Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/278

 H. STEINTHAL, ALLGEMEINE ETHIK. 277 Corresponding to the categories of the understanding there are certain measures of ethical judgment, which are the " forms in which the formal feeling holds its content" (p. 72). These forms are called Ideas, and it is the business of critical Ethics to dis- cover them. They are not conceptions, because they are not contained in actual things but in the formal judgment ; nor am they perceptions, because their objects are not real but intelli- gible ; nor lastly are they laws, which, though relations, yet hold their factors apart without submergence into the unity which is the object of formal feeling. A line divided in " medial section " is seen by the observer as three lines, the two parts and the- whole line ; the artist sees it as the " golden section," a single object created by the relation of its parts. The Moral Ideas then are purely intelligible relations of form, which are the measure or pattern of the Good Will. Prof. Steinthal insists, and justly, that the only Good is the Good Will, whose actions- are but " the language of will" : his insistence upon this point is one of the great merits of his work. But the Idea of the Good is not a psychological form of the will as a mental faculty : it is purely formal, and does not enter as such into the mechanism of the mind, but is a category of judgment. Goodness, therefore, is an intelligible or formal quality of the will, none the less objective because it is good only in relation to the feeling of approbation, for the quality is one with this feeling of judgment. The First Part is occupied with exhibiting the Ideas which are the elements in the Idea of the Good. They are five in number : (1) the Idea of Moral Personality, (2) of Benevolence, (3) of Union, (4) of Eight, (5) of Perfection. This list differs from Herbart's in only one particular : Herbart has no Idea of Union,, but he has a fifth Idea, that of Fairness or Equity ( Bittigkeit ), which is absent from Prof. Steinthal's list. The Idea of Moral Personality is the same as Herbarfc's Inner Freedom. All these- Ideas are pure relations either within the will or between different wills. Moral Personality, for instance, is the agreement between the will and the moral insight ; not a mere logical relation of subsumption, but of such a kind as that the moral insight shall itself produce the will (p. 99). Thus it is the- relation between the will (which is always psychological) and its ideal as given by insight which is moral : morality is a quality of the disposition (Gesinnung) : what is moral is character. Benevolence again is a relation between two wills, in which one person adopts the other wholly into his consciousness, a devotion on the one side which needs in the perfect order to be rewarded by gratitude on the other. None of these Ideas must be taken apart from the others : a rascal may be a " perfect " rascal, but the perfection of the Moral Idea is one which is guided by the moral insight of the first Idea: there may be good- will among thieves, but their good- will to one another is ill-will against all the rest of the world. The last and highest of the Ideas is Perfec-