Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/433

 REVIEWS 419

The writer who today presumes to raise the question of "the ground of authority" (p. 8) in morals, has the choice between taking refuge in one of the speculative systems and frankly occupying and defending a very lonesome position. As is so often the case in periods of transition, Dr. Dole does not commit himself dis- tinctly to either alternative. He is not aware of this failure. He lacks neither the courage nor the sincerity of his perceptions, but with all his modernness he has not sufficiently broken with tra- dition to see the whole length to which his method must lead.

In a word. Dr. Dole, in spite of himself, does too much trying to save the face of absolutistic, solipsistic, subjectivistic ethical theories. Why waste strength resurrecting that futile Kantian wraith "the good will" (chap, iv) ? Why not let it go the way of that other ghostly delusion, "the economic man"? Everybody who thinks things through, and Dr. Dole certainly belongs to the guild, knows that the decisive factor in our estimate of willing is our appraisal of all the consequences which can be connected with it. We neither do nor can value an act of will without making this element the ultimate arbiter. What is the good of downing "utili- tarianism" in Part I (chap, iii), when we are going to say, on p. 153, "That must be best which is the highest utility, and right is the straightest line to the best"? What doth it profit us in the direc- tion of clarified ideas, if the downing is apparently done by downing hedonism (Part I, chap, v), when the trick is turned (I do not mean that the author consciously juggles) by leaving the impres- sion (in spite of the qualification on p. 35) that hedonism is all there is to utilitarianism? Was utilitarianism after Bentham and James Mill as hedonistic as before, and if so did it remain so after the younger Mill? Why darken counsel any longer with attempts to rehabilitate attitudes, and subjective states, and scales of motives, as ultimate measures of good and bad, when our most genuine in- sight expresses itself in the formulas, "Right is a mode of effi- ciency" (p. 148), or "Virtue is .... that which fits men together" (p. 151), or "Right is the method by which we bring about social welfare" (p. 146) ? Why not out with it plainly. Right is that which works, and then take up the full-grown man's burden of putting the veritable content into that "works" ? After much rins- ing-out of old introspective and deductive bottles. Dr. Dole doesn't really try to make them hold his new wine. He recalls their labels now and then, but the real stuflf is carried elsewhere. No single norm