in §56 he pointedly refers to "that 
 
 kind of activity undoubtedly exercised by us, implied 
 
 in all distinctively intelligent and moral experience." 
 
 Prof. Pringle Pattison would no doubt insist 
 
 that in positing an active principle of any sort as the 
 
 result of a critical enquiry he is going beyond the 
 
 * Cf. close of § 29, and elsewhere. 
 
Lecture VII 133 
 
 legitimate limits of the purely epistemological enquiry 
 in which he is confessedly engaged, quite as much, 
 indeed, as when he attributes to this principle an 
 origin different from the manifold it unifies. I do not 
 see however that this criticism could be justly applied 
 to Green except on the condition that what Green is 
 analyzing is the notion of experience in general. This 
 he undoubtedly is not doing, and the real question we 
 have, I think, to ask ourselves, before passing judg- 
 ment on Green for transgressing the natural limits of 
 his method, is : — What does Green include under 
 what he refers to as a "formal analysis of experience." 
 At the opening of Book III., §154, we find the 
 limitations of a formal analysis of the will clearly 
 defined. The result of what Green explicitly asserts 
 to be " merely a formal account of willing and the will " 
 is to lead up to the following definition of an act of 
 will, as giving " what is common to all acts of willing." 
 It is " one in which a self-conscious individual directs 
 himself to the realisation of some idea, as to an object 
 in which for the time he seeks self-satisfaction." What 
 lies outside the limits of the formal enquiry is mainly 
 the study of the distinction between a good and a bad 
 
 , will. The formal account, says Green, " does 
 
 id. p. 161. „ , , / ,- .,, 
 
 not tell us the real nature of any act of will, 
 
 or of any man as willing, or of any national will — if 
 
 there be such a thing as one will operating in or upon 
 
 the several members of a nation — or of the human 
 
 will, if again there be such a thing as one will operating 
 
 throughout the history of mankind. For the real 
 
134 -^ Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 nature of any act of will depends on the particular 
 nature of the object in which the person willing for 
 the time seeks self-satisfaction. Self-satisfaction is the 
 form of every object willed; but the filling of that 
 form, the character of that in which self-satisfaction 
 is sought, ranging from sensual pleasure to the fulfil- 
 ment of a vocation conceived as given by God, makes 
 the object what it really is. It is on the specific 
 difference of the objects willed under the general form 
 of self-satisfaction that the quality of the will must 
 depend. It is here therefore that we must seek for 
 the basis of distinction between goodness and badness 
 of will." The delimitation traced here between the 
 formal, transcendental enquiry, and the specifically, 
 concretely ethical enquiry seems fair enough. And 
 it leaves us at the close of the "formal" enquiry 
 which precedes the " practical " discussion of the good 
 will, not with a logically indispensable conception, 
 but with a self, aiming at the realisation of ideas with 
 which it has identified itself. We may therefore, in 
 my opinion, view with approval the following outline 
 sketch of what we may specifically call Green's tran- 
 scendental method. 
 
 1. The acceptation of experience, the subject- 
 
 matter to be analyzed, as a concrete whole. 
 
 2. Concentration on the general features of such 
 
 experience. 
 
 3. The justification of a spiritual principle as an 
 
 indispensable factor in the constitution of every 
 such experience. 
 
Lecture VII t%i 
 
 4. The definition of the nature of this spiritual 
 
 principle (as deduced from the general 
 
 characteristics of experience). 
 
 In passing on now to this 4th item in Green's 
 
 scheme, we proceed to develop (and criticise) Green's 
 
 ideas under two heads : — 
 
 1. The unity of spiritual experience. 
 
 2. The inwardness of spiritual experience. 
 
 I. — The Unity of the Spiritual Principle. 
 
 Green's determination of the nature of the spiritual 
 principle as self-conscious seems to me to be perfectly 
 justified in the light of his own conception of a theory 
 of knowledge. However abstract and morphological 
 an analysis of experience may be, provided it is an 
 analysis of experience considered as real, one's own 
 experience, therefore, in its inmost structure, must it 
 not dawn upon the analyst, sooner or later, that his 
 analysis of experience as real, i.e., as most real, is just 
 an analysis of the meaning of a true principle of 
 unity ? 
 
 Now what is it that holds the parts of experience 
 together as co-factors in a seamless texture of reality ? 
 It must be more than mere co-existence in space or 
 sequence in time, for space and time as principia in. 
 dividuationis; maintain the severalty of existents as it 
 were in perfect looseness from each other. It is only 
 as we apprehend the time-space world more concretely, 
 bringing it under the unifying conceptions of law and 
 of life that we can realise this severalty of existence as 
 
13,6 A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 a systematised severalty, as a many in one. But 
 "law" and "life" are still inadequate categories. 
 They do indeed imply the relation of spirit to the 
 content of the time-space world, but inadequately. 
 Law is a spiritual order superinduced upon its material, 
 and to explain the universe in terms of nothing higher 
 than law is to leave the law-giver in unexplained 
 isolation from that to which he legislates and the 
 material brought under law in unexplained relation to 
 that which is its principle of order. The conception 
 of life again is that of a spiritual order w^induced, 
 shall we say, within the time-space world,* and giving 
 to the presence of law in the universe an immanental 
 significance. Properly understood it presents the 
 universe to us as a development according to law in 
 space and time. But still such a purely immanental 
 grasp of reality is inadequate. Mind stands outside 
 the scheme just in so far as it refuses to be one with 
 its object in this indwelling sense, and we are driven 
 on to that which is more than law, more even than 
 life under law, to mind or self-consciousness, the truly 
 concrete category. And with what result ? 
 
 Essentially this : A true philosophic insight into the 
 meaning of unity. Once a philosophical analysis of the 
 meaning of experience as we know it has transformed 
 the truism of the world's intimate relation to our con- 
 sciousness of it into a profound truth, so that we can 
 look upon the structure of experience as the ever- 
 
 • According to certain recent speculations (Professor Bose), 
 everywhere within it. 
 
Lecture VII 137 
 
 present revelation of mind's own nature, many of the 
 old perplexities of philosophy fade away like thin 
 ghosts into the ignorance that alone brought them 
 forth and sustained them. In particular, the idealism 
 which is the expression of the spiritual whole of 
 experience as seen from this illuminating view-point is 
 seen to guarantee all the just demands of realism. 
 For what are the facts of knowledge, concretely 
 conceived? First a knower, a consciousness, that 
 systematizes its object, the world, at the same time as 
 it distinguishes itself from it, and from every part of 
 it, and this even more truly in reflective thought than 
 in sensation. The so-called externality of Nature is 
 not a mere "appearance" that is overcome in the 
 light of idealistic philosophy, but as I understand the 
 true idealism, its externality under the form of space 
 is an essential requisite of the profound type of unity 
 which experience reveals to us when considered as 
 the revelation of the meaning of mind. Not that we 
 can logically prove the necessity of such a form of 
 experience. On the contrary, in grasping the signi- 
 ficance of the unity which mind's presence imposes on 
 the universe, we are grasping the essential structure 
 of mind itself, behind which we can hardly hope to 
 move with open eyes. It will be time enough to do 
 that when further development brings us the over- 
 soul, and with it a deeper grasp of the nature of being. 
 That objects should be mutually separate and have 
 natures of their own the laws of which remain to be 
 discovered by us, appears to me to be as essential a 
 
138 A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 condition of the possibility of experience as we know- 
 it, as is the presence of mind itself as principle of 
 unity. I take it that analysis of experience, accepted 
 as a spiritual whole, is the process through which we 
 learn what mind really is, and that what we learn is 
 not only the "duality of subject and object within the 
 unity of experience," but the mutual externality of 
 objects to each other and the self-distinction of the 
 subject from each and all of its objects — the subject 
 in its object, the world, becoming as it were, an object 
 to itself. These are the structural facts of self-con- 
 sciousness as made clear by philosophical analysis. 
 
 II : The Inwardness of Spiritual Experience 
 
 The self-distinguishing characteristic of self-con- 
 sciousness leaves us still with an all too formal concep- 
 tion of its significance. One other fundamental charac- 
 teristic at least is essential to its barest defiiiition. It 
 is a consciousness of ends, a teleological principle, and, 
 as such, intrinsically free. It is in its relation to 
 morality that the self-conscious principle reveals itself 
 more emphatically as a principle of freedom. The 
 practical self-conscious experience reveals to the 
 analyst of its structure the self as purposive agent in 
 process of shaping circumstance to the requirements 
 of practical ends. The self-distinguishing character- 
 istic of self-consciousness becomes extremly marked 
 as we approach this more inward point of view. " Each 
 Self," says Professor Pringle-Pattison, "is a unique 
 
Lecture VII 139 
 
 existence perfectly impervious ... to other selves — 
 
 „ ,. impervious in a fashion of which the im- 
 Hegelian- 
 ism and penetrability of matter is a famt analogue 
 
 Person- . . . The Self . . resists invasion . . . Each 
 
 P227 "^^^ ^^^ ^ centre of his own, which we 
 
 [others] cannot occupy, and from which he 
 
 looks, as it were, upon the inner side of his acts and 
 
 . J words." In a recent essay I have ventured 
 
 id. p. 243 . ■^ 
 
 on the following illustration with a view 
 
 to bringing home this supremely important fact of 
 
 the uninvadable* inwardness of self-experience. " The 
 
 Person I P^^'^t'cipators in an orchestral concert may be 
 
 Idealism divided into three classes, those who are out- 
 
 P- 171- side the walls of the concert hall and have at 
 172 
 
 best only the sounds at their disposal to 
 
 symbolise wha,t is going on within the walls, the ticket- 
 holders inside who not only hear the sounds but see 
 how they are being produced, and finally the 
 performers themselves who are not only aware of the 
 sounds and the processes that give them, but inwardly 
 realize the hidden unities of purpose and interest of 
 which all else is but the means or the expression. 
 Thus at any moment of the performance the outer 
 spectator, we will say experiences a sound, the inner 
 spectator, in addition, the workings to which the sound 
 is due, and the performer himself the inspiration of the 
 musical purpose and interest which is the source and 
 fountain-head of all that is happening." 
 
 * This uninvadability I hold to be an indispensable condition 
 01 true intimacy between one person and another. 
 
140 A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 In the same series of Oxford essays, in an able 
 article on " Personality Human and Divine," Dr. 
 Rashdall enforces the same truth. " The esse of a 
 -J g person is to know himself, to be for himself, 
 to feel and to think for himself, to act on his 
 own knowledge and to know that he acts .... The 
 essence of a person is not what he is for another, but 
 what he is for himself. It is there that his principium 
 individuationis is to be found — in what he is, when 
 looked at from the inside. All the fallacies of our 
 anti-individualist thinkers come from talking as though 
 the essence of a person lay in what can be known 
 about him, and not in his own knowledge, 
 his own experience of himself .... However 
 much I know of another man, and however 
 much by the likeness of my own experience, by the 
 acuteness of the interpretation which I put upon his 
 acts and words, by the sympathy which I feel for him 
 — I may know of another's inner life, that life, is for 
 ever a thing quite distinct from me, the knower of it 
 .... If per impossible two disembodied spirits, or 
 selves, were to go through exactly the same 
 experiences— knew, felt and willed always alike — still 
 they would be two and not one," * 
 
 I have emphasized this peculiar inwardness and 
 privacy of the individual consciousness, as I feel 
 convinced that the true meaning of personal freedom 
 and the difficulty of reaching beyond a pluralistic 
 solution of experience to a monistic Absolutism are 
 
 *cf. espedally id. footnote, p. 384. 
 
Lecture VII 141 
 
 not properly realised until this inward view of 
 consciousness, the inward point of view of the 
 experient himself is fully grasped. * 
 
 In his own peculiar way, Green connects the freedom 
 of the Self with this feature of privacy in Self- 
 consciousness. As a spiritual whole, self-distinct 
 from circumstance and the train of unappropriated 
 desires, it can be determined by these only in so far 
 as they are brought under the conditions of self- 
 conscious activity. On this view every self- 
 conscious act is intrinsically self-determined, self- 
 determined by self-appropriated motives. Some 
 analogies may help to illustrate this view. 
 
 A plant is intrinsically self-determined in so far 
 as it can tolerate nothing alien to its organic nature. 
 The inorganic salts, etc., which are its food become 
 so only after subtle transmutation, through digestive 
 and assimilative processes, into organic products. 
 Such processes are usually referred to by biologists 
 as " vital processes." They are due to the character- 
 istic activities of living cells. Biologists are con- 
 stantly stumbling across this vital agency in all 
 that is most inward in the subject they study. 
 "In studying digestion we reach an understanding 
 of everything until we come to the active, vital 
 property of the gland-cells in secreting. In study- 
 ing absorption we understand the process until 
 
 * As Dr. Rashdall well points out, this di£Sculty is not met by 
 Professor Royce in his great attempt to conciliate the world and 
 the individual. 
 
142 A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 we come to what we have called the vital powers of 
 the absorptive cells of the alimentary canal. The 
 circulation is intelligible until we come to the beating 
 of the heart and the contraction of the muscles of 
 the blood-vessels . . . Why a muscle contracts or a 
 gland secretes we have certainly not yet answered." * 
 When we come to consciousness or mind, we find a 
 similar exclusion of what is alien to spiritual re- 
 quirements. No mind, as such, can tolerate 2^ felt 
 contradiction, nor a felt confusion. It is only in so 
 far as ideas are felt to be in harmony with our pre- 
 acquired systematised knowledge that they can be 
 assimilated into our mental tissue. It is this power 
 to assert the intrinsic rights of its own nature against 
 all intrusion which, when consciously exercised, con- 
 stitutes the prerogative of freedom. In the moral 
 consciousness, where the decisive factor is a sensitive 
 Conscience, the exclusion of the alien, the immoral, 
 becomes peculiarly imperative, and the Self free in 
 proportion to its sensitiveness and the sincerity with 
 which it insists on preserving inviolate the purity of 
 its own nature. 
 
 This maintenance of self-integrity represents what 
 we might call the negative office of the principle of 
 freedom in self-conscious activity. Its positive func- 
 tion is frankly teleological. To be a self at all, as 
 the Greeks clearly saw — to be rational, as they put 
 it — is to have an end and develop towards it. In 
 the case of self-consciousness as morally directed, 
 
 * " The Story of Life's Mechanism," by H. W. Conn, p. 66. : 
 
Lecture VII 143 
 
 the positive self-conscious principle is the moral 
 Ideal, the Idea of Perfection ever working directly 
 or indirectly towards its own fulfilment as the soul 
 of moral progress. Green is emphatic on the close, 
 inherent, connection between teleology and self- 
 consciousness. "To conceive his life as an 
 
 end, to conceive ends for which he seeks to 
 p. 129. . 
 
 live, are clearly the functions only of a being 
 
 who can distinguish the manifold of his experience, 
 actual and possible, from himself, and at the same 
 time gather it together as related to his single self" 
 
 It will already have become apparent that in thus 
 concretely developing the significance of self-con- 
 sciousness as a spiritual whole of the kind we have 
 been outlining. Green has amply secured himself 
 against that "legend" of his views which represents 
 his eternal consciousness as "an atomic nucleus 
 within each finite centre of consciousness." I should 
 accordingly fall in entirely with Prof. Bosanquet's 
 defence of Green's " Eternal Consciousness " in his 
 Aristotelian paper so far as it exculpates Green 
 from atomizing the fact of self-consciousness. Prof. 
 Bosanquet rightly maintains that Green's Eternal 
 Self is conceived as " a system, or some- 
 thing closer than a system, all inclusive 
 and thoroughly one," " eternal " in the sense that it 
 
 is present to itself in all its parts with an 
 
 intimacy which we cannot imagine, but can more or 
 less remotely illustrate from our highest experience, 
 say, of knowledge and of love. "Eternity," he 
 
144 -A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 argues, " is the name given to that characteristic of 
 a true whole by which its parts (if we may 
 use such a term) are in absolute intimacy 
 of unity with one another. And the human mind, 
 as such, appears to be distinguished by the capacity 
 for apprehending a whole of this nature, and therefore 
 so far, and in this partial sense, it may be considered 
 as eternal." 
 
 There is, however, an important criticism to make 
 upon this apology for Green. It is really only an 
 apology for Green's " self," not for Green's " eternity.'' 
 If we drop the word "eternal" in the first quotation, 
 and make it apply to the "self," and if in the second 
 quotation we put " self-consciousness " in the place of 
 the word " eternity," we get what seems to me to be the 
 real point of Prof. Bosanquet's apology for Green, his 
 defence of Green's self as systematic, as " a spiritual 
 whole."* 
 
 The essential diflSculty in Green's treatment of the 
 eternal self is indeed not overcome in any way by this 
 just apology. It still remains timeless and changeless 
 in a sense which Prof. Bosanquet undoubtedly ac- 
 cepts along with Green, but which I find myself un- 
 able to accept. 
 
 Green's main argument, as we have seen, is that 
 
 that which is the principle that makes possible a 
 
 certain type of experience, cannot itself be 
 
 '^ ' ^ qualified by the predicates of that experi- 
 
 * Green himself seems to me to commit the same confusion, 
 (cf. Proleg. p. 66, p. 71). " For fact . . . universe." 
 
Lecture VII 145 
 
 ence. Thus that which conceives time cannot for 
 that very reason be in time.* The eternal 
 ^ ^ P consciousness, he tells us, "if for no other 
 reason than that it conceives time, cannot 
 itself be in time." For a similar reason the eternal 
 consciousness is changeless. As Green pointedly 
 insists : It has no history. Similarly, as we 
 have seen, the eternal consciousness is "a 
 subject of which outsidedness to anything is not a 
 possible attribute ; which by its synthetic action 
 constitutes that relation, but is not itself de- 
 ^ " termined by it.'' 
 There is, in my opinion, a fundamental fallacy in- 
 volved in this famous line of reasoning. It pre- 
 supposes the untenable Kantian distinction between 
 the understanding and the reason, the empirical and 
 the pure ego, a distinction which is bound, logically, 
 to issue in the Kantian formalisms with all the in- 
 superable difficulties they involve. Indeed, Green 
 himself maintains stoutly that there is only one 
 consciousness in each of us (the fact of having to 
 maintain it, is itself significant) and is hard put to to 
 explain how, notwithstanding, there should be these 
 two aspects of it, the empirical and the eternal 
 There is not a double consciousness he tells 
 " us, but "the one indivisible reality of our 
 consciousness cannot be comprehended in a single 
 conception. In seeking to understand its reality, we 
 have to look at it from two different points of view - 
 and the different conceptions that we form of it, as 
 
 10 
 
146 A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 looked at from these different points, do not admit 
 of being united, any more than do our impressions of 
 opposite sides of the same shield." But surely the 
 unifying principle par excellence, is not to be over- 
 come by a diflficulty like to that which we experience in 
 seeing round a corner, a difficulty which may be prac- 
 tically compensated for by a judicious use of mirrorsl* 
 Green has apparently forgotten the supreme character- 
 istic of self-consciousness, of being a unity in multi- 
 plicity, of being a perfect spiritual whole. It is quite 
 true that our imperfect selves must be content with 
 fragmentary realisations of such a whole in our own 
 lives, but surely what glimpses we do catch of our 
 spiritual wholeness are gained in and through the 
 experience of the empirical self, the only self we can 
 know, unless aiifiicted by the disease of multiple 
 consciousness. 
 
 But if we accept the singleness of our conscious- 
 ness in a perfectly unambiguous sense, rejecting all 
 incomprehensible severance between the empirical 
 and the transcendental self, Green's argument ceases 
 to be even plausible. If I apprehend a time succes- 
 sion, it is because I, the only I, am equipped with a 
 time-form or some such capacity for time-experience. 
 Am I then to say that this indispensable attribute is 
 not myself dX all, that I, the substance, lie outside my 
 attributes? But if we are intrinsically adapted for 
 
 * Moreover some people, apparently, can, under certain con- 
 ditions, see " all round things," — cf. James " Principles of Psy. 
 chology," vol. ii, p. 54. 
 
Lecture VII 
 
 147 
 
 time-experience, then, unless we wish to cling to the 
 theory of a phanton i6va,us that is not also an ivipyeia, we 
 must admit that we are creatures of time-experience 
 in so far as we have any existence whatsoever, and 
 that the condition of the possibility of time-experi- 
 ence, far from being the timelessness of self, is the 
 presence of a time-form or capacity of consciousness 
 which exists only in so far as it is operative. 
 
 A similar criticism applies to Green's argument 
 concerning the non-spatial character of self- 
 consciousness. The space-form must again 
 be conceded as inseparably involved in the possibility 
 of self-consciousness, and it must be maintained 
 at the same time that the space-form can be an 
 attribute only in so far as it is operative. In so 
 far, then, as we are conscious at all of things as 
 external to each other, we are conscious of that in- 
 alienable characteristic of self-consciousness itself 
 according to which it distinguishes itself from these 
 spatial differences without at the same time annihilat- 
 ing them. Self-conscious experience, if it is to be in 
 any sense effective, must be a space-experience. 
 
 But to return to the self, qua eternal. How, we 
 may ask, does Green manage to give to his statements 
 an air of plausibility? To a certain extent, un- 
 doubtedly, the systematic nature of self-hood is, 
 qua systematic, as involving reciprocal and not 
 merely successive determinations, clothed eo ipso with 
 the semblance of the eternal. I say "semblance," 
 advisedly, for these reciprocal determinations, though 
 
148 A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 not successive, are at least simultaneous, and in so 
 far as they are represented as changeless, they have 
 at least permanence or duration.* An eternity that 
 is characterised by relations of simultaneity and 
 duration is an eternity in time, and yet it is precisely 
 by these characteristics that Green is constantly 
 representing his eternity. Thus (close of § 31) we 
 read the following : — " In other words, a succession 
 always implies something else than the terms of the 
 succession, and that a " something else " which can 
 simultaneously present to itself objects as existing not 
 simultaneously but one before the other."t 
 
 We feel ourselves justified then in insisting that 
 the self must be a time-self, and content ourselves 
 with endorsing the following words of Dr. Rashdall : 
 " Any sense in which God is (to use the mediaeval 
 expression) supra tempus must be a sense which is 
 compatible with leaving to the time-consciousness in 
 which individuals undoubtedly live, true reality 
 likewise, though there may and must undoubtedly be 
 aspects of this reality which we do not fully under- 
 
 * As concerns duration — cf. p. 37. " The only agent we know 
 as maintaining an identity with itself throughout a series of 
 changes ;" p. 74 "The eternal consciousness subsists throughout 
 all the changes ; " p. 75. " It is operative throughout succes- 
 sion;" quoted by Mr. E. B. McGilvary. Article on "The 
 Eternal Consciousness." "Mind," Oct., 1901. 
 
 tFor the particular emphasis Green lays on sequence, as 
 representative of time-process, see bottom of p. 70 ; cf. also p. 
 105 where we read, " The act itself is not in time in the sense of 
 being an event determined by previous events. 
 
Lecture VII 149 
 
 stand." If we give up time, then, we are prepared to 
 Heg. and say with Prof. Pringle-Pattison, "we move out 
 
 Pers. of reaUty altogether." . . » " Only an 
 P- '°3- abstraction can properly be spoken of as 
 id. p. 236.out of time." 
 
 The " changelessness " of Green's eternal self 
 follows of course on its timelessness, and is equally 
 inconceivable except in so far as it implies 
 that timeless dialectic which, as Prof. Pringle- 
 Pattison lucidly points out, is simply 
 ■ " logical implication." 
 
 We have now to consider in what way Green's 
 theory of the relation of the absolute to the individual 
 self is affected by the conclusions which we have 
 already reached. 
 
 We may allow at once that such criticism of 
 Green's absolute self as proceeds from the assumption 
 that Green's transcendental analysis of experience is, 
 like Kant's, a purely logical aifair with a formal 
 subject-matter and a formal issue in the sense we 
 have already discussed, commits necessarily an 
 ignoratio elenchi. It proves a course of reasoning to 
 be false for which Green is not answerable. Prof. 
 Pringle-Pattison's criticisms, instructive as they are, 
 seem to me, on this matter, to be of this kind. 
 "Green," he says, "explicitly identifies the 
 self which the theory of knowledge reveals — 
 the "single active self-conscious principle, by 
 whatever name it may be called — with the universal 
 or divine self-consciousness." And a little further on 
 
150 A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 he points out that " it must be in the highest degree 
 improper to convert consciousness in general without 
 
 more ado into a universal consciousness;" 
 
 ■ " surely it does not follow," he adds, " that, 
 
 because we are professedly abstracting from any 
 
 particular self of experience, we are therefore analyzing 
 
 the absolute or divine self-consciousness." 
 
 We have seen however that though Green's 
 p. 31-35. 
 
 language may have frequently implied that his 
 
 transcendental analysis was a mere abstract enquiry, it 
 
 is essentially a concrete one, and the self-consciousness 
 
 he has in view as fulfilling the function of a unity ot 
 
 apperception is in the first instance, necessarily, his 
 
 own, as he reflectively experiences its operation in 
 
 himself, or rather as himself. We may agree then 
 
 that when Prof. Pringle-Pattison eloquently argues 
 
 that there is no evolution possible of a fact 
 id. p. 12;. . . , , 
 
 from a conception, that we must be on our 
 
 guard against the idea that logical abstractions can 
 
 id. p. 132. thicken as it were into real existences, that 
 
 id. p. 133. knowledge is one thing and existence another, 
 
 that no number of absolutes flocking together will 
 
 constitute a fact, — his argument, though it 
 
 'may hold good against Hegel's thickening of 
 
 his absolute idea, does not fairly apply to Green's 
 
 case. 
 
 The question therefore remains whether Green is. 
 
 justified in discerning the existence of God in 
 
 the concrete implications of knowledge and of 
 
 morality. 
 
Lecture VII 151 
 
 "The existence of God," says Prof. Pringle- 
 
 ., , Pattison, "must either be an immediate 
 id. p. 126. . ' . ,.,,.- 
 
 certainty, or it must be involved in facts of 
 
 experience which do possess that certainty." This 
 seems to me to be a sound statement, and I am con- 
 vinced that from the idealistic point of view there is 
 warrant in individual experience for tracing the pre- 
 sence of a spiritual principle, other than ourselves. I 
 content myself here with noting the two lines of argu- 
 ment adopted or implied by Green himself.* 
 
 There is in the first place that striking characteristic 
 of self-conscious experience, nature's intrinsic independ- 
 ence of our finitude ; the fact too, that we are endlessly 
 discovering the rationality of the universe under forms 
 that we could never have ourselves imagined, much 
 less instituted. Nature thrusts theism of some sort 
 upon us, and in the light of the monistic postulates of 
 science and philosophy we may say that it thrusts 
 monotheism of a sort upon us. A spiritual principle 
 in nature, other than ourselves, seems undoubtedly 
 evidenced by the facts of experience. Again, the 
 idealistic contention that spirit is indispensable to 
 existence seems, as Berkeley, Ferrier, Green and 
 others all insist, to point in the same direction. 
 It is impossible to suppose that when my flickering 
 consciousness wavers and dies, whether through in- 
 
 * I do not myself consider that any adequate evidence for God's 
 existence and holiness can be gained apart from an analysis of 
 the religious experience. 
 
 cf. "The Problem of Conduct" p. 464. 
 
152 A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 attention, sleep, or death itself, its objects perish with 
 it. And yet object apart from subject is unthinkable. 
 The universe must therefore have its sustaining 
 principle to which it is omnipresent — in a form of 
 course very different from that which it bears to our 
 conditioned powers of thought and perception. 
 
 These intimations of God's presence certainly point 
 to the Otherness of God, but it is the imperviousness 
 of the self qua experient which is, to my mind, the 
 supreme evidence for it. This we have already dis- 
 cussed at some length. It seems to me conclusive 
 that my experience is mine, and not another's nor 
 God's. We are, I am convinced, at liberty to worship 
 God without worshiping ourselves or anybody else.* 
 I see no philosophical diflficulty in this fact of apart- 
 ness. If externality and self-distinction enter into the 
 structure of self-consciousness, I do not see a priori 
 why the inviolable otherness and personal freedom of 
 individual selves might not enter naturally, in keeping 
 with God's own otherness and supreme dignity, into 
 the structure of a loftier insight than is afforded by 
 self-consciousness. 
 
 If we accept, however, this fact of God's otherness, 
 we cannot accept, as it stands. Green's theory of the 
 universal incarnation of the Deity in man as ade- 
 
 * Cf. Hegelianism and Personality, p. 203( when we are warned 
 against taking the process of human development as in very 
 truth the evolution of God. " The development we can trace is 
 not the development of God, but of man's thoughts about God 
 — a development, therefore, which does not aflfect the existence 
 of their object.'' 
 
Lecture VII 153 
 
 quate. As maintained by Green — and we have seen 
 in what modest sense he maintains it — it has the 
 serious defect of so identifying the two personalities, 
 the human and the divine, as to do injustice to 
 both. Prof. Pringle-Pattison's " Hegelianism and 
 Personality," as the author explicity asserts, is just an 
 exposure, on historical grounds, of the radical error, 
 subversive of all the lawful rights of personality, of 
 identifying the human and the divine self-6onscious- 
 ness, by unifying consciousness in a single self — the 
 attempt to unify the divine and the human subject 
 being, as he insists, "ultimately destructive of the 
 reality of both." 
 
 We need not enter into a detailed proof of Green's 
 delinquency in this respect. When Prof. Bosan- 
 quet delicately admits the presence of the defect, we 
 
 may rely upon it that the defect is there. " It 
 Anst. almost seems as if Green thought at times 
 DC. roc.jj^^j reality might fairly be described as a 
 1901-2. „ . / , . , „ , . , 
 
 self-consciousness (which we naturally think 
 
 of after the pattern of our own) considered as 
 the unifying principle of an unalterable system of rela- 
 tions. In the same way it would appear as if he thought 
 that the supreme moral good could be conceived as 
 realised in the divine consciousness without trans- 
 cending its specifically moral nature." 
 
 Our complaint then against Green is, not that he 
 traces God's presence in experience, but that his 
 attempt to define, in formal outline, the relationship 
 between the two personalities, human and divine, is 
 
1 54 A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 too hasty. We must excuse ourselves however from 
 venturing any further into the many mazes of con^- 
 structive theology. 
 
LECTURE VIII 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The pragmatism and radical empiricism of 
 Prof. James has logical affinities with 
 naturalism which stand in the way of its assimil- 
 ation with any form of idealism. Mr. Schiller's. 
 " Humanism," though it gravitates occasionally- 
 towards naturalism, is in essential agreement with, 
 the main tenets of personal idealism. Its main 
 defect, which if logically followed out might 
 require its alliance with naturalism, is its. 
 inadequate recognition of the necessity of a 
 theory of categories in philosophical enquiry.. 
 The recognition that logical distinctions require: 
 reference to logical purpose, is a fundamental 
 feature of pragmatist logic, but it cannot 
 authorize us to dispense with a theory of the 
 categories, the indispensable prolegomena to 
 philosophy, apart from which indeed no sufficient 
 j ustification can be given for the pragmatic position.. 
 We hold, however, that pragmatism properly 
 " categorised " suggests the most effective form 
 of which concrete idealism is capable, and, as the: 
 
iS8 A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 representative of this concrete idealism, may well 
 stand for the third main stage in philosophical 
 thinking. Philosophy first appears as a theory 
 of reality, then as a theory of reality conditioned 
 by a theory of knowledge, lastly as a theory of 
 reality conditioned by a theory of experience. 
 Pragmatism, properly understood, stands for a 
 theory of reality seen in the light of a theory of 
 experience which adopts as its starting-point the 
 human soul's immediate self-consciousness. 
 And this is concrete personal idealism. Self- 
 consciousness, as the pragmatist understands it, 
 is " practical " self-consciousness in the sense that 
 it is essentially a purposive activity. The self- 
 conscious principle is concretely conceived as a 
 principle of postulation whose supreme, unceas- 
 ing demand is for spiritual perfection. In so far as 
 the purposive reason is not conceived as a 
 spiritual principle which gives real redeeming 
 significance to the practical uses of life, but as a 
 mere instrument in the service of human passion, 
 pragmatism lapses into naturalism and forfeits 
 the allegiance of all idealists. Only in so far 
 as pragmatism insists on a wholeness of 
 endeavour, to be tested by its organizing power 
 over the life, can it stand as a philosophic 
 theory of experience, and, as such, it is certainly 
 not a pleasure-pain philosophy, for this insist- 
 
Lecture VIII 159 
 
 ence on wholeness of experience implies the 
 refusal to be led or misled by any pleasurable 
 or painful part of such experience. 
 
 Again as thus insisting on wholeness of en- 
 deavour pragmatism is not a mere will-philosophy 
 which emphasizes loyalty at the expense of 
 wisdom, faith at the expense of reason. For 
 such wholeness of endeavour is not the process 
 through which will, as a fixed fiat, vindicates its 
 capacity to maintain itself, qua will, to the end, 
 and carry its fiat through to the letter, but the 
 process through which the reasoned resolve to 
 search out and fulfil the main requirements of a 
 desired object or pursuit enables us to test the 
 wisdom of our desires, and conform our loyalty 
 accordingly. The integrity of purpose which 
 springs from the spirit's demand for perfection 
 means the resolve to thoroughly test the 
 genuineness of an aspiration by living through 
 its whole requirement, pleasurable and painful. 
 
LECTURE VIII 
 
 PRAGMATISM AS CONCRETE IDEALISM 
 
 We are now in a position to consider the principle of 
 Self-consciousness more concretely. 
 
 Of the more recent attempts to do philosophic 
 justice to the paramount claims of personality there 
 is one that has particularly and deservedly attracted 
 attention. I refer to what is known as Pragmatism. 
 •Pragmatism usually opposes itself to Intellectualism, 
 and as such has quite recently been defined by one 
 of its ablest exponents [F. C. S. Schiller " The Ethical 
 Basis of Metaphysics, International Journal of Ethics," 
 July, 1903] as "the thorough recognition that the 
 purposive character of mental life generally must 
 influence and pervade also our most remotely cog- 
 nitive activities." In " Personal Idealism " — a term 
 independently originated on both sides of the Atlantic 
 at the same time — we have the same main concern, 
 "the development and defence of the principle of 
 Personality," but with explicit recognition of the 
 
Lecture VIII i6i 
 
 fundamental truths of Idealism.* Personal Idealism 
 with Man as its starting point interprets its main 
 position in equal opposition to Naturalism with Nature 
 as its starting-point and Absolute Idealism with God 
 as its starting point. A good brief account of the 
 status of Personal Idealism will be found in a 
 book of that name (1902) in the Editor's Preface. 
 Prof A. Seth Pringle-Pattison, perhaps the most 
 weighty champion of personality in this country, 
 inclines to " Ethicism," or " Ethical Humanism," as 
 the appropriate label for his own views. Voluntarism 
 is another alternative title; and quite recently 
 (October, 1903), Mr. Schiller has come forward with 
 the simple word " Humanism," * as in his opinion 
 best expressing the soul of the new movement. 
 
 *What these precisely are it would not be too easy to 
 state. One writer [Prof. Pringle-Pattison "Man's place in the 
 Cosmos," p. 10] defines Idealism as " the doctrine which finds 
 the ultimate reality of the universe in mind or spirit, and its 
 end in the perfecting of spiritual life," a definition I should 
 consider quite adequate did it not rather suggest an independence 
 of spirit from that which it spiritualises — or in formal terms, of 
 subject from object, which Idealism is essentially concerned to 
 disallow. The following modification of the above definition 
 would, I think, be more satisfactory : " Idealism is a doctrine 
 which finds the Ultimate Reality of the Universe in spiritual 
 life, and its end in the perfecting thereof." The phrase " spiritual 
 life" would cover the indispensable relation of spirit to the 
 essential conditions apart from which it has no existence. 
 
 * cf. A. S. Pringle-Pattison " Man's place in the Cosmos," 
 p. 42, "as against this naturalistic tendency, philosophy must 
 be unflinchingly humanistic, anthropocentric." 
 
 II 
 
r62 A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 Pragmatism, he tells us, is Humanism in its relation 
 to Theory of Knowledge. 
 
 But Voluntarists, Personal Idealists, Ethicists, 
 Pragmatists, Humanists, are all Personalists in one 
 form or another, committed to a teleological Weltan- 
 schauung, and imbued with the most loyaj respect 
 for spiritual freedom and spiritual progress. Time 
 and Change, for them, are the conditions not of 
 phenomenal but of real existence, for they are the 
 conditions of progress, and what is more real than 
 progress ? * 
 
 We propose to adopt Pragmatism as the general 
 title under_ which we may refer to this whole teleo- 
 logical, personalistic movement. In its earlier forms, 
 as in the writings of Prof. James, it is confessedly 
 antagonistic to the idealistic position we have been 
 developing in these lectures, but as developed in the 
 
 » Whilst emphasizing the reality of Time and Change we 
 cordially welcome as most suggestive Prof. Royce's fascinating 
 theory in the second volume of " The World and the Individual " 
 concerning the relation of Time to Eternity, for the transcen- 
 dence of Time here indicated does not imply that the time- 
 element is not a form of real experience or will ever prove 
 superfluous. That there can be no transcendence except through 
 assimilation of what is transcended, is, I suppose, axiomatic for 
 Concrete Idealism, the one rule of method which explains its 
 progress out of Kantian Formalism. Mr. Schiller's ingenious 
 theory on the transcendence of change (Mind, October, 1900. 
 On the conception of 'Evipyaa AKU'7i<rlas) appears to me to violate 
 this rule. It stamps Becoming as in last resort unreal. Can 
 the goal of change be adequately conceived as an Activity 
 released from the privilege of Progress ? 
 
Lecture VIII 163 
 
 writings of Mr. Schiller, it shows a marked tendency 
 to fall into line with the Concrete Idealism we have 
 been urging. Pragmatism, we believe, is not only 
 perfectly compatible with Concrete Idealism but of 
 its very essence. 
 
 I make no attempt to trace the whole history of 
 Pragmatism.* Such an attempt would involve a 
 critical estimate of Professor James's "Radical 
 Empiricism," which I the more willingly refrain from 
 giving as " Professor James's promised Metaphysics," 
 [Schiller " Humanism," Preface, p. ix.] may present 
 his position in a fresh light and make it necessary 
 for critics to reconsider their past criticisms. I 
 restrict myself to a consideration of the views of the 
 most advanced exponent of Pragmatism, as developed 
 in the two essays already alluded to : " Axioms and 
 Postulates " and " The Ethical Basis of Metaphysics." 
 
 *cf. The Popular Science Monthly "Illustrations of the Logic 
 of Science," by C. S. Peine, vol. xii. November, 1877, 
 "The Fixation of Belief"; vol. xii. January, 1878, 
 " How to make our Ideas clear.'' 
 William James, "Principles of Psychology" — the concluding 
 chapter, "Philosophical Conceptions and Practical 
 Results." " The Will to Believe and other Essays." 
 
 Professor Miller, Philosophical Review, March, 1899 (under 
 head of Discussions : Professor James on Philosophical 
 Method). 
 
 Caldwell, " Pragmatism." Mind, October, 1900. 
 
 JI. Sturt, The Logic of Pragmatism. Aristotelian Society 
 Proceedings, New Series, vol. iii. 
 
 F. C. S, Schiller, "Axioms as Postulates" in "Personal Ideal- 
 ism," " Humanism,'',i903. 
 
164 A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 The volume on " Humanism " was unfortunately not 
 published in time for me to utilise, but I judge from 
 the preface that its purport is a development of the 
 view-point of those two essays — one of which is 
 republished in the book — and in no way retracts 
 their conclusions. 
 
 In this essay on the Ethical Basis of Metaphysics, 
 we have the following significant statement, which, 
 in my opinion, if consistently adhered to, would place 
 Pragmatism in its true light as the proper expression 
 for Modern Idealism : — " I should confidently claim," 
 says Mr. Schiller, "that by Pragmatism a further 
 step has been taken in the analysis of our experience 
 which amounts to an important advance in that 
 self-knowledge on which our knowledge of the world 
 depends. Indeed this advance seems to me to be of 
 a magnitude comparable with, and no less momentous 
 than, that which gave to the epistemological question 
 priority over the ontological. It is generally recognised 
 as the capital achievement of Modem Philosophy to 
 have perceived that a solution of the Ontological 
 question — What is Reality ? — is not possible until it 
 has been decided how Reality can come within our 
 ken. Before there can be a real for us at all, the 
 Real must be knowable, and the notion of an un- 
 knowable reality is useless, because it abolishes itself. 
 The true formulation therefore of the ultimate question 
 of metaphysics must become — What can I know as 
 real ? And thus the effect of what Kant called the 
 Copernican revolution in philosophy is that Ontology, 
 
Lecture VIII 165 
 
 the theory of Reality, comes to be conditioned by 
 Epistemology, the theory of our Knowledge." " But," 
 he adds, "this truth is incomplete until we realize 
 all that is involved in the knowledge being ours and 
 recognise the real nature of our knowing." 
 
 We have then three stages traced i" Ontology, 2° 
 Epistemology, 3° Pragmatism. 
 
 There is undoubtedly something incongruous in 
 having a triad of this kind in which the third member 
 in chronological order appears entirely to lack the 
 august dignity of the first two. It is like adding to 
 the division of things into Ancient and Modern a 
 third species "very up to date," the implication being 
 that what was previously modern is now ancient, and 
 what was previously ancient is now to be reckoned as 
 antediluvian. We naturally ask whether we can 
 possibly be justified in acquiescing in that supreme 
 importance of the new Ethical Philosophy which 
 could alone justify such a readjustment of philosoph- 
 ical perspective. 
 
 Let us at once confess that there is much in the 
 language of the modern pragmatist to justify the 
 conservative distrust with which his doctrine is 
 received in many quarters. Conscious apparently of 
 the inherent strength of its position, this upstart, 
 called Pragmatism, has not infrequently shown a 
 contemptuous disregard, I will not say for its pre- 
 decessors, but for its own natural co-workers in 
 philosophy. Conscious again of the relative novelty 
 of its form of appeal, it has, in my opinion, exaggerated 
 
1 66 A Philosophical Introdtiction to Ethics 
 
 the force and the freshness of this latest development 
 of Idealism into the revolutionary glory of a new 
 Philosophy. I consider this splendid isolation of 
 pragmatism a harmful fiction, and personally identify 
 myself with the movement only in so far as it connects 
 itself explicitly with the development of modern 
 idealism. Pragmatism has been passing through a 
 crisis. It has long been hesitating (in so far as such 
 a term can be applied to Pragmatism at all) between 
 casting in its lot with Evolutionistic Naturalism on 
 the one hand, or with Ethical Idealism on the other. 
 The midway course is kept, by Prof. James, for 
 instance, only by a frank revolt against the logic of 
 his own naturalistic foundations, by a "Thou shall 
 not" of a sudden indeterminism tyrannically check- 
 ing the disconcerted issue of his own previous thinking. 
 Through this abrupt exercise of philosophic justice, 
 however, the logic of facts has come to James's rescue, 
 and the brilliancy with which these new resources 
 have been handled has cast a protecting shadow 
 over the treacherous bases of his radical empiricism. 
 We do not care to ask for too much system from so 
 attractive and original a thinker. But a prosier ex- 
 ponent of the professor's creed will find himself, 
 we fear, in a position of most unstable equilibrium, 
 and will be compelled in the name of reason 
 to choose between a systematic completion either 
 of the naturalistic basis or of the spiritualistic 
 aspiration. 
 
 With Mr. Schiller, who, by the way, lacks all prosi- 
 
lecture VIII 167 
 
 ness to an extent that must sometimes scare even his 
 best friends, — ^there is, I firmly believe, despitp 
 much apparent evidence to the contrary, clear signs 
 of the felt need of reinstating pragmatic philosophy 
 on its natural idealistic basis.* 
 
 But when this is done, — and this brings us back 
 to the extract above quoted, pragmatism will take its 
 place as the movement which more than any other, 
 perhaps, has served to direct the course of idealism 
 along sound lines, and we shall see more clearly and 
 with broader vision that the one comprehensive sequel 
 to a transcended Epistemology is just that concrete 
 teleological idealism to which in various ways all 
 idealism from the date of the second critique has been 
 in various ways contributing, a movement which in 
 potency and promise, if not, as yet, in uncontested 
 achievement, would fully sustain the dignity of con- 
 
 * I notice, however, with some disquietude, in the preface to 
 
 " Humanism. ' p. xxiv, that Mr. Schiller steers nearer to Scylla 
 
 than to Charybdis. Naturalism is allowed to be " worthy of 
 
 respect for the honest work it does," and to have " a real use," 
 
 whereas absolutism 'has no use.' Dr. Hodgson's naturalistic 
 
 „ conception ofthe end of philosophy as that of "attain- 
 
 ' A j' '"S ^ Rationale of the Universe, as mentally visible 
 
 from -A human centre " and of its attitude towards 
 
 1903 P- 3- ^|jg Universe as "practical instead of speculative" 
 
 runs the corresponding ones of personal idealism so near, in 
 
 form of expression (especially those of Mr. Schiller's) 
 
 1 • P- 13- jjj^f "Humanism," unsupported by the philosophical 
 
 categories may very well drift into naturalism and so stultify its 
 
 true philosophical mission. 
 
i68 A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 stituting a third stage in the history of philosophic 
 thought. 
 
 If we go back to the quoted extract and its 
 closing sentence, we see that Mr. Schiller explicitly 
 refers to pragmatism as the completion of the 
 epistemological readjustment of the philosophical 
 problem, and as a completion consisting in a more 
 adequate realisation of the concrete character of 
 knowledge as the knowledge characteristic of moral 
 personalities. If this were accepted as the true 
 pragmatic standing-point, pragmatism would not 
 lack adherents. 
 
 This same adhesion to a concrete philosophy is 
 characteristic of the earlier and more important essay 
 on " Axioms as Postulates." There we read 
 ■ J^'o that " it is the individual concrete experience 
 in all its fulness which every man wants 
 Philosophy to interpret for him." This declaration I 
 would whole-heartedly accept. We cannot think the 
 world truly without acting in it rightly, and the true 
 philosophical theory of life must issue out of life 
 itself, lived in accordance with philosophical principles. 
 Only so can we hope to see the philosophic spirit 
 brought adequately to bear on the solution of life's 
 main problems. The logical conclusion from such an 
 outlook is that philosophical problems are adequately 
 treated only when they are treated in relation to the 
 interests of spiritual experience, all other solutions 
 being provisional, or else subsidiary. This is the 
 central conviction of pragmatism and constitutes the 
 
Lecture VIII 169 
 
 gist of its theory of reality, the theory, namely, that 
 reality is relative to interest or purpose, that nothing is 
 real to us except in so far as we realise it and sustain 
 it through our own conscious activity. "Reality as 
 it is in itself and apart from our interests," " Reality 
 existing for itself apart from our agency," thesn are 
 the pragmatic inconceivables. "For our 
 ■ interests," argues Mr. Schiller very pointedly, 
 
 "impose the conditions under which alone 
 reality can be revealed. Only such aspects 
 of reality can be revealed as are not merely know- 
 able but are objects of an actual desire, and conse- 
 quent attempt, to know. . . Reality and the know- 
 ledge thereof . . . essentially presuppose a definitely 
 directed effort to know." It is in vain to adduce 
 the passivity of sensation as a difficulty, for sensation 
 is essentially an active process, a reaction upon a 
 stimulation. Moreover even our most passive 
 receptivity of sensation, in which we do not feel our- 
 selves to be reacting at all, can and should be 
 construed, in Mr. Schiller's opinion "as the effort- 
 
 _ ,, less fruition of what we once acquired by 
 Pars. Id. „. „ ^ ... , 
 
 , strenuous effort." Our receptivities are thus 
 
 acquired habits of reaction. All our experi- 
 . , ence consists in acquiring habits or utilizing 
 
 them. All experience is either experiment 
 or reaction. 
 
 Practical self-consciousness, and all self-conscious- 
 ness is at bottom practical on the pragmatic view of 
 reality, is essentially a creative principle. Our action 
 
170 A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 is a real factor in the course of events. Such moral 
 
 shaping as we give to the Universe is not predetermined 
 
 for us, but essentially determined by us. 
 
 . asis (■•yyg must discard, therefore, the notion, 
 
 of Met. , . , ■ • r i_ ij 
 
 that m the constitution of the world we count 
 p. 440. 
 
 for nothing, that it matters not what we do, be- 
 cause reality is what it is, whatever we may do. It is 
 true on the contrary, that our action is essential and 
 indispensable, that to some extent the world, (our 
 world) is of our making.'' Pragmatism, in fact, 
 cannot tolerate a reality that is not relative to our 
 purposive activity. 
 
 Hegel was fond of insisting against Fichte's attempt 
 
 to interpret the universe through the notion 
 
 • 8^' of duty, i.e., through something that is not 
 
 'but is to be, that it was " absurd to place the 
 p. 192 • : . 
 
 reality of the Universe in an end which is no- 
 
 where as yet realised." " The idea is not so 
 feeble," he writes, " as merely to have a right 
 or an obligation to exist without actually existing." Ad- 
 mitting that Hegel is in the right, are we to accept his 
 statement as implying that an ideal order eternally 
 exists independently of our puny strivings ? This is 
 certainly not necessary. We have only to insist once 
 again on the fact that the ideal order is perpetually 
 being realised wherever, through the agency of self- 
 conscious individuals, the principle of good is 
 determinative in the shaping of events. The achieve- 
 ment of a realised ideal of perfection is a progressive 
 achievement and depends upon ourselves, but the 
 
Lecture VIII 171 
 
 ideal is never at any time " something that is not but 
 is to be," but " something that partly is already and 
 shall be ever more fully." 
 
 The Principle of Postulation 
 
 The concretest and most fundamental expression 
 
 of self-consciousness, according to pragmatism, is 
 
 the postulate. The postulate is essentially life's 
 
 spiritual principle. "The unity of the agent," 
 Pcrs I d 
 
 " writes Mr. Schiller, " is emphatically affirmed 
 p. 133. ' '^ . ■' 
 
 in the principle of postulation, which pervades 
 all theoretic activity, generates all axioms, initiates all 
 experiment, and sustains all effort." 
 
 What then precisely is this postulate, and in what 
 relation does it stand to the spiritual ideal ? 
 
 The first brief answer must be that there is the 
 same relation between the ideal and the postulate 
 as subsists between the idke and the idee-force. 
 Once the ideal is conceived, not as an ever-receding 
 dream of perfection but as the structural principle of 
 personal life, it is more truly termed a postulate than an 
 ideal. A postulate is an ideal that has matured its 
 motor factors, an idea in the attitude of self-realisation 
 or of " working itself out." It this sense it seems to me 
 almost if not quite identical with the motive in Green's 
 use of the term as a self-appropriated motive, the 
 motive with which the self has identified itself. 
 
 It is, however, essential to the proper conception ot 
 the postulate to conceive it as being the self s own 
 free expression and not as a principle which works 
 
172 A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 incarnate, in and through the self. It is an end or 
 ideal of action accepted by the individual's practical 
 consciousness as a right of its own rational nature, 
 and through this very acceptance transmuted into a 
 moral imperative. If we bear in mind that as 
 interpreted by a concrete idealism, such imperative 
 cannot be expressed once and for all in a stereotyped 
 formula, but orAy progressively as the imperative of a 
 growing experience, as an imperative that, despite 
 endless variety of formulation, may yet be the same 
 for all men at all times and for each of us at all 
 stages of our freedom, we could identify the ultimate 
 postulate of perfection with a categorical imperative. 
 To believe in any such ultimate postulate is to hold 
 the realisation of our rational nature as an end in 
 itself, and the postulate which claims for such nature 
 its unconditional right to fulfilment, as a categorical 
 imperative, absolute at least within the limits of our 
 experience. 
 
 The ideal then is the postulate in germ. The ideal, 
 self-consciously claimed, becomes the postulate or 
 demand for its fulfilment. Such a demand cannot be 
 adequately conceived as a mere fiat of the rational 
 will or practical reason. The pragmatic postulate 
 is more than a mere attitude of self-determination : 
 it is a concrete universal, the principle that " sustains " 
 as well as " initiates '' the carrying through of an 
 adopted ideal, for better or for worse. Thus the 
 demand for perfection is essentially the demand, 
 persistently maintained and renewed, for that which can 
 
Lecture VII J 173 
 
 harmonize the whole of life, stand all tests, " maintain 
 its predicates " in the most varying contexts, the de- 
 mand in short for the true unity of the growing life. 
 
 So conceived, the principle of postulation acquires 
 its true objective significance. Failing to distinguish 
 clearly between a man's appetites and his aspirations, 
 between his animal and his spiritual needs, between 
 man as the slave and man as the lord of evolution, 
 pragmatism must have often seemed to consist in a 
 vindication of man's rights to have all his felt needs 
 gratified. The insistence laid by Mr. Schiller how- 
 ever, on the fact that pragmatism is a philosophy 
 " that seriously strives to comprehend the whole of 
 experience," suiBciently shows that pragmatism has 
 no. intention of adopting such an ultra-naturalistic 
 credo. Here again the lack of an epistemological 
 theory of categories makes itself felt.* We want tO' 
 see the self-conscious need justified as against the 
 " merely natural need," on the ground of its being the 
 " natural need spiritualised," the true concrete natural 
 need. The postulate could then be established as 
 the spirit's concrete claim for satisfaction. The analysis 
 
 * Mr. Schiller's remark ("Personal Idealism,'' p. 125), that "so 
 long as the structure of knowledge is not completed, the final 
 significance of its forms cannot be clearly mirrored in its 
 structure," and his similar remarks on p. 53-54 that self-knowledge 
 in any complete sense is impossible so long as one continues ta 
 have new experience, are no doubt true enough, but they surely 
 give no reason for dispensing with a theory of categories or ot 
 degrees of reality. I am not quite sure of Mr. Schiller's own 
 convictions on this point. 
 
174 -A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 of self-consciousness would convince us that the 
 " needs " which may unconditionally lodge this claim 
 for satisfaction are the needs of the animal for its 
 spiritual fulfilment, of the body for the spirit's control, 
 and of our broken visitations of spiritual insight for 
 the spirit's permanently effective presence as life's 
 unifying principle. 
 
 The point at issue here is so important that it may 
 well bear further illustration. The pragmatic idea 
 has superficially associated itself in many minds with 
 a certain spirit of haste that rushes to soothe the cry 
 of the emotions much as an over -fond or over-taxed 
 mother might hasten to comfort her crying child, — 
 governed more by the emotional instinct for prompt 
 relief than by the rational desire for the child's more 
 permanent good. There is no doubt good ground 
 for some such misconception as this in the language 
 of the exponents of Pragmatism. It seems at times 
 as though the reason were being degraded to being 
 passion's slave and we were being drawn back under 
 Hume's shadow once again. " I cannot but conceive 
 the reason," says Mr. Schiller, "as being 
 E. basis jjjj^g ^jjg j-gs). Qf om- equipment, a weapon in 
 of Met. jjjg struggle for existence, and a means of 
 P' ^^ achieving adaptation. It must follow that 
 the practical use, which has developed it, must have 
 stamped itself upon its inmost structure." Now 
 statements of this kind do not do justice to Pragmatism 
 as a philosophy of life. In a theory of evolution, 
 developed from the scientific, external point of view 
 
Lecture VIII 175 
 
 the statement would be forceful and apposite. But 
 what is a full-blown truth from the superficial, 
 naturalistic point of view may well be a thin half- 
 truth from the concreter philosophical standpoint. 
 No philosophy worthy of the name could surely 
 consent to the degradation of reason to a mere means. 
 It is true that in the passage just quoted, Mr. 
 Schiller includes " the rest of our equipment " under 
 the same category of " means," but it is obvious from 
 the context that "practical purpose," is excepted. 
 A contrast is thus set up between practical purpose 
 and reason which is entirely antagonistic to the 
 avowed aim of pragmatic philosophy, "to weld 
 together thought and deed, or rather, to 
 i'ers. . jggjgj. ^j^g forces that insidiously dissever 
 them and pit the intellect against the will in 
 meaningless abstraction." 
 
 In the interests of true Pragmatism we would 
 therefore insist, as Mr. Schiller would, we believe, be 
 the first to do, that though it is undoubtedly true that 
 the reason has developed under practical conditions, 
 and that these conditions have kept the purposive 
 reason from cherishing its wings unduly at the expense 
 of its feet, it is still more profoundly true that it is 
 the purposive reason qua spiritual principle that has 
 given redeeming, progressive significance to the 
 practical uses to which the conditions of its healthy 
 growth have so largely restricted it. 
 
 Another source of misconception is undoubtedly to 
 be found in a tendency, common both to pragmatists 
 
176 A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 and their opponents, to fasten a party-meaning to 
 the opponent's terminology. Thus, to take a notable 
 instance, " pure reason," or " pure cognition," is the 
 " pure figment," of the pragmatist, because he under- 
 stands by it a reason emptied of all teleological import 
 whereas to some distinguished absolutists, at least, it 
 is the " spiritual principle," and so profoundly teleo- 
 logical that their only fear is lest it be interpreted as 
 countenancing a merely practical, utilitarian teleology 
 that has no spiritual reach beyond the grasp of 
 immediate interest. It is hardly surprising that 
 misunderstandings should, under these conditions, 
 tend to widen unnecessarily that breach between 
 personal and absolute idealism which essentially 
 consists in a simple though important difference of 
 starting-point. 
 
 In some remarks published in the Aristotelian 
 Society Proceedings, 1902-3, p. 185, Prof. Bosan- 
 quet has given clear expression to the misconception 
 referred to. " It is being suggested on all sides," he 
 writes, " that ' purpose ' helps to define and regulate 
 cognition, that cognition is rather organic to purpose 
 than self-determining;'' and he goes on to argue that 
 the character of a true end belongs much more really 
 to "pure cognition" than to "purpose." The whole 
 tendency of the argument is to support the concep- 
 tion of being an " end in itself" as a worthier 
 expression of the teleological idea than that of being 
 a definite purpose directed to some practical end. 
 With this I most cordially agree. It is more truly 
 
176 A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 and their opponents, to fasten a party-meaning to 
 the opponent's terminology. Thus, to take a notable 
 instance, " pure reason," or " pure cognition," is the 
 "pure figment," of the pragmatist, because he under- 
 stands by it a reason emptied of all teleological import 
 whereas to some distinguished absolutists, at least, it 
 is the " spiritual principle," and so profoundly teleo- 
 logical that their only fear is lest it be interpreted as 
 countenancing a merely practical, utilitarian teleology 
 that has no spiritual reach beyond the grasp of 
 immediate interest. It is hardly surprising that 
 misunderstandings should, under these conditions, 
 tend to widen unnecessarily that breach between 
 personal and absolute idealism which essentially 
 consists in a simple though important difference of 
 starting-point. 
 
 In some remarks published in the Aristotelian 
 Society Proceedings, 1902-3, p. 185, Prof. Bosan- 
 quet has given clear expression to the misconception 
 referred to. " It is being suggested on all sides," he 
 writes, " that ' purpose ' helps to define and regulate 
 cognition, that cognition is rather organic to purpose 
 than self-determining ; " and he goes on to argue that 
 the character of a true end belongs much more really 
 to " pure cognition " than to " purpose." The whole 
 tendency of the argument is to support the concep- 
 tion of being an " end in itself" as a worthier 
 expression of the teleological idea than that of being 
 a definite purpose directed to some practical end. 
 With this I most cordially agree. It is more truly 
 
Lecture VIII 177 
 
 purposive to aim at purity of heart than to set about 
 building a house or planning a journey. If in 
 planning an expedition, or seeking for a home, we 
 sacrifice in any way our spiritual integrity there is no 
 effective spiritual principle in our lives at all. If 
 then by "practical purpose," we mean a purpose 
 which gains its definiteness, not from any indwelling 
 ideal, but from the content it seeks to realise — a 
 house, a journey — such purposing, we may allow, leaves 
 us far indeed from the springs of our spiritual existence. 
 We may, and do cordially welcome against all such 
 restrictedly partial conceptions of purpose the nature 
 of "pure cognition," as Prof. Bosanquet, with 
 perhaps too much deference to Platonic usage, under- 
 stands the term. We would only request, as Prag- 
 matists, that the teleological significance of such pure 
 cognition be brought prominently forward in such a 
 way as to shed spiritual light on the pressing problems 
 of human existence.* This, I consider, Pro£ 
 
 *In particular, by interpreting "relation to consciousness" 
 as " relation to purpose," and this in the detail of intellectual 
 enquiry just as much as in apparently more practical matters. 
 Much confusion is caused in logical discussion, for instance, by 
 the endeavour to justify accepted logical distinctions such as 
 that between intension and extension without a direct reference 
 to the purpose (e.g., the interests of classification) which such a 
 distinction may be intended to answer. I fail to see how the 
 meaning of any logical distinction can be properly grasped apart 
 from some guiding reference to 'das. function it is to fill. The dis- 
 tinction between connotative and non-connotative terms, between 
 abstract and concrete terms, is surely not on a par with the given 
 distinction between a pearl and a diamond, or a horse and a 
 
 12 
 
178 A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 Bosanquet has himself done most effectively through 
 his recent articles in " Mind," in his explanation of 
 the sense in which a spiritual idea may play the part 
 of a practical criterion of conduct in the individual's 
 own life. Nothing more pragmatic, in the best sense 
 of that term, could be desired by the most ardent 
 Pragmatist. 
 
 The practical attitude which the perfection-postulate 
 requires of us seems to me to be best characterized by 
 the simple watchword, "For better, for worse,'' and that 
 in WISE RESOLVE LOYALLY TESTED, we have the one sure 
 means of realising the perfection that we postulate. 
 Does not the very name " Perfection " tell us that it 
 is essentially the habit of carrying our ideas through, 
 of carrying them out to the end ? 
 
 The conflict between wisdom and loyalty, that 
 conflict of perfection's very elements, of which the 
 perfect life is the successful issue, a conflict closely 
 analogous to that between Reason and Faith, though 
 of perennial interest to all forms of human striving, is 
 perhaps of special interest to Pragmatism. For the 
 Pragmatist manifesto entitled "the will to believe" has 
 left many with the impression that this new Philo- 
 sophy of Faith and Risk is an apologia' of loyalty at 
 all costs, though it be blind and headstrong and not 
 able to give an account of itself. And the romantic 
 
 donkey. In his persistent insistence on this point in his various 
 treatises, particularly the last on " The use of words in Reason- 
 ing," Mr. Alfred Sidgwick has, in my opinion, done excellent 
 service to the cause of logic. 
 
Lecture VIII 179 
 
 element is palpably present in Pragmatism. Here is 
 a passage from Mr. Peirce's first article in the "Popular 
 Science Mpnthly," the first of that series of articles to 
 which James refers as the herald of the whole Prag- 
 matic movement of today: — "The genius of a man's 
 logical method should be loved and reverenced as 
 his bride, whom he has chosen from all the world. 
 He need not condemn the others ; on the contrary, 
 he may honour them deeply; and in doing so he 
 only honours her the more. But she is the one that he 
 has chosen, and he knows that he was right in 
 making that choice. And having made it, he will 
 work and fight for her, and will not complain that 
 there are blows to take, hoping that there may be as 
 many and as hard to give, and will strive to be the 
 worthy knight and champion of her from the blaze of 
 whose splendors he draws his inspiration and his 
 courage." 
 
 In its insistence on loyalty this is splendid. But 
 what about wisdom ? Are we to have a little exercise 
 of wisdom first and then have done with it, our whole 
 soul then passing blindly into the arms of loyalty? 
 In his second article. Dr. Peirce speaks of the 
 mediaeval days when all the efibrts of scholasticism 
 were directed towards harmonizing its faith in Aristotle 
 and its faith in the Church, where truth was for the 
 philosophical professor his own particular stronghold 
 in which he intrenched himself, and from time to time 
 sallied forth to give battle to the others — a picture of 
 loyalty to which the graphic touch is given by the 
 
i8o A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 reminder that renegades were in those stalwart times 
 looked upon with contempt, even by the party whose 
 belief they adopted. This method of philosophizing 
 does not it is true, meet with Dr. Peirce's approval, 
 but unless Pragmatism insists that wisdom must 
 sustain loyalty all through its exercise, and by such 
 strong maintenance growing wiser, utilize its gathered 
 insight to correct or if need be to divert the direction 
 of loyalty, then the mediaeval days, with their 
 loyalties unpenetrated by wisdom, may yet visit us 
 again. If Pragmatism is to be the Renascence it claims 
 to be, and not a Romantic movement or a lapse into 
 mediaevalism, it must allow that free wisdom is the 
 soul of loyalty, and loyalty only the motor element in 
 wisdom itself. 
 
 As an illustration of this inward conflict between 
 wisdom and loyalty which the Postulate of Perfection 
 by its very adoption brings at once into our life, we 
 may suitably take that rivalry and conflict of the 
 diiferent empirical Me^s, of the various calls of life upon 
 our faculty, which constitutes the crucial problem for 
 all of us as we pass into manhood or womanhood. 
 Wisdom in the choice of a career is here the obvious 
 first good. After the first blush of that early youth 
 when no walk of hfe seems beyond us and we aim at an 
 all-inclusive destiny, we begin to feel the necessity, as 
 James puts it, of standing by one of our empirical 
 selves and relinquishing the rest. We have to find 
 that function which we are pre-eminently fitted by 
 nature to discharge. To succeed in life at all we 
 
Lecture VIII i8i 
 
 must be prepared to select one or a few closely 
 allied destinies and back ourselves resolutely to develop 
 the specific Me or M^s to which those destinies are 
 yoked. 
 
 Such dedication brings as a rule a great relief to the 
 conflict-worried depths of self-feeling. Ruskin tells 
 us in his " Praeterita '' of the great relief to his inner feel- 
 ing that ensued on his giving up once and for all the 
 ambitions of a poet. The usual difficulty in dealing 
 satisfactorily with this "conflict of studies" is the 
 difficulty of quenching by violence any deeply- 
 ingrained feeling. The ardour for sonnets and odes, 
 once it has been sufficently nourished, may be firmly 
 kept under when the mind is compulsorily fascinated 
 by the spell of an examination or some other binding 
 claim upon one's time, but with leisure and an easy 
 mind what a spring-like renewal of the old ardour is 
 like to burst forth again and drive its willing victim 
 back once more into the loved solitude of the poet's 
 world. And so the soul oscillates between two vocations, 
 the one necessary but Unloved, the other loved but 
 impossible. Such rivalry, if tbo long continued, spells 
 a wasted life. Now it is just here where our wisdom 
 is intellectually self-distracted, that wisdom must 
 become an idke-force, develop its motor factor of 
 cease to be wise. The way of perfection here would 
 lie, in my opinion, in striking out along the line of 
 least resistance but in striking out boldly. Let us at 
 our first leisure follow up the coveted pursuit into all 
 its responsibilities, pierce beyond the unlaboured thrill 
 
Lecture VIII 183 
 
 have used it as an argument against dalliance with 
 the mere pleasure-side of a pursuit. It is equally 
 valuable, we may add, as an argument against continu- 
 ally shirking the mere pain-side of a destiny, and so 
 missing a right vocation altogether. In both cases 
 what is necessary is to make courageous experience 
 with the whole issue, to fix one's eyes on the whole 
 meaning, worth and requirements of a career, to see 
 that special potential Me as a whole, and to judge 
 finally after deliberate experience of its main require- 
 ments. 
 
LECTURE IX 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The true prolegomena of moral philosophy are 
 a philosophical logic and a philosophical 
 psychology. The former fulfils its function 
 most adequately as a theory of the categories 
 or principles of unity through which we may 
 seek to unify experience ; in particular by 
 bringing out the true meaning of a concrete 
 principle and making clear the teleological point 
 of view which is so essential for philosophical 
 thinking. 
 
 The conception of a philosophical psychology 
 proves a stumbling-block to many. Mr. Bradley, 
 for instance, maintains that when psychology 
 ceases to be phenomenalistic, it ceases to be 
 psychology and becomes metaphysic. As 
 against such a view we maintain that it is both 
 possible and desirable to treat of real personal 
 experience in the general manner characteristic 
 of all psychological method without treating of 
 it as maximally real, as the subject matter, that 
 is, of metaphysic. Professor Stout's Psycho- 
 
1 88 A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 logy, so far as it is based on his theory of con- 
 ation, is essentially a philosophical psychology 
 of this kind. 
 
 The theory of Conation, which is central in Prof. 
 Stout's Psychology, is essentially teleological in 
 character. Mental power is in all cases a process 
 directed towards an end, and by reason of the very 
 purposiveness of its activity, both initiating means 
 for attaining the end, and varying such tentative 
 efforts as fail to prove purposive. The guiding 
 factor in such process is an indeterminate total 
 apprehension which, by its natural differentiation, 
 determines the order of the development, and is 
 referred to by Prof Stout as " a principle of 
 finality." To the essential nature of conation, 
 conceived as above, Prof Stout fiabitually re- 
 fers for his " ultimate" psychological explanations. 
 In the case where conation is governed by ideas, 
 progressive mental development means not only 
 extension of productive activity, but a deepening 
 of motive which in last resort as an ideal of 
 spiritual perfection comes to control all the 
 endeavour of one's conscious life. 
 
 We thus pass by a natural transition out of 
 teleological psychology into moral philosophy. 
 
LECTURE IX 
 
 THE RELATION OF ETHICS TO THEORY OF 
 EXPERIENCE AND TELEOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 We have, throughout this whole course of lectures, 
 been endeavouring to bring out the importance of the 
 spiritual idea in conduct, and our conclusion has been 
 that in so far as insistence on such a spiritual 
 principle means the basing of ethics on metaphysics^ 
 we would unhesitatingly urge the need of a meta- 
 physical ethic. 
 
 We are now prepared to state our views on this 
 point in a more definite and practical manner. 
 
 A science of ethics, as distinguished from a 
 philosophy of ethics, is required, as we have seen, for 
 dealing with ethical data by the ordinary inductive 
 methods of science. The only restriction we should 
 insist on here would be the very natural one that such 
 a science should not attempt to pose as a ^;z«/ theory 
 of conduct, and that it should appropriately refrain 
 from philosophically criticizing its own assumptions. 
 Its working principles are sufficiently justified if they 
 work well. 
 
19° A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 A moral philosophy requires, however, a, more 
 adequate foundation, and is naturally based on such 
 disciplines as aim at justifying or applying the 
 concrete view of mind as a spiritual development. 
 
 The proper propaedeutic for a course in moral 
 philosophy would, in my opinion, consist of a theory 
 of experience {or philosophical \og\c), followed up by 
 a teleological (or philosophical) psychology. 
 
 I say " theory of experience " instead of theory ot 
 "knowledge" or"epistemology," in order to include the 
 theory of action or "praxology." A theory of experience 
 is the natural introduction to philosophy proper, for 
 since the spiritual element is ignored in all scientific 
 investigation by a methodological necessity, it is 
 indispensable in passing from science into philosophy 
 to acquire some familiarity with its significance in 
 experience, to be introduced in fact to that fuller, 
 richer experience whereof spiritual principles of unity 
 are the functional essentials. By such a discipline, 
 the student, already more or less versed in the 
 scientific ' categories, and familiar with that form of 
 causal explanation which accounts for a phenomenon 
 by adducing the totality of the relevant antecedent 
 conditions, is introduced to the philosophical type of 
 explanation in terms of final causes. 
 
 The importance of the teleological point of view for 
 philosophy can hardly be over-estimated. Those 
 who may have spent some years in strictly scientific 
 or mathematical studies, prior to entering upon 
 philosophy proper, will probably agree with the 
 
Lecture IX 191 
 
 present writer in tracing their first genuine philosoph- 
 ical conversion to the time when the meaning ot final 
 causation first became intelligible to them. It was 
 the second chapter of Dr. Caird's " Evolution of 
 Religion " in which he makes it clear that the only 
 adequate way of defining religion is not to seek for 
 the elements common to all religions, but rather for the 
 differentiae of the highest forms, that effected my 
 enlightenment and initiation into philosophy. 
 
 Fiske, in his preface to " The Idea of God," confesses 
 to a quite similar experience. He points out how in 
 his " Cosmic Philosophy " — a pre-teleological work on 
 Spencerian lines, — he had been working towards the 
 teleological idea but had not succeeded in bringing it 
 into clear self-consciousness. " When, after long 
 hovering in the background of consciousness, it 
 suddenly flashed upon me two years ago, it came 
 with such vividness as to seem like a revelation." 
 " This conclusion," he goes on to say, " as to the 
 implications of the doctrine of evolution concerning 
 man's place in nature supplies the element wanting 
 in the theistic theory set forth in " Cosmic Philosophy," 
 — the teleological element." 
 
 These confessions may arouse a smile in the many 
 favoured philosophers who have approached their 
 subject through the illuminating guidance of Aristotle, 
 and to these the philosophic thrill may have come in 
 other ways ;* but for the mind long accustomed in 
 
 * Cf. Prof. Prir^Ie-Pattison i" Hegelianism and Personality" 
 p. 63. 
 
192 A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 thought and practice to reduce causal connections to 
 abstract energy equivalences, the philosophical 
 baptism, par excellence, is that which confers the 
 grace of teleological insight.* 
 
 Closely bound up with this first teleological 
 illumination is the lesson concealed in " The Secret 
 of Hegel," — the principle of the concrete universal.. 
 This latter expression is, in fact, tautological, as a 
 " principle " just is a " concrete universal," and to 
 understand the one is to understand the other. In 
 the writer's own experience, however, a working grasp 
 of the distinction between a formal and a concrete 
 principle came long after the transition from 
 mechanism to teleology. And yet, on looking back» 
 it seems clear that the later distinction was involved 
 in the earlier. To have been warned off from seek- 
 ing the characteristic definition of religion in the 
 elements common to all religious was to have been 
 cautioned not to accept the abstract universal, the 
 universal gained by eliminating differences and 
 retaining mere resemblances, as an effective con- 
 ception in dealing with final causation. 
 
 Speaking then from personal experience, I would 
 urge that in these scientific days, when initiation into 
 philosophy means, essentially, the acquired capacity 
 to transcend the mechanical, scientific point of view,, 
 
 *Cf. Prof. Pringle-Pattison. "Man's place in the Cosmos." 
 p. 39 : — " Any system which abandons this [i. e. , the teleological], 
 point of view lapses thereby from philosophy to science " — 
 weighty words I would most emphatically endorse. 
 
Lecture IX 193 
 
 a theory of experience, as prolegomena to philosophy, 
 be in particular a theory of the categories or unifying 
 principles. 
 
 From the theory of experience the natural 
 transition would be to a teleological psychology. 
 After the philosophical logic comes the philosophical 
 psychology. 
 
 The conception of a teleological psychology may 
 seem to need a certain justification. To many indeed, 
 e.g., to Mr. F. H. Bradley, it seems about as reason- 
 able to talk of a teleological psychology as it would 
 be to taljj of a teleological astronomy. Mr. Bradley, 
 it is true, does not directly attack the adoption of a 
 teleological method in psychology, but rather what he 
 holds to be the confusion of psychology with meta- 
 physics. Psychology, he maintains, must deal with 
 phenomena only, i.e., with " the mere course 
 
 ■ ^' 'of psychical events, as such, happening 
 within a single organism." These and the laws of 
 co-existence and sequence constitute between them 
 the legitimate object of psychology. But as such a 
 description is open to many misconceptions, the author 
 connects phenomenalism rather with the type of 
 explanation appropriate to it than with the more or less 
 of abstractness of the phenomena considered. Ex- 
 planation of phenomena must be by working 
 hypotheses only, i.e., by hypotheses whose sole 
 validity consists in their working well in explaining 
 "the course of mere events." A purely fictitious 
 hypothesis is, within the confines of phenomenalism, 
 
 13 
 
194 ^ Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 more acceptable than the most palpable vera causa 
 if only it can be shown to work better. There is no 
 dallying with " pure experience " here. Psychology, 
 like all empirical science, is concerned not with the 
 
 reality of its hypotheses, nor indeed with 
 * their truth, " except so far as truth means 
 
 whatever serves best to explain the course of mere 
 events." Mr. Bradley condenses this thought into a 
 
 striking phrase : " What in short we want in 
 . p. 35. pgy(,jjQ]Qgy a^j.g explanations that truly 
 
 explain, and above all things we do not want true 
 
 explanations." Thus a theory of dispositions may 
 
 do excellent service in "truly explaining," 
 
 ■ " ■ but such dispositions are only admissible as 
 
 " legitimate fictions used to explain the happening of 
 
 phenomena." Keep your hands off reality, is Mr. 
 
 Bradley's one warning word to the psychologist, and 
 
 avoid in particular pressing the soul to 
 
 disclose its real nature. " If you ask about 
 
 the soul unconditionally, what is the truth about its 
 
 nature, the enquiry is metaphysical. But if on the 
 
 other hand, you confine yourself to a limited kind of 
 
 question about the soul, that limitation keeps you 
 
 within empirical psychology, and is the boundary of 
 
 your science.'' 
 
 Mr. Bradley's article will commend itself by its force 
 and lucidity to all who read it. And in large measure 
 we would fully admit the cogency of the reasoning. 
 By all means let us have strict phenomenalism in 
 that psychology without a soul which prides itself on 
 
lecture IX 195 
 
 its strictly inductive method. The soul is simply not 
 amenable to the verification-tests of strict scientific 
 method. It must therefore be ignored by the 
 empirical psychologist. But this does not of course 
 imply any forfeiture of its spiritual existence, but 
 means simply this, that being spirit and not sense- 
 perceivable, it is not the sort of " fact " the inductive 
 method can deal with. Let empirical psychology 
 accept the proper limitation of its own scientific 
 method, and may its harvests be increasingly fruitful. 
 
 But there is room for a new rational psychology, a 
 concreter psychology, a psychology with a soul, or at 
 least treating of that which can adequately represent 
 the spiritual principle, a psychology which is at once 
 teleological and philosophical in character, and is yet 
 not a metaphysic* 
 
 Let us first distinguish between three ways of 
 
 * Mr. Bradley's aim in the article discussed, is to justify the 
 widening of the sphere of empirical psychology so as to include 
 the study of mental activity qua subjective feeling, not qua object 
 before the mind. This however does not touch the question of 
 method, which remains for empirical psychology inductive, and 
 not teleological. cf. id., p. 41. "It is only for a false view 
 then that phenomena consist merely of objects. The experienced 
 contains in itself very much more than these. And it is the 
 whole content of the experienced which, when regarded in a 
 certain way, becomes a co-eiistence and succession of events and 
 forms the subject matter of empirical psychology." The whole 
 question is whether, regarded in that way which compels us to 
 conceive of experienced content as a " co-existence and succession 
 of events," we can possibly be doing justice to the facts of 
 spiritual experience. 
 
196 A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 handling experience as a subject-matter of enquiry. 
 Let a stand for the spiritual element in experience, jr 
 for the phenomenal. Again let <rc and ^c stand for the 
 same constituents when taken in their concrete signific- 
 ance, and (Ta and ^a for these when taken in less than 
 their concretest significance, i.e., more or less ab- 
 stractly. 
 
 Then we may take experience to mean, either : — 
 1°. TTa : (The meaning given by empirical psychology 
 to experience when it abstracts entirely from the 
 spiritual factor in experience). This is the point 
 of view of phenomenalism. 
 
 2°. ((nr)a : (The meaning given by teleological psy- 
 chology to experience when it abstracts, e.g., from 
 the normative aspect of experience and from its 
 relation to the divine experience). 
 3°- (<rT)c : (The meaning presumably given by meta- 
 physics to experience, conceived with the maxi- 
 mum of concreteness). 
 Now I should call both (o-ir)c and {av)^ real, and xa 
 alone non-real, in the sense of phenomenal. In (tr jr), 
 we are treating of personal experience as a whole, 
 though we treat it abstractly, in the sense of "generally " 
 or "formally." ((rir)a, that is, is just a general treat- 
 ment of the unity of experience, ira, on the other 
 hand, is a treatment — 2, general treatment also — of the 
 "lesser half" of experience, and as dealing with a 
 fragmentary subject-matter, is abstract in the more 
 natural sense of the word when it means " partial " as 
 opposed to "general." 
 
Lecture IX 197 
 
 Any treatment of experience as a whole, whether 
 more or less generalised, whether general or individual, 
 I would call a treatment of experience as real. Is it 
 not just to consider that the essential characteristic of 
 real experience is its spiritual integrity, and that when 
 this is present, and experience is studied, however 
 generally, in the light of its spiritual principle, we are 
 no longer dealing with phenomena but with realities ? 
 We hold then that there must be a psychology which 
 deals with experience as real, and yet is not as concrete 
 a study as moral philosophy and still less so than 
 metaphysics or systematic philosophy. And what 
 this distinction really amounts to is this, that natural 
 science deals with the phenomenal, philosophy with 
 the real, but that there are many philosophical sciences, 
 each dealing with a conception of experience one 
 grade or degree more real than its predecessor. Teleo- 
 logical psychology would on this scheme, next to the 
 theory of the categories, which we might well eliminate 
 in this connection as being rather of the nature of 
 prolegomena, be the fundamental* philosophical 
 science, and therefore of supreme importance for the 
 proper development of the concreter philosophies 
 (moral philosophy, philosophy of the beautiful, meta- 
 physics) that presuppose it. 
 
 In the article already referred to, Mr. 
 
 ' Bradley, shrewdly suspecting Prof. Stout of 
 
 no sp- 7 heresy, challenges him to confess publicly the 
 
 phenonienalistic credo. "The vital question," we 
 
 ' And therefore of course, the least truly explanatory. 
 
198 A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 read, "seems to be this: Does Dr. Stout mean to 
 confine psychology to events and the laws of events ? 
 Does he mean to assert that, since psychology is not 
 concerned with more than this, it is at liberty to use 
 fictions, and that the question of truth is not to be 
 raised in it except so far as truth means whatever 
 serves best to explain the course of mere events ? I 
 cannot understand how it is that, if Dr. Stout really 
 holds these doctrines, he should not have expressed 
 them more clearly."* I cannot of course speak for 
 Prof. Stout himself, but I am personally convinced 
 that he is definitely committed to the teleological 
 heresy, and that his theory of conation, i.e., his whole 
 psychology, is (<r jra) not tt^. To me such delinquency 
 presents itself as a supreme virtue, and I am pro- 
 foundly persuaded that when concrete idealism settles 
 finally into a relatively stable position it will discover, 
 we hope with due gratitude, that its foundations have 
 been already thoroughly laid in Prof. Stout's teleo- 
 logical treatment of experience. 
 
 It is a very strong weakness in Prof. Stout's pro- 
 cedure that he should have been more interested 
 
 * It would be interesting to know whether Mr. Bradley would 
 characterize Bk. II., ch. ii., of Green's "Prolegomena" as 
 metaphysics or as psychology. To the present writer, that 
 chapter is a striking witness to the truth that a moral philosopher 
 who requires to develop the psychological side of his subject finds 
 the current empirical psychology too abstract for the purpose, and 
 is compelled to build up a concreter psychology characterized by 
 its recognition of the spiritual principle in experience. 
 Cf. also the interesting section § 71. 
 
Lecture IX 199 
 
 m developing his sabject adequately than in disen- 
 tangling the -teleological elements of his treatment 
 from the phenomenalistic ; yet we do feel that it is a 
 weakness, and a source of natural perplexity to such 
 ■critics as Mr. Bradley and Prof. Milnsterberg who 
 are interested in the Methodology of Psychology. 
 I propose, therefore, to typify by a reference to 
 Prof. Stout's theory of Conation, as developed in the 
 "Analytic" and in the "Manual," how I understand 
 this teleological element to be pervadingly present in 
 his psychology. 
 
 With Prof. Stout, the central interest of psych- 
 ology is the self-fulfilment of conscious striving. 
 Such striving tends invariably towards an end in one 
 or both of the two senses of that word "aim" or 
 "ending." All consciousness, with Prof. Stout, is 
 conative consciousness, consciousness of which the 
 
 , general character is an " intrinsic tendency " 
 Manual " , , , . , ■' 
 
 gg to develop towards its own natural consum- 
 mation. " A thought-illuminated conation, 
 such as the definite desire for food, runs its 
 ■ ^'^' course and reaches its natural ending just 
 ■ ^' ^' as the blind craving does. When a man's 
 appetite is fully appeased, he ceases to think 
 about his dinner." Again we read that all 
 conative processes cease when and so far as 
 their end is attained, "their end in the teleological 
 sense " being " also their end as occurrences in time." 
 The teleological character of conative process is 
 brought out by Prof. Stout in four main ways : — 
 
1.26s 
 
 with 
 
 I. 190. 
 
 2° It 
 
 An. Psy. 
 
 I. 232. 
 
 200 A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 1° It is as we have seen a process directed blindly 
 or deliberately towards an end. It is indeed only in 
 the latter case, in the case of the thought-illumined 
 conation, that we can strictly speak of the activity 
 being teleological, but in either case it is manifestly 
 purposive, and though Prof. Stout's lan- 
 n. sy.g^g^gg ^Qgg j^gj, ^^^-^ ^^ jjj g ^ Q bc quite 
 
 decisive on this point, he would, I think, be 
 quite ready to allow the synonymity of the two 
 expressions " conative " and " teleological." 
 is a process which, on the analogy of a 
 disturbed equilibrium, initiates by its very 
 " activity such processes as tend to its restor- 
 ation. To be striving towards an end is 
 eo ipso to be setting in motion the means whereby 
 
 . , , , the end is to be attained. In particular we 
 id. 11. 1 , . , , , 
 
 g read that it belongs to the very nature of 
 
 persistent conflict to set in motion processes 
 which lead to its own cessation. 
 
 3° Prof. Stout in his analysis of conative process 
 lays it down as a general principle "that 
 where the course of mental activity is ob- 
 structed in one direction, it seeks other 
 channels." " Our total mental activity," he 
 adds elsewhere, " is like a stream with a cur- 
 rent, which, when its course is barred in one 
 
 direction, seeks other channels." This is ex- 
 P 252. 
 
 cellently brought out in a page of the Manual 
 
 in which Prof. Stout is considering that " persistency 
 
 with varied eflfort " which is so characteristic of the 
 
 id 
 
 . II. 
 
 P- 
 
 157- 
 
 id 
 
 . II. 
 
 P- 
 
 148. 
 
Lecture IX 201 
 
 appetitive actions of animals. " Persistency with 
 varied adaptation," we read, " is an adaptation which 
 can only be understood by reference to the continuous 
 impulse or conation which pervades and constitutes 
 perceptual process. Just because the impulse is a 
 tendency towards an end, it guides the course of the 
 action. When the action enters into a phase which 
 checks instead of furthering the return to equilibrium, 
 the current of activity diverts itself into a relatively 
 new channel. The process would not be a process 
 towards an end, if it could persist without variation in 
 an unsuccessful course." In this latter sentence we see 
 how Prof. Stout connects the general principle in 
 question with the very nature of conative process 
 itself. Conation implies adaptive variation. 
 
 4° The teleological process defines itself through 
 attention. If it is true that percepts and ideas tend 
 to act themselves out in some form of conative pro- 
 cess, it is equally, indeed identically true, that conative 
 process defines itself in and through percepts 
 
 , , ' ' and ideas. " The conative state defines 
 II.p. lo;?. 
 
 itself in the cognitive," and it is on this 
 
 account that conation develops itself in the form of 
 attention-process. Conative process is in fact 
 self-guided by the ideas through which it de- 
 velops, attention being metaphorically hkened 
 
 „ by Prof. Stout to " the light used by cona- 
 An Psy f .» 
 
 8^ tion to make out its path.^' The original 
 
 ' conation tends to define itself, " and the 
 
 gradual acquisition of knowledge through experience 
 
202 A Philosophical Introduction to JEthics 
 
 is but another expression for the process whereby 
 
 the originally blind craving becomes more distinct 
 
 and differentiated." 
 
 The attentive principle which Prof. Stout 
 
 „ ' discusses under the name of noetic synthesis, 
 11. p. 41. . . ■* 
 
 and alludes to as a distmct kind of mental 
 factor, is just that "apprehension of the whole which 
 determines the order and connection of the apprehen- 
 sion of the parts." It is James's fringe-consciousness 
 animated by a purposive tendency, and as developed 
 by Prof. Stout seems to me to give the most sug- 
 gestive clue yet given to the question as to what we 
 mean by the felt inward experience of a spiritual 
 principle. 
 
 This total or implicit apprehension, as Prof. 
 Stout conceives it, is of course no mere awareness, 
 but an idie force in the most generalized sense 
 of that word. It is a total interest whose intrinsic 
 nature it is to work itself out to a satisfactory fulfil- 
 ment. 
 
 The dominant part played by this "principle of 
 
 finality" in mental development is familiar 
 
 ^' to all acquainted with Prof. Stout's psycho- 
 
 262 272' ^°Sy- Attentive interest is here consistently 
 
 exhibited as the unifying principle of the 
 
 whole process of acquiring experience, e.g. in the 
 
 building up of associations and in their reproduction 
 
 under changed conditions. With Prof. Stout 
 
 there is no ultimate explanation in any problem 
 
 of psychology apart from a reference to the 
 
Lecture IX 203 
 
 essential nature of conation, in marked contrast 
 here with Prof. James, quS. psychologist, who 
 seeks his ultimate explanations in " laws of 
 neural habit." [cf. Principles of Psychology I. 
 P- 566, 653]. 
 
 We propose however to restrict our vindication of 
 the essentially teleological character of Prof. Stout's, 
 psychology to pointing out in what sense it can 
 be accepted as a peculiarly appropriate introduc- 
 tion to moral philosophy. Moral philosophy we 
 take to be rooted in the idea of perfection, of a 
 common good, as it is sometimes more specifically 
 called ; in a principle of finality which dominates 
 the whole practical life. Now Prof. Stout's 
 psychology leads us precisely up to this point through 
 its concrete philosophical treatment of mental develop- 
 ment. For it presents us not only with a principle of 
 finality as everywhere dominant in mental development, 
 but enables us to see how it is that in proportion as 
 our experience becomes more comprehensive and 
 more organized, the teleological motive deepens till 
 it becomes deep enough to embrace all the purposes 
 of life. With the organized differentiation of the 
 mental life we can trace the concomitant integration. 
 We ever find the principle of purposive, constructive 
 interest at the working frontiers of the mental life, 
 yet gaining at the core of one's being a correspond- 
 ingly progressive depth of purpose and width of 
 reach. 
 
 In support of the above, we may take Prof. 
 
204 A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 Stout's treatment of the relation of habit to adapta- 
 tion.* 
 
 Prof. Stout clearly points out that the mere 
 fact of repeatedly performing an action of a certain 
 specific kind cannot, except in the very simplest cases- 
 as in idiot life for instance — account for the 
 character of the formed habit. If repetition were 
 everything in habit, there could be no such thing as 
 the formation of a habit, but only a constant repetition 
 of certain movements without any progress whatsoever. 
 By mere repetition we can stiffen certain well-marked 
 tendencies but we cannot make of them tendencies 
 towards an end ox goal. 
 
 To understand what habit, even the simplest habit, 
 means, we must recognise the purposiveness of the 
 process by which habits are formed. Otherwise it is 
 impossible to explain the purposive character of the 
 habit when it has come to be quite unconsciously 
 performed. Habit has its roots in our striving pur- 
 posive activities, and the term " habit " in its most 
 general sense means just that condition of our pur- 
 posive activity when it has learned to function 
 according to its nature, smoothly, economically, 
 pleasurably. 
 
 * Prof. Stout's treatment of this point agrees fundamentally 
 with Aristotle's in Book II. of the Ethics. It is probably super- 
 fluous to remark that Prof. Stout's interest-series has essential 
 points of similarity with the ^vreX^eta of Aristotle. That 
 Prof. Stout's psychology should remind one of Aristotle as it 
 has reminded others of Hegel, is, I venture to think, a significant 
 indication of its essentially teleological, philosophical character. 
 
Lecture IX 205 
 
 Again, it is only by conceiving habit in closest . 
 connection with conative process that we can under- 
 stand why our habits tend to become less and less 
 consciously performed in proportion as they are more 
 skilfully carried out. The secret lies, as Prof. 
 Stout points out, in the teleological character of the 
 attention-process. Since all conative process ceases 
 when and so far as its end is attained, the formed 
 habit in these simple cases no longer requires to be 
 guided by the original purpose, and the original pur- 
 pose as such is no longer felt. Prof. Stout 
 
 "■ 5^' gives as an illustration "the development of 
 
 I. p. 266.^ u uv i- 1 c ■ : 
 
 a habit of always performmg an act upon a 
 certain occasion, e.g., the custom of answering letters 
 by return of post." He points out that " the original 
 conation, the desire to be business-like, or whatever 
 else it may be, has attained its end and therefore 
 disappears." 
 
 Completing Prof. Stout's thought, entirely in 
 the spirit of his own distinction between automatic 
 habits and habits of thought and volition, we would 
 propose to distinguish here two typical cases. 
 
 1° The habit may express an interest that does not 
 enter into the main stream of our purposive liie, in 
 which case, the original conation once satisfied, no 
 other interest arises out of it. Once I have reached 
 a certain sufificient dexterity in tying my tie, desire 
 for improvement in that direction passes from me, and 
 I end therefore in performing the action mechanically. 
 Moreover, I do not connect the tying of my tie with 
 
2o6 A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 any one of my large interests in life. The consequence 
 is that this formed habit remains a stiff, conservative 
 propensity to perform an action in a certain way. 
 My purpose is preadjusted to a certain set of con- 
 ditions which never vary, and my consciousness of 
 this process tends to reduce itself to a mere set of sub- 
 conscious sensations probably regulated entirely by 
 the lower non-cerebral centres. 
 
 2° The case is different where the habit in question 
 does express an interest which enters into the main 
 stream of our purposive life. Here, in proportion as 
 the original purpose is satisfied, a fuller, larger pur- 
 pose takes its place. The formed habit no longer 
 harbours the original purpose in the form of a stiffened 
 propensity in a fixed direction, but is instinct with the 
 larger purpose which is now able to utilise it as a fit 
 organ for its own needs. I have acquired, say, the 
 habit of answering letters by return, and my desire to 
 be businesslike is satisfied. I have in this respect 
 become business-like by instinct. But this acquired 
 tendency is now put to the uses of the larger purpose 
 to do to-day's work to-day, and the old habit enters 
 now as a trained factor into the sphere of action of 
 the new generalised purpose. The principle of finality 
 asserts itself afresh within the habit ; the conditions 
 which are to be met are now very much more varied ; 
 the old preadjustment has therefore to readjust itself 
 and a new period of habit-formation has set in. 
 
 We see then that as the moral horizon enlarges, the 
 moral purpose deepens. The purpose to be business- 
 
Lecture IX 207 
 
 like in a certain specific direction once achieved, the 
 acquired disposition persists as a purpose to be 
 business-like in other spheres, involving the tendency 
 to be business-like in all spheres. But with the form- 
 ation of other habits for other purposes we are likely to 
 experience a deepening of motive in other directions, 
 and a consequent conflict of general motives which, in 
 Prof Stout's phraseology, by the very nature of 
 conflict-process " sets in motion processes which lead to 
 its own cessation." A motive that can utilise all 
 acquired habits and dispositions as organs for its own 
 single self-expression, and maintain itself consistently 
 through the endless diversity of life's varied activities, 
 becomes the psychological imperative, and in this deep 
 reconciling purpose, which is the very essence of our 
 practical consciousness, we thus come to recognise a 
 spiritual principle that is life's summum bonum and 
 supreme criterion. We see then that from teleological 
 psychology the transition to moral philosophy proper 
 is not only not difficult, but inevitable. 
 
LECTURE X 
 
PREFACE 
 
 As concerns the relation of moral philosophy to 
 metaphysics we may say that whilst moral philo- 
 sophy is based on philosophical logic and psych- 
 ology, it is rooted Yd metaphysics, where by meta- 
 physics we understand philosophy in its 
 concretest form. The contrary view that 
 metaphysics is rooted in moral philosophy loses 
 its apparent force so soon as this concrete 
 character of metaphysics is realised and granted. 
 Ethics, qua Natural Science, is, of course, 
 neither based upon metaphysics nor rooted in it. 
 To be rooted in metaphysics means to be rooted 
 in the monistic postulate with all that that 
 postulate ultimately involves. Both Absoluteand 
 Personal Idealism, as I conceive it, agree in 
 sharing the monistic postulate, but differ in 
 starting-point and method. Whilst personal 
 idealism takes personal experience as its datum 
 and adopts an essentially teleological method, 
 absolute idealism starts with the whole or the 
 absolute as its datum, and proceeds by the help 
 
212 A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 of an ontological method. Both the datum and 
 the method of the absolutist appear untenable, 
 the fundamental inadequacy of absolutism 
 consisting in its failure to distinguish clearly 
 between my experience as it is for myself and 
 my experience as it is for another. The essential 
 differentia of personal idealism is that it starts 
 from the individual's immediate experience and 
 insists on the difference between the respective 
 points of view of experient and of external 
 observer as essential and fundamental. 
 
LECTURE X 
 
 ETHICS AND METAPHYSICS* 
 
 Our previous discussion would seem to have led to 
 the following conclusion, that since the essential 
 object of ethical prolegomena — the adequate recogni- 
 tion, namely, of the spiritual principle in experience, 
 is sufficiently gained through a theory of experience 
 and teleological psychology, moral philosophy is 
 really based on these and not on metaphysics 
 properly so-called. This in a sense is true : as 
 students eager for progressive enlightenment, we pass 
 naturally into moral philosophy out of philosophical 
 logic and psychology. 
 
 And yet in the deeper teleological sense of the term, 
 we must admit that moral philosophy is roofed in 
 metaphysics or rational theology, though it may be 
 based on the more formal enquiries already referred 
 to. The mechanical metaphor of a "foundation," 
 though it is well suited to represent the relation in 
 which the simpler and more general philosophy 
 
 * Throughout the discussion that follows the term "ethics" is 
 used as synonymous with the term " moral philosophy." 
 
2 14 -^ Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 stands to the more complete and concrete, in the 
 gradual process of acquiring knowledge, is in another 
 and more essential respect inadequate. The organic 
 metaphor of a " root ", with its implication of a teleo- 
 logical as opposed to a mechanical connection, seems 
 better suited to represent the relation in which the 
 concrete whole stands to its partial derivations. The 
 part must be rooted in the whole, not the whole in 
 the part. But if we admit that to get to the root of 
 a matter is to see that matter in the light of its final 
 cause, and admit that the more concrete and 
 developed is alone capable of explaining in this sense 
 what is less so, — we will admit the suitability of say- 
 ing that ethics is rooted in metaphysics, metaphysics 
 being the concretest, the spiritually richest of all 
 studies. At the same time, even the root metaphor is 
 not sufficiently "inward" to do justice to the teleo- 
 logical relation here involved. It would be perhaps 
 less misleading to say that ethics is organically impli- 
 cated in metaphysics. 
 
 This way of stating the relation may help us in 
 answering a further question as to whether it is not 
 really metaphysics that is rooted in ethics, and not 
 vice-versa. 
 
 The view that metaphysics has an ethical basis is 
 maintained by Mr. Schiller in his paper on "The 
 Ethical basis of Metaphysics," ["International Journal 
 of Ethics" — ^July, 1903 — (reprinted in "Humanism.")] 
 Mr. Schiller's point may be briefly stated as follows : — 
 
 " The metaphysical conception of real is dominated 
 
Lecture X 215 
 
 by the ethical conception oigood, and the teleological 
 valuations which issue from this conception enter into 
 the very tissue of such knowledge of reality as we 
 attain to. Knowledge is a form of value, reality an 
 expression of the good. Hence, the foundations of 
 metaphysics, as Lotze anticipated, are found to lie in 
 ethics." 
 
 Now it seems important to consider in the first 
 place what meaning we are to give to the term 
 "good." If by the "good" we mean that which 
 gives conduct its value, in opposition, say to some 
 other ideal, that of beauty, then Mr. Schiller's view 
 illegitimately implies the primacy of one aspect of 
 man's spirit over the others. If on the other hand 
 we mean by " the good " that which is the source of 
 a// value, then the good is just "the ideal in experi- 
 ence," and Mr. Schiller's statement* that the concep- 
 tion of realis dominated by the conception oigood, 
 simply amounts to saying that the conception of the 
 real is dominated by the conception of the ideal. 
 But this does not appear a sufficient reason for 
 subordinating metaphysics to ethics rather than to 
 logic or aesthetics. At most, it could only justify the 
 statement that the foundations of metaphysics must 
 be laid in a theory of teleology. 
 
 And this brings us to a second point. Has Mr. 
 
 *"At a blow it [i.e.. Pragmatism] awards to the 
 > ■ P- 43 • ethical concept of good supreme authority over the 
 logical conception of true and the metaphysical conception o' 
 real." 
 
2i6 A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 Schiller grasped the true concrete character of 
 metaphysics ? Granting that we must advance from 
 a theory of teleology as basis in order to deal effect- 
 ively with the concreter problems of metaphysics, 
 this in no way affirms the intrinsic depend- 
 ence of metaphysics on ethics. It does not 
 mean that we are therefore entitled to deduce our 
 metaphysical system from our ethical. The very 
 reverse. It implies only that we must take up into 
 our study of metaphysics the teleological idea as a 
 steadying conception to be reilluminated in the light 
 of the larger metaphysical outlook, not that we import 
 it into metaphysics as its taskmaster, and dictator. 
 The postulate of concrete idealism obliges us to 
 conclude that whilst metaphysics may truly be said 
 to be based on a theory of teleology, such a theory of 
 teleology is really rooted in metaphysics. Or again, 
 since the conception of a concrete metaphysics, as we 
 conceive it, absolutely precludes its dealing with the 
 real in any sense of that word which does not include 
 the good, we conclude that when Mr. Schiller asserts 
 that the metaphysical conception of the real is 
 dominated by the ethical conception of the good, he 
 is simply pointing out that the dominating factor in 
 concrete real experience is the teleological spiritual 
 principle which gives the experience its aim and 
 value. It may well be, for instance, that love — the 
 last word of moral philosophy, is the life-secret of 
 metaphysic, playing the part of the heart-beat to the 
 whole system of systematic philosophy. For does 
 
Lecture X 217 
 
 not love, it may be said, embrace within itself the 
 harmony of all other ideals — wisdom, beauty, effective 
 labour, as the idea of justice in Plato's commonwealth 
 is the harmonizing principle apart from which there 
 would be neither wisdom, temperance or courage ? 
 May there not be a spirit of spirit, and love be the 
 breath of the spiritual cosmos ? It may be so. But 
 in any case both the love-problem and its solution, 
 concerning as it does, in prospect at least, the whole 
 cosmos in its concretest aspect, belongs, in the form 
 in which it is here set, to metaphysics. 
 
 We conclude then that though metaphysics as the 
 concretest of the philosophical sciences may be said 
 to be based on moral philosophy in the sense that to 
 reach the whole we may well be compelled to push 
 from the part outwards, our final word on this point 
 must be that moral philosophy, the ethics of man as 
 spirit, is rooted va. metaphysics.* 
 
 And yet even a last word may need elucidating. 
 When we assert that ethics is rooted in metaphysics 
 what we reaiUy mean is that it is rooted in the 
 monistic postulate, of which concrete metaphysics, even 
 at its best, is but the attempted justification. This 
 monistic postulate is, as I take it, the common root 
 
 * Qua Natural Science, ethics can of course neither be said to be 
 based on nor rooted in metaphysics. No science with an 
 inductive, mechanical method can have anything to do, qua 
 science, with philosophy and its teleological method. Ethics 
 as a natural science may be based on empirical psychology and 
 rooted in sociology but neither based nor rooted in any kind of 
 philosophy. 
 
2i8 A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 of both absolute and personal idealism. Both are 
 monotelic idealisms, monisms in aim and tendency, 
 for I am unable to consider the so called pluralism of 
 certain personal idealists as anything more than a 
 half-way house on the inevitable road to monism of 
 one kind or another. Idealism, the categories and 
 monism appear to me to be mutually co-essential. 
 Apart from an appeal to philosophic conceptions of 
 unity, I cannot see how idealism can justify itself 
 against the naturalism which grows directly and 
 naturally out of the abstract scientific standpoint, nor 
 can I see how apart from the monistic postulate, 
 idealism or any other philosophy can make headway 
 at all. For is there any test of metaphysical theory 
 other than its harmonizing power over the ultimate 
 problems of experience, and the monistic postulate 
 just is the intrinsic demand of our philosophic nature 
 to apply the harmony-test to its most comprehensive 
 views of experience. That the monistic postulate 
 needs reinterpreting is most true : philosophy has 
 indeed still to decide what sort of unity it is that the 
 philosophic nature requires ; and the difficulty which 
 the problem of monism presents when looked at from 
 the point of view of immediate personal experience 
 is evidence enough that the conception of a unity of 
 experience needs reanalyzing and deepening, 
 but it in no way justifies the abolition of the monistic 
 idea but simply its revision. 
 
 The only conceivable refutation of the monistic 
 postulate would be to show that our philosophic nature 
 
Lecture X 219 
 
 has no right to demand it, and that the demand for a 
 pluralistic solution interprets that nature more truly. 
 It is not the difference xn postulate that divides the 
 personal from the absolute idealist. The real 
 initial difference lies in difference of starting-point. 
 The personal idealist is unable to convince himself 
 that in any intelligible sense of the word he can take 
 the absolute as a datum, or discuss ' the whole ' as 
 though it were a given ' fact ' instead of a baffling 
 problem. In Prof Henry Jones's able article on 
 "Reflective Thought and Religion," in the "Hibbert 
 Journal" (October, 1903) — an article representative of 
 the Absolutist point of view — we have the Absolute 
 
 characterized as "the first datum" of know- 
 p. 34 ledge " as well as its final result," and on the 
 
 same page we have the Absolutist method 
 characterized as "a metaphysical and ontological 
 method which begins with the whale, with the real,* 
 with God, as the datum on which all experience is 
 engaged, and which all experience only explicates and 
 realises more fully as it advances." 
 
 Now, if the absolute is to be our datum, it can 
 hardly be a form of experience that we are analyzing. 
 We can surely not pretend to start from God's own 
 immediate experience, from what God is for Himself. 
 But if we do not do this, we seem logically thrown back 
 
 *The two methods, the teleological equally with the onto- 
 logical, profess to deal with reality directly, and not, as with the 
 older epistemology, through the medium of a representative 
 world of ideas. 
 
220 A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 upon the scientific standpoint, from which the " data " 
 •are held as external to the mental activity directed 
 upon them. And indeed, Prof Henry Jones's 
 language in the quotation just given really implies this 
 standpoint. The absolute is " the datum on which all 
 experience is engaged, and which all experience only 
 ■explicates and realises more fully as it advances." 
 The standpoint of personal experience avoided, there 
 seems no option but to conceive the datum externally 
 in this way, for the concreter datum we have empha- 
 sized all along as the characteristically philosophical 
 •datum is the fact of experience as it is for the experient 
 himself. 
 
 The inherent inability we labour under, having 
 regard to the Otherness of God, of placing ourselves 
 at the Deity's own standpoint, makes it very hard to 
 •see what the theocentric point of view of the absolute 
 idealist can really mean. The theocentric point of 
 view would be incontestably the most admirable could 
 we but share God's experience, as it is for Himself. 
 But as this is presumably impossible, the theocentric 
 point of view seems to identify itself with the im- 
 personal point of view of Natural Science, or, failing 
 that, with that formally epistemological point of view of 
 experience in general, which concrete idealism has so 
 effectively discredited. Neither refuge is open to 
 Professor Jones, whose point of view is eminently 
 that of the concrete idealist (cf. the excellent remarks, 
 id. p. 27-28 re the existential reality of the scientific 
 datum) and I fail to see how it can mean for him 
 
Lecture X 221 
 
 anything more than the monistic postulate com- 
 bined with the datum of "immediate personal 
 experience." This is the datum of the personal 
 idealist, and it is a datum for him, not in the sense of 
 being already adequately known, but as being his own 
 immediate experience, the experience with which his 
 own personality is identified. But if this "personal" 
 point of view is adopted, another important conse- 
 quence seems to follow : the ontological method of the 
 absolutist ceases to be distinguishable from the teleo- 
 logical method of the personalist. For the datum 
 determines the method in this sense at least that the 
 method must be adapted to fit the datum. An onto* 
 logical method would no doubt have its raison-d'etre if it 
 could be wielded from the point of view of the absolu- 
 tist's own immediate experience. But if it cannot 
 otherwise be justified, it remains an ideal conception of 
 method which can never be actually applied for lack of 
 the requisite fulcrum on which to rest it. If there were 
 three ultimate definitions of "a fact of experience" 
 instead oitwo, the scientific and the philosophical, there 
 would be room for this third method. But as only 
 two are possible, the distinction between the two types- 
 of philosophical method, the ideological and the 
 ontological necessarily, proves to be a distinction 
 without a difference.* 
 
 *The repudiation of the ontological method does not, of course, 
 involve the confession that the starting-point of personal idealism 
 is ontologically deficient, so as to necessitate a going outside and 
 beyond the original datum for one's material. (V. The conclud- 
 ing paragraph). 
 
22 2 A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics 
 
 We maintain, therefore, that it is an injustice to 
 Personal Idealism to oppose to its human standpoint 
 a divine point of view which transcends it as God 
 transcends man. Personal Idealists would eagerly 
 welcome the theocentric view-point, were such a point 
 of vantage attainable to hunian insight. Moreover, in 
 its monistic postulate, it possesses the one sufficient 
 though indispensable passport for traversing the 
 furthest frontiers of experience, the one requisite for 
 indefinitely deepening the meaning of the personal 
 experience from which it starts. Hence to interpret 
 the " anthropocentric " position of the Personal Idealist 
 as making man sit at the centre of the universe in the 
 place of God is to misinterpret it. It would be con- 
 trary to the whole progressive spirit of the modern 
 Voluntarism to identify the starting-point with the goal. 
 The plain fact seems to be that man does sit at the 
 centre of his own immediate experience, and that by 
 starting in thought from that centre he is best able to 
 guarantee his personal freedom and integrity against 
 the pantheistic encroachments of a Divine Immensity. 
 The objection that God cannot be logically reached 
 by adding successive accretions from without to the 
 limited experience from which one starts, and that any 
 such attempt must infallibly end in that "Deus ex 
 machina " solution known as Occasionalism — as 
 witness the whole story of Cartesian Rationalism, may 
 be fitly answered by asserting the essentially limitless 
 character of our own spiritual experience as seen in 
 the light of the monistic postulate, and by the further 
 
Lecture X 223 
 
 reminder that we do not desire to confuse a knowledge 
 of God or consciousness of His intimate presence, to 
 be reached through an analysis of the import of our 
 own religious experience, with any pretence at actually 
 experiencing the inviolate inward experience of God 
 Himself. 
 
 Within man's own spiritual experience there may 
 no doubt be a legitimate distinction made between a 
 Ptolemaic and a Copemican interpretation of such 
 experience, and Personal Idealism may have erred 
 somewhat in being too ptolemaic. But it should surely 
 be granted that the true Gopernican solution will not 
 have been given until God's central supremacy is 
 Adndicated without damage to the essential interests of 
 man's free, inviolate personality. 
 
 The End 
 
 W. Jolly &" Sons, Printers, Bridgt Street, Aberdeen. 
 
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