Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 8.djvu/435

 NEW BOOKS. 421 his introduction that the making of such definitions is the sole business of philosophy. ' Philosophy,' he says, ' can only do justice to her prob- lem of the analysis of concepts by means of propositions which serve to explain the meanings of words, i.e., in analytic judgments ' (p. 15). And yet on the very preceding page, we have an account of the problem of philosophy which seems to be radically different from this ; '. . . there is required,' says Herr Bon, ' a previous accurate analysis of the concept in question ; i.e., an exhibition of the experiences of earlier generations that are deposited in the concept and often partly forgotten, or at least unnoticed. And let us say again : This is exactly the method and prob- lem by uieaus of which philosophy is distinguished from the special sciences ' (p. 14). Now these two conceptions of the meaning of ' analysis of concepts,' as defining the problem of philosophy, seem to be not only inconsistent with one another, but also neither of them sufficient. On the second Herr Bon does not insist ; indeed he does not seem to see how different it is from the first ; and it may therefore be dismissed with the remark that what is ' deposited ' in any given concept will, in many cases, be a false view of things that was taken by our ancestors, and not an ' experience ' in the sense of something which truly represents the facts. This defini- tion would therefore make it in many cases the business of philosophy to arrive at falsehoods which commended themselves to our ancestors. The other definition seems still more palpably absurd, since it would make philosophy consist in nothing but attaching a definite name to a definite idea, without any inquiry as to whether that idea represents a truth or a falsehood. Any falsehood, so Herr Bon's view implies, provided it be only precise enough, may be proclaimed for true by philosophy. Into this paradox he seems to have been driven by his very warm opposition to the view that it is the philosopher's business to assume a common meaning wherever a common name is used. But he does not seem to see that the real objection to this ' inductive ' method is not that it uses one word for several different things, or, as Herr Bon would say, uses ' confused concepts ' (the above quotations show that he does not observe the distinc- tion between words and concepts), but that it fails to perceive that the things are different. Hence it might be not unfair to say that a large part of the problem of philosophy was ' sharply to contrast the different meanings ' of one word, as Herr Bon recognises for a moment (p. 33) ; if we add to this that it must then go on to discover the synthetic rela- tions between these different things meant. But it is then also plain that it is a proper question for philosophy ' what morality is ' and not only ' what we will agree to call by that name,' the answer to the first question being the discovery of what different notions there are that can be called by that name, and if those notions are complex, whether the relations between their elements do truly hold. Herr Bon's practice is better than his theory, but it is perhaps owing to his theory that he has not taken sufficient care to exhaust the notions which are involved in the ordinary loose talk about morality. He has, in fact, omitted to notice the only notion which really serves to distinguish Ethics from any other study. What this is called matters no more than Herr Bon thinks it matters. What is important is that there is a per- fectly distinct meaning, of which he says not a word, that I should prefer to denote by the name 'good,' for the reason that that word, and the word ' ought,' seemed generally to be used with reference to it, though, no doubt, with a confused reference. Herr Bon's theory, if taken strictly, would make this criticism impertinent ; since if the judgment, in which he declares ' You ought to do what is commanded you ' (p. 24), were