Page:Philosophical Review Volume 13.djvu/660

646 follow that the precise nature of the foreseen consequences and effectual considerations is in the least to be ignored. No element that, as a matter of fact, does enter into the determination of moral judgment upon the contemplated act, can be without interest for such a theory. The view with which this must not be confused is that quasi-Stoicism, never, I suppose, entertained by a serious thinker, though frequently imputed to many, that the good will is simply the will to be good, to which any particular content is merely accidental, wealth and poverty, sickness and health, honor and disgrace, having no interest for it. The good will must not only have its particular object; it is the desire for that object, and it is only as such that it receives its moral predicate.

That these statements cannot here be made more definite is due to the empty formalism in which we have left the fundamental principle of subjectivism,—that the right conduct is that which the agent believes to be right. Rightness is left in the guise of a mere immediate quality; as if it should be said, "That is sweet which tastes sweet to me." But this defect is by no means irremovable or inherent in the general theory. It is open to its advocate, as to another man, to analyze the meaning of rightness, to investigate the evolution and present functioning of the moral judgment, and to take into account the manifold social relations which constitute the environment of the moral being as such. An ethical subjectivism, if it were held to-day, would differ from all similar theories of the past, in proportion as it was permeated with the theories and results of modern psychology and sociology.

One necessary characteristic of every ethical subjectivism is to be found in the prime importance which it sets upon the prospective judgment, the judgment of the contemplated act. If that was right which I believed right, my present judgment becomes a mere echo and abridgement of the former judgment. Similarly, criticism of the conduct of others takes upon itself a halting uncertainty due to the impossibility of arriving at their secret self-judgment; it must operate by means of general analogies that may not seldom be misleading. Now so much I