Page:Philosophical Review Volume 11.djvu/637

621 of obligation," and he seems to regard the earliest moral judgments as being simply expressions of the fact that the 'feeling of obligation' has been aroused. It must, of course, be allowed that the word 'feeling' is used in a very wide sense, and one may easily make too much of a question which is largely one of terminology; but, at any rate, I hardly think that Professor Ladd's account of the 'feeling of obligation' and its relation to moral judgment is so clear that he can afford to speak of Sidgwick's careful discussion of the meaning of 'ought' as 'completely missing the mark.'

Professor Ladd starts from the position that, while "judgments as to what one ought are the result of environment, education, and reflection," "'the feeling of the ought' is primary, essential, and unique," (p. 70). "But although we cannot," he says, "explain the feeling of obligation by resolving it into any other form of feeling, we may observe and describe the occasions on which it probably arises in the life of the individual man" (p. 72). And he proceeds to show how, under the influence of the social environment, the feeling of obligation is elicited, partly by means of social approbation and disapprobation, partly by the operation of sympathy. Similiarly in the race at large, "the feeling of oughtness is first aroused and trained to service in the behalf of the prevalent customs" (p. 77). But, from the first appearance, and throughout the whole development of the consciousness of obligation, the 'feeling of obligation' remains something distinct from any modification of 'the pleasure-pain feeling.' "It appears, then, that the student of ethics must assume, as the necessary presupposition of the origin and development of the moral life, the existence in man's consciousness of the germinal feeling of obligation. ... Like the other earlier manifestations of psychical life, we can rarely or never put our finger precisely upon the time of its origin; but, as a rule, it appears whenever by rod, or gesture, or language coming from one of his own kind, the natural impulses of the child are checked and corrected through a conflict with the custom of his social environment. Much less can its origin be traced with the whole race of men, by any possible extension of anthropological researches. Man, as man, is from the first equipped with this peculiar form of feeling in reaction upon his existing social environment" (pp. 78-79).

The only difficulty which I wish to emphasize in this generally admirable account is, that in the passage just quoted Professor Ladd seems to represent the 'feeling of obligation' as a sort of innate or instinctive feeling, just as fear or anger, I suppose, may be so regarded. And I gather that he would not admit that the consciousness of