Page:Philosophical Review Volume 12.djvu/698

682 series, and hence we are led to believe that each individual is unique, a fact not to be brought under a law of likeness with other beings. The freedom of the will is a simple fact, unlike anything else, inexplicable. Any calculation, therefore, in the psychic series would miscarry because of the power of the will, not, indeed, to create energy, but to direct it.

The presuppositions of ethics are common to all the natural sciences. None of these is called upon to prove the existence or the possibility of knowledge about its subject matter. Each is free to start with unquestioned data and to investigate them with uncriticized knowledge. In their general method, also, ethics and science are at one. To understand anything, whether physical or moral, is to interpret its meaning in terms of universal experience, and to this end the only sound method of procedure is observation and analysis. Yet the explanatory symbols or concepts of ethics are of necessity unique. The world of experience presents itself as a problem both for our intellect and our will, as an objective series and as an ideal system of values. The concept expressive of the former aspect is causality, of the latter, obligation. These, obviously, are not interchangeable. Causality has no significance in ethics, nor has obligation in physics. Thus the demand for one absolute category of scientific interpretation is illegitimate. The standard by which we value facts is not itself a fact.

If art were concerned simply with beautiful appearance, no quantitative determinations would affect it. But, as a matter of fact, a certain amount of quantity is necessary for the production of aesthetic satisfaction. The quantity may be spatial, as in the dimensions of a church or a picture; it may also be temporal, as in the repetition of a figure in decorative designs; or it may be intensive, as in music. The rule, first pointed out by Fechner, which underlies these facts, is that the magnitude of a work of art shall be proportional to its æsthetic significance, i.e., its outer magnitude must be equal to its 'inner' magnitude. This rule is borne out by Burke's thesis, that the sublime is concerned with great objects and the beautiful with small ones.