Page:Philosophical Review Volume 1.djvu/233

Rh of religion, art, and science" is its highest function. The State is the great "ethical teacher of its citizens." The coercion which is characteristic of State action at lower levels must of course cease in these "ideal relations." The political limit is, in general, the same as the ethical. "With the ethical State, as with the ethical person in his relation to other persons, the limitation arises out of the duty imposed on every man to realize self by self, and therefore freely" (p. 252). Instead of acting vicariously for its citizens, the State should help the individual to help himself.

Such is, in brief outline, the ethical theory developed by Professor Laurie in this work. A single criticism may be suggested in closing. It will be seen that the author reaches an ethical position closely corresponding to the "dualism" of his metaphysic. The formal and the real, the rational and the attuent, remain apart in both spheres. In an ethical reference, reason without feeling is empty, yielding merely the form of law without its content. There is need, accordingly, of a "datum" or "raw material" of sensibility, as well as of sense. In both cases an "empirical instruction" is requisite. Yet feeling is described as "chaotic" (p. 156), "anarchical" (p. 147), a mere "raw material." The author entitles his theory " The Ethics of Reason," and fundamentally it seems open to the same criticism as the ethical rationalism of Kant. The insistence upon the ethical supremacy of reason is in both cases admirable, but the same injustice is done to feeling in both. Does not the epistemological parallel suggest that this ethical defect is due to a psychological error? Does not feeling, like sensation, already contain in it the germs of order and relation, to be developed by reason into law?

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