Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/279

 278 CEITICAL NOTICES : tion, which gives body to the moral personality ; but it is not a stagnant state but a progress : perfection consists in becoming perfect. This implies on the side of character Love for the Good, as to be attained in the individual himself and society as a whole. It leads therefore to the conception of an " Intelligible world " above the world of Nature, which is the objective system of which the complete moral personality is the subjective counter- part. This conception the author describes as the keystone of his system, and it plays a very important part in his ethical view of the world. We may pass over for the present the admirable and suggestive Second Part which treats of the actual institutions in which these Ideas are embodied and of which they are the creators. The question presses for answer, How is this free intelligible world to be reconciled with the nature of the individuals who have to realise it ? Freedom is an intelligible Idea, which yet is active amidst the natural life of the psychological man. The answer is given in the Third Part which treats of the psychological mechanism of moral action. It consists in combining a peculiar theory of the will with a distinction drawn already in Part i. between Power (Macht) and Force (Kraft) (p. 160). The Ideas have Power, but they have not Force ; as such they would only be one of the many psychological forces of the mind, but they are purely intelligible. The force of immorality is measured by the strength of bad desires ; the power of morality is the degree in which the moral insight prevails, and it is measured therefore by the weakness of opposing desires. Butler is not widely read in Germany, where no one expects to find moral philosophy in a volume of Sermons, but this distinction is of the same nature with the distinction he draws between the authority of conscience and the power of the passions, and in point of language less appropriate. The theory of will rests mainly on the principle of the interaction of ideas (Vorstelhinyen). In the course of a valuable classification of movements, Prof. Steinthal endeavours to show that will, desire and effort are not different from ideas ; will and intention signify only that a conscious idea is approved (p. 332). The will is built up from the instructions of the impulses, and in especial from the impulse to imitation, which is explained as due to the innervation of muscles connected with a motion at the sight of that motion in another. But in man reflexes and impulses are lost with the development of consciousness, and every idea becomes accompanied with the consciousness of an end. What is most characteristic of will is deliberateness ( Beaonncnheit ) or self-control, and this arises from the inhibition or determination of one idea by another. In this way different groups of ideas excite one another, and one idea within a group excites the rest within the same group. This faculty arises from association, one idea calling another into consciousness ; and the excitability of different groups depends upon laws which are set forth on p. 370.