Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 6.djvu/568

 552 CRITICAL NOTICES : deprive ourselves of the ethical stimulus of an indeterminisin that holds out the prospect of a victory over evil. The same point is urged with great force in the good-humoured attack on Hegel's system entitled " On some Hegelisms " where " the pure plethora of necessary being with the oxygen of possibility all suffocated out of its lungs " is shown to render im- possible all good or bad, and to reduce all things to " one dead level of mere fate " (p. 292). The method of Hegel, whom Prof. James playfully calls "a philosophic desperado," w r hose career is " one series of outrages upon the chastity of thought " (p. 274), seems to him to consist essentially of a refusal to distinguish, which enables to take what is true of a term secundum quid, to treat it as true of the same term simpliciter and then to apply it to the term secundum aliud (p. 280). And, he adds, in certain stages of nitrous oxide intoxication similar Hegelisms may be produced almost automatically. The essay on "The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life" con- tains the noticeable points that there is no abstract good or moral order per se, that "without a claim actually made by some con- crete person there can be no obligation, but that there is some obligation wherever there is a claim " (p. 194), that consequently wrongness does not become " more acceptable or intelligible when we imagine it to consist in the laceration of an a -priori ideal order than in the disappointment of a living personal God" (p. 196). The best world imaginable is that which satisfies all claims (p. 202), the best attainable that which satisfies as many demands as possible (p. 205), since " the essence of good is simply to satisfy demand" (p. 201). It would surely dissipate many atrocities of ethical theory to have it recognised that no moral order can be perfect that leaves unsatisfied the claims of any moral being how- ever humble ; yet it would seem that Prof. James somewhat exaggerates when he declares (p. 201) that " the various ideals have no common character apart from the fact that they are ideals". If that were so, the ' chance of a world altogether good ' would be a poor one ; but we may surely indulge in the thought (and so perhaps transmute it into fact ! ) that the various claims of the various beings may be made to converge into forms which are no longer mutually destructive. The essays on " Great Men and their Environment " and " The Importance of Individuals" form eloquent protests against the mis- application of evolutionist principles which leads to the minimising of the function of great men. Great men are produced by physio- logical causes so remote from any traceable influence of the en- vironment that they must from the point of view of the latter be regarded as ' accidental '. Yet their action often twists the course of history and gives it a direction in which it flows for ever after. Hence Prof. James confesses himself a hero-worshipper, malgre tout, and subscribes with all his heart to the remark of his car- penter that " there is very little difference between one man