Page:Philosophical Review Volume 13.djvu/108

94 distribution. It was further discovered that the number of objects perceived in one exposure depended upon the duration of the mental after-image, which, in turn, depended upon the distinctness and duration of the visual impression. In other words, the number of objects perceived depended rather on physiological conditions than upon a specialized form of mental activity. Practice tended to unite in close perceptive unity impressions which at first could only be united with difficulty. Hence we may conclude that things which we perceive as single objects are composed psychologically of a group of elements which were primarily separate objects of attention. Elements habitually found together become so closely associated that we are not conscious of the steps which bring them together. Distribution of attention, therefore, takes place only when the elements are so closely united that the succession has disappeared. But when this occurs, the object is no longer perceived as a plurality; it has become a conscious unity. Simultaneous distribution is, therefore, a psychological impossibility. The phenomena usually ascribed to distribution are explicable by the duration of the mental after-image.

(I) The fundamental problem of ethics is to determine the origin and genesis of the fact of morality. It is necessary carefully to distinguish morality from its concomitant facts, particularly from the social organization. To determine the direction of moral progress, recourse must be had to all available material in the shape of narratives of explorers and the history and literature of different peoples. The speculative demand for unity has led many thinkers to consider the good as exclusively the beautiful, the true, individual or social interest, or solidarity. In reality, the moral ideal is extremely complex, and on analysis breaks up into three distinct elements, an æsthetic, a logical or rational, and a sympathetic or altruistic. These three elements of the moral ideal are closely united and capable of acting upon each other. Each may predominate to the exclusion of the others, according to races or individuals. In Buddhist India, in Greece, and in Rome, there is a predominance of the altruistic, æsthetic, and rational elements respectively. (II) The two lines along which moral progress has proceeded, those of intellect and sense, did not advance in a rigorously uniform and parallel way, and consequently the evolution of morality has been marked by arrests, regressions, and deviations, determined by the predominance of one or the other of the two lines of improvement. These irregularities are especially noticeable in the evolution of the æsthetic element. For psychological reasons, largeness appears earlier than order and proportion as an æsthetic factor. Savages and children