Page:Philosophical Review Volume 1.djvu/619

No. 6.] however defective; it has compelled man to give it some shape and body. Hence the existence of permanent institutions which hold forth the eternal good not in its abstract shape but in some concrete embodiment.

The first of these modes for giving definiteness to the ideal, and thus making it available for actual conduct, may be soon dismissed. It is, over again, only the thought of an ideal, except it now takes the form of a law instead of that of a good or satisfaction. It is at most the consciousness that there is something to do and that this something has unconditioned claims upon us. We are as far as ever from any method of translating this something in general into the special thing which has to be done in a given case. And here, as before, this unconditioned law not simply fails to carry with itself any way of getting concrete, but it stands in negative relation to any transfer into particular action. It declares: "Whatever you do, you will come short of the law which demands a complete realization; and you can give only inadequate obedience, since your action is limited through your want at the moment of action." Given the general acceptance of the theory, the result would be, on account of the impossibility of conforming to the demands of the law, either a complete recklessness of conduct (since we cannot in any way satisfy this hard task-master, let us at least get what pleasure we can out of the passing moments) or a pessimism transcending anything of which Schopenhauer has dreamed.

I cannot see that the case stands any different with the idea of a Better. Granted that the thought of a better would arise from the opposition of a Good upon the whole to every special good, as depicted by Green, how are we to advance from this thought of a better to any notion of what that better is, either as to the prevailing tendency of life, the direction in which we are to look for improvement upon the whole, or in any special situation? The notion that there is a better, if a mere idea, that is, an idea not tending to define itself in this or that specific better, would be, it appears to me, hardly more than a mockery for all the guidance it would give conduct. How is