Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/305

 292 CEITICAL NOTICES : W. WUNDT, ETHIK. "human". The general rule in cases of conflict is that the narrower must yield to the wider norm (p. 469). In order to gain a " highest regulative idea " we may think of the ideal as unchanging ; but mental representations of it are in unceasing development. " That this development is the last moral aim we can comprehend, in which all individual aims disappear, remains the universal postulate that finds in the historical shapings of ideal problems its particular embodiments " (p. 483). The basis of Prof. Wundt's ethical system is evidently apart from his theory of Apperception the doctrine of Evolution, which has taken form for him especially in the ideas of human progress and of "the general mind". Unfortunately, these ideas, in Prof. Wundt's mode of conceiving them, seem to have become inex- tricably mixed with illusory elements. They are at least expressed in the form of very disputable "laws ". He also tries to accom- plish too much with the idea of progress. It is clear that the moral ideal cannot be defined in terms of " progress"; for in order to know that progress exists we must both have an ideal and know that the movement of things is towards it and not away from it. To make plausible his assertion of a constant and unbroken advance, Prof. Wundt requires a psychological " law of non-equivalence " ; and he has to ignore degeneration and dis- solution. The effective addition made by the doctrine of evolution to the material of constructive ethics is really much less in the idea of progress than in the new precision given to the conceptions of " social organism " and " general mind ". It is a merit of Prof. Wundt's book to have laid special stress on this last conception. In the application of it, however, the weakness of the speculative construction becomes more than ever apparent. This weakness is due essentially to the transformation of "mind" into "will," and so may be traced to the doctrine of Apperception. The ques- tion is inevitable, Why should one will submit to another, the "individual will," for example, to the "general will"? From Prof. Wundt's point of view, this question is unanswerable ; for he has suppressed all reference to " subjective feeling," and he has made the appeal to reason useless by an unlimited extension of his law of " the heterogony of ends ". The concluding section is divided into four chapters, treating respectively of "The Single Personality," " Society," "The State," " Humanity ". Here, as in the rest of the book, in spite of what is promised as to concessions to " individualism," Prof. Wundt's "general will" seems to leave little room for any other will. "The social order," he says, "is not a creation that is there for the sake of individuals ; on which account also it needs no justi- fication from the services it renders to the individual " (p. 540). This is certainly quite consistent with the principle of "the general will" as it is here laid down. In the eyes of some readers such a corollary will be of itself sufficient to condemn that principle. THOMAS WHITTAKEK.