Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 12.djvu/323

 HEDONISM AMONG IDEALISTS. 309 it seems clear that the clue which the mind follows, however ignorantly, is in substance that idea of perfection which pursued in its main lines beyond the details of experience becomes the Idea of the Absolute. No doubt it is the unity just in advance of where we stand, rather than an idea of the ultimate metaphysical Absolute, which at any moment, as Green insists, aids and guides the ordinary man. Morality depends on metaphysic, I am suggesting, not in the sense that it works with the explicit determinations of the abso- lute, but that it operates through conceptions of unity which, if criticised or doubted, only metaphysical investigation can elucidate or justify. The idea of the Supreme Good is the ultimate elucidation of this conception, but cannot be the shape in which it actually operates within the everyday mind. This is Plato's doctrine, and Green's ; x and it meets I think, in principle, the difficulty of an abstract comparison between a course of conduct and the Supreme Good. 2. It remains to explain more in detail how, in the adjust- ment of moral conduct, we obtain guidance from the idea of perfection as thus understood. The essential point is that the situations, which constitute the problems of conduct, are highly individualised, and demand no less individualised solutions. Existing morality, and current knowledge of man and of the world, are the organs by which the impulse towards unity is brought into relation with specific character and circumstance. These play the part in practice which is played in the development of theory by acquired science and experience. And it is very important not to demand too much. The idea of a magical possibility of absolute rightness in morality seems to be at the root of ethical pessimism. The best rightness we can hope for is to be right for us under all our conditions and limitations. 2 It is because these conditions and limitations are so complex that moral problems are not hopelessly insoluble. We have not got to say what is right for others, or what would be right for ourselves if we were other than we are. Our judgment in morality is about as good and as bad as our judgment in other complex matters. We attempt whether by habit or by reflexion makes no 1 Prolegomena, sect. 309, cf. Republic, 505 E. "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 " i.e., it is our guide throughout, but changes as we pursue it. 2 This is the very type and essence of science. Mr. Taylor seems wholly off the right track at this point, in suggesting that individualisa- tion makes morality subjective (Problem, p. 361).