Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/124

 C. BENOUVIEK, DES DOCTRINES PHILOSOPHIQUES. Ill of moving away from practice and viewing life impartially in order to return afterwards more effectively to its practical regula- tion, is to keep practical considerations in view in its metaphysical constructions, of two indemonstrable assumptions to take not the one that fits in best with the ideal already suggested by science, but the one that seems most likely to encourage action, this means that action., just as with the Pyrrhonists, will fall under the dominion of custom. For practical considerations introduced not merely as a stimulus but as a guide, prior to the final theore- tical construction, can only be considerations depending on those unanalysed aims of which it is a function of philosophy to ascer- tain the comparative value ; considerations, therefore, which from the first invalidate the critical function of philosophy with regard to practice. This is the effect that a doctrine of the practical reason would seem likely to produce. Yet it must be acknowledged that there is no trace of this kind of effect on M. Eenouvier's own practical philosophy. He applies an equally severe analysis to all the phrases that have been proposed as solutions of the problems of the ethical end and of the worth of life ; keeping always in view the essential question of the aim of the individual. In the case of so consistent a thinker as M. Eenouvier, it would be absurd to say that this is in spite of his theory, not because of it. We must try to find an element of truth in. the doctrine of the practi- cal reason that may be recognised by those who cannot in any sense accept that doctrine as a whole. M. Eenouvier, as has been seen, claims for Kant the merit of having been the first to make explicit the independence of the ethical end on particular systems of metaphysics. This truth is already present, he admits, so far as its effective application to conduct is concerned, in the " independence " of the Stoics, and in Spinoza's doctrine of freedom as action from within ; but this " independence " or " freedom " is represented at the same time as a harmony with external nature, or even sometimes as " obedi- ence  to nature, and is not defined strictly in terms of person- ality. M. Eenouvier's analysis certainly enables us to understand better the fascination which Kant's formula has exercised. The truth of " the autonomy of ethics, we may be disposed to think, is expressed most clearly by M. Eenouvier when he states it without reference to "the practical reason"; but that it should appear as if bound up with the Kantian doctrine is explicable. As soon as it is seen that ethics, although dependent for its working out on theoretical knowledge, is independent of any theory of the universe so far as the determination of its essential end is concerned, the preconceived idea of a subordination instead of a co-ordination between metaphysics and ethics takes effect in a simple reversal of their previous order. The doctrine of the prac- tical reason, therefore, may be regarded as an exaggeration of the truth of " the independence of ethics "