Page:History of Modern Philosophy (Falckenberg).djvu/556

 534 HER BART. submit themselves to right as a rule for the avoidance of strife. (5) In retribution and equity, also, the original clement is displeasure, displeasure in an unrequited act as a disturb- ance of equilibrium. This last Idea demands that no deed of good or evil remain unanswered ; that in reward, thanks, and punishment, a quantum of good and evil equal to that of which he has been the cause return upon the agent. The one-sided deed of good or ill is a disturbance, the removal of which demands a corresponding requital. Herbart warns us against the attempt to derive the five original Ideas (which scientific analysis alone separates, for in life we always judge according to all of them together) from a single higher Idea, maintaining that the demand for a common principle of morals is a prejudice. From the union of several beings into one person proceed five other pattern-concepts, the derived or social Ideas of the ethical institutions in which the primary Ideas are realized. These correspond to the primary Ideas in the reverse order : The system of rewards, which regulates punishment ; the legal society, which hinders strife; the system of administration, aimed at the greatest possible good of all ; the system of culture, aimed at the development of the greatest possible power and virtuosity ; finally, as the highest, and that which unites the others in itself, society as a person, which, when it is provided with the necessary power, is termed the state. If we combine the totality of the original Ideas into the unity of the person the concept of virtue arises. If we reflect on the limitations which oppose the full realization of the ideal of virtue, we gain the concepts of law and duty. An ethics, like that of Kant, which exclusively emphasizes the imperative or obligatory character of the good, is one-sided ; it considers morality only in arrest, a mistake which goes with its false doctrine of freedom. On the other hand, it was a great merit in Kant that he first made clear the unconditional validity of moral judgment, independent of all eudemonism. Politics and pedagogics are branches of the theory of virtue. The end of education is develop- ment in virtue, and, as a means to this, the arousing of varied interests and the production of a stable character.