Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/304

 W. WUNDT, ETHIK. 291 " Man acts freely in the ethical sense when he follows only in- ternal causality" (p. 410). The peculiarity of the conscience consists not in superiority to all motives, but in determination by " impe- rative motives". "Impulsive motives'' are turned into "imperative motives " by means of (1) external constraint, (2) internal con- straint, (3) feelings of permanent satisfaction, (4) the representa- tion of a moral ideal of life. The religious shaping of moral ideas, it is repeated, goes before every other (p. 423). The "external constraint" of religious commands precedes political constraint. Similarly "the imperative of internal constraint exercises its effects " first " through the relations of the religious community". "The imperative of enduring satisfaction creates for itself, by the prospect of eternal rewards and punishments, the highest motives that in this form can exist." Finally, "the moral ideal of life " also is capable of assuming a religious form by its identification with the life of a historical person. Eeligion has all this influence as "educator to morality,'' because it is itself " the concrete sensible embodiment of moral ideals" (p. 424). Ethical writers have been accustomed to treat of " goods," " virtues," and "duties". For these terms Prof. Wundt proposes to substitute Amoral aims," "moral motives," and "moral norms ". These are respectively the subjects of the remaining three chapters of his third section. Beginning with the problem of the ethical end, he decides that " the acting personality as such is never the true object of moral action" (p. 428). " The foreign Ego " can no more be the last aim of morality than our own Ego. Two social aims alone are left as " the true objects of the moral will," viz., " public welfare " and " general progress ". "Subjective feelings of happiness " have no " universal value," and so can have no part in the moral end. The " general human aims " are " objective psychical values". "Here also the principle of the heterogony of ends and the law of the unlimited new creation of psychical products penetrate all occurrence" (p. 432). "Be the direct aims that the individual pursues never so limited, they always overpass their immediate end, and lose themselves at last in the immeasurable stream of development of human mind " (p. 433). " The last aim of moral effort thus becomes an ideal aim, never attainable in reality " (p. 434). " The only sufficient, but also the fully convincing ground of belief in a moral ideal lies in the impossibility of setting a limit to mental and moral develop- ment, or, which would come to the same thing, of thinking its complete annihilation " (p. 446). The objective ground of punish- ment is that the actions punished oppose moral development and so tend to annihilate the ideal (p. 436). Motives instead of ends being in question, " every disposition is immoral which consists in an uprising of the individual will against the general will" (p. 448). " As crime consists in an uprising of the single will against the general will, so punishment is the natural reaction of the latter against this uprising" (p. 458). ''Ethical norms," like ethical ends, are of three chief kinds " individual/' " social " and