Page:Philosophical Review Volume 13.djvu/345

331 facile analysis. With Professor Dewey's discussion of the popular fallacy, that genetic explanation means the resolving of the later into the earlier, we shall also have no quarrel. In this connection, however, I note one possible misstatement. It is said: "The later fact in its experienced qualify is unique, irresolvable, and underived." It is to the word 'underived' that I would take exception, provided it implies that there is not continuity of quality as well as of quantity or degree. For, as a matter of fact, every quantity is really as unique as every quality. This is untrue only of abstract extension; an inch has no geometrical properties different from those of a millimeter. But every concrete extension, as well as every number or intensity, is thoroughly unique, has, in short, a distinct quality. If, then, quality be not continuous in change, neither is quantity. Again, in criticism of President Schurman's volume, The Ethical Import of Darwinism, Professor Dewey makes another apparent misstatement, which, however, is surely unintentional. He points out that continuity of process must not be confused with identity of content, and that knowledge of differences is not less important than that of the generic identity of the process. He then says: "Supposing (which does not seem to be the case) that an identical belief regarding the duty of parental care, or of conjugal fidelity, could be discovered in human societies at all times and places. This would throw no light whatsoever upon the scientific significance of the phenomenon." Of course, this is literally untrue. The supposed fact would indicate that the development of the belief was simultaneous with, or prior to, the differentiation of the human species, and must, therefore, have a relatively universal and permanent ground in human character.

It remains to consider the few passages bearing upon the second of the two main propositions advanced in the essay, that no other method than the historical method is available for scientific ethical research. "We cannot apply artificial isolation and artificial combination [to an ethical phenomenon]. ... Only through history can we unravel it. ... History offers to us the only available substitute for the isolation and for the cumulative recombination of experiment" (p. 113). But what of the relative isolations and recombinations that repeatedly occur in our common life, and are ever open to watchful and intelligent observation? Not all of modern life is equally complex and defiant of analysis. "That which is presented to us in the later terms of the series in too complicated and confused a form to be unraveled, shows itself in a relatively simple and transparent mode in the earlier members" (p. 114). But the later terms have the not