Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 8.djvu/542

 528 CRITICAL NOTICES : like), Custom (Sitte) and Law (Recht). The relations between these are dealt with at considerable length, and in a very in- structive way. The fifth chapter deals with the more purely individual aspects of the moral consciousness, the place of conscience and kindred topics. In this connexion some reference is made to the place of the Beautiful and of Fine Art, as having significance for the inner life of the individual ; and it is contended (p. 172 sqq.) that what Bhrenfels quaintly describes as a certain ' minimum of meta- physical conviction ' is necessary for the full realisation of the moral life of the individual. From this point of view religious convictions may be valuable as working hypotheses, even if they are not wholly in accordance with truth ; and to expel them for a ' metaphysical nihilism ' would be to ' empty out the child with the bath ' (p. 184). Even in the interests of truth itself such a procedure might prove suicidal. If the Ptolemaic Astronomy had simply been rejected as not being completly true, it is probable that men would never have reached a true theory of the heavens at all. Truth can only be reached through the gradual polishing of our hypotheses. All this is no doubt instructive ; but would it not be well to urge, in connexion with it, that our provisional hypotheses, metaphysical or other, should at least be as true as we can make them ? Should it not be borne in mind also that, besides acceptance and rejection, there is such a thing as suspense of judgment ? In the sixth chapter Ehrenfels is brought back to the idea of absolute value as contained in the popular moral consciousness. The tendency of the popular consciousness to attribute absolute value to moral distinctions is connected by Ehrenfels with the ideas of responsibility and freedom. Kant has best brought out the Logic of the position. The ' ought ' implies ' can ' ; and the idea of absolute freedom leads inevitably to the idea of absolute law and through that of absolute value. But if we acknowledge the relativity of the ' ought,' we may avoid these consequences, and the conception of absolute value becomes unnecessary. The seventh chapter contains some concluding remarks, largely bearing on the practical value of ethical speculation. The science of Ethics, Ehrenfels contends, is partly theoretical and partly practical. The theoretical part may be divided into the general and the special. His own work, so far, is concerned with general theoretical Ethics. More special treatment of Ethics might be carried on in a descriptive and genetic manner. To this should be added the more directly practical part of Ethics. " Our rejec- tion," he says (p. 260), "of the hypothesis of absolute value precludes the view of Practical Ethics as an absolute normative discipline with imperatives of a strictly universal binding force. Still, the imperatives of practical Ethics distinguish themselves from those of all other practical disciplines in this, that they possess an almost universal applicability in fact. The applicability of the