Page:Philosophical Review Volume 1.djvu/610

594 know of any theory, however, which is quite consistent to either point of view. The theory which makes the most of being practical generally shrinks, as matter of fact, from the attempt to carry out into detail its rules for living; and the most metaphysical doctrine commonly tries to show that at least the main rules for morality follow from it. The difficulty is imbedded in the very nature of the science; so much so that it is far easier for the school which prides itself upon its practicality (generally the utilitarian) to accuse the other (generally the 'transcendental') of vagueness than to work out any definitely concrete guidance itself; and easier for the metaphysical school to show the impossibility of deducing any detailed scheme of action from a notion like that of seeking the greatest quantity of pleasures than for it to show how its own general ideal is to be translated out of the region of the general into the specific; and, of course, all action is specific.

The difficulty is intrinsic, I say, and not the result of any mere accident of statement. Ethics is the theory of action and all action is concrete, individualized to the last ell. Ethical theory must have, then, a similar concreteness and particularity. And yet no body of rules and precepts, however extensive and however developed its casuistic, can reach out to take in the wealth of concrete action. No theory, it is safe to say, can begin to cover the action of a single individual for a single day. Is not, then, the very conception of ethical theory a misconception, a striving for something impossible? Is there not an antimony in its very definition?

The difficulty, it may be noticed, is no other and therefore no more impossible to solve than that involved in all application of theory to practice. When, for example, a man is to build a tunnel, he has to do something quite specific, having its own concrete conditions. It is not a tunnel in general which he has to make, but a tunnel having its own special end and called for by its own set of circumstances — a set of circumstances not capable of being precisely duplicated anywhere else in the world. The work has to be done under conditions imposed by the given environment, character of soil, facility of access to machinery,