Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/563

 562 H. EASHDALL : MR. W. L. COURTNEY ON BISHOP BUTLER. in almost any circumstance " (Sermon iii.) the want of any idea, of evolution or development in his view of conscience the want of discrimination between the subjective and the objective tightness. of actions. On these subjects Mr. Courtney has said less than he might have said. These and many more positive mistakes of ISutler which are of course to a great extent characteristic of the age rather than of the man would have afforded ample scope for the exercise of Mr. Courtney's powers of criticism. His insistence on the deficiencies of an ethical system which rests either on no metaphysic at all or upon the metaphysic of Locke is of course justifiable enough. But the limitations of Butler's thought should not have blinded Mr. Courtney either to the extreme and permanent value of Butler's exposure of the essential l>/*fff<in~ jn-nfennt of Hedonism or to the essentially rational character of his ethical system. When writers of Mr. Courtney's school are dealing with Kant, they make very light of the shocks to common-sense, the utter impossibility of extracting from his system a workable criterion, the difficulty of reconciling one part of the system with another, the barbarous and sometimes almost meaningless paraphernalia of technicalities through which one has to penetrate to the really fundamental ideas of the writer. It is one of the best features of Mr. Courtney's interesting book that he freely admits such deficiencies and protests against the " air of mystery " in which metaphysicians delight to envelop their system. He makes it his object to bring out the really essential, the permanent, the intrinsically valuable element in the writings of such masters as Kant and Hegel. I do not in the least complain of such a procedure ; but why should it not be extended to poor Butler '? The reason is to be sought in the fact that even Mr. Courtney cannot wholly emancipate himself from the prejudices of his school, which prevent its members from recognising an essential similarity of doctrine when disguised by a more popular and less technical phraseology, and when divorced from the " metaphysic " with which they have been accustomed to associate it. Surely it is possible to give some reasonable answer to the questions, ' What is the ethical standard ? ' ' Why must I be moral ? ' ' What is the Moral Faculty '? ' ; without at the same time answering the questions, ' What is Knowledge ? ' ' What is Being ? ' A man may surely have sound and even philosophical ideas about the nature of Morality without being prepared to commit himself to the identity of Knowing and Being ; though I grant that his ideas about morality are likely to be deeper and more solidly-founded if he has made up his mind upon the latter questions also. If Butler, with all his deficiencies and limitations, has contributed to make possible alike the answers to the ethical problem of Ethics which is given in the MI tlnnl* <>f l-'JIi/r.-i and the answer which we find in the J'l-u/f'/o- iiK'H'i In /,V///Vx, he ought not to have been slightingly treated because he has contributed little or nothing to Metaphysic properly so called.