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 C. RENOUVIER, DES DOCTRINES FHILOSOPHIQUES. 113 cal doctrines that trace ethical precepts to commands, of which he acknowledges the merit as attempts to account for obligation on egoistic grounds, justify the commands finally as means to a good that can only be attained by social action according to definite rules. But to these doctrines, and equally to those that make more use of sympathy, it is objected that everything depends on the individual taste and disposition. Suppose that anyone is not sufficiently sympathetic ; or that, having recognised that the existence of the social order and (as part of it) his own action in accordance with justice, is on the whole to his personal advantage, he should nevertheless decide to evade the requirements of justice and gain a greater advantage, whenever he can escape detection : how is the moralist to convince him bhat he ought to act rightly? To this it can only be replied that voluntary acceptance of an ethical code does after all depend on the empirical fact of the social nature of man ; and the degree in which men act according to the principles they accept, on the degree in which certain dis- positions are present. The admission of this, with all its conse- quences, no doubt supposes a different conception of personal merit from that of Kant. On the whole, however, M. Eenouvier's ethical antinomy, although some irreducible differences are left, does not seem to be quite so absolute as he contends. Of the remaining antinomies there is at least one that of finite and infinite where those who are in general agreement with M. Eenouvier would select the antithesis. The opposition of evolution and creation, which, when they are considered as philosophical doctrines, seems at first irreducible, can be solved by an evolutionist without absolute denial of creation. For creation, in the sense in which M. Eenouvier attributes it to the human mind (with exclusion of indeterminism) may be perfectly well regarded as the outcome of a universal process of evolution. This explanation goes naturally with the admission in a certain sense of M. Eenouvier's doctrine of belief. He himself is the first to admit that as regards the antinomy of " Thing " and " Idea " that heads the series, all schools of philosophy are now in a sense idealist, as at the beginning all were in a sense realist. To the contemporary " school of the ideal/ 5 represented in different ways by M, Vacherot and M. Fouillee, he takes up an attitude of oppo- sition, on the ground that it .denies in effect the existence of the ideal outside the human mind ; yet he has affinities with that school. There is much resemblance, for example, between his view of the infinite and M. Vacherot's, although their affirmations about the reality of the infinite are quite opposed. Both philo- sophers bring out with great distinctness the opposition of the idea of perfection, which, as they see, must be that of the highest degree of definite order and clear consciousness, and therefore essentially finite, to the idea of unlimited extension or force, the uTreipov of Greek philosophy, chaos as opposed to cos- mos. Again, M. Eenouvier's re-statement of Pascal's " argument 8