Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 12.djvu/322

 308 BERNARD BOSANQUET I like scientific theories, our morality is no doubt in the main a working habit or tradition, in course of constant re-adjust- ment. I am convinced that the reiteration of such phrases as "choice" and "preference" is fatal to understanding the nature of the moral criterion. All voluntary action is " choice " in the sense that it is willed ; but the phrase sug- gests the selection of one ready-made course of conduct out of a number, as if there were hundreds before us on the counter of a shop. Thus the question why you choose "it," or which course you "like best," acquires a pre- dominance unknown in real life. For, in fact, action is, construction, rationality, invention of individual solutions, for individual problems by modification of existing systems. This is what, I think, Green really meant l when he insisted that while nothing could follow from a bare definition of virtue, yet morality grows by habitual preoccupation with moral ideas in application to circumstances as they arise. The true analogy is the absorption of a scientific intelligence in detecting the true bearings of a principle such as natural selection. Such an absorption is fruitful, in morality and in science alike ; and fruitful in proportion as the principle is- clearly and justly apprehended. Then, it may be asked, do we admit morality or Ethics, which we here compare with Biology and Chemistry, to be a natural science ; and do w r e not abandon the contention that a metaphysical idea is necessary for the guidance of conduct f This is very much a matter of degree. I admitted that the Uniformity of Nature as such is of no use to Biology or Chemistry, because it is notorious that these sciences can exist and nourish without casting a glance on Logic. But the total absence of a working faith in Uniformity would be and has been, I suppose, fatal even to the most purely- natural science. So one might say that in a sense a logical faith is necessary and useful to the merest natural know- ledge. And this logical faith itself has degrees ; and notions, of system, method, and explanation may, though I am slow to assert it, be found really helpful in determining scientific problems. Morality deals with higher categories, and its working faith involves a unity of a type not known to pure natural science. Such a unity is really a metaphysical idea, though to say in what forms and disguises it actually operates in the everyday mind would be a very difficult matter. But 1 Prolegomena, sect. 308.