Page:Philosophical Review Volume 13.djvu/661

647 to be true: that the judgment upon the contemplated act is, indeed, the archetypal moral function, fountain and origin of the moral life; that to judge after this fashion is first and foremost what it is to be a moral being; that all other moral judgments are relatively incomplete; and that, in particular, the approval or condemnation of the conduct of others is virtually a projection of the judgment upon oneself, and must have been impossible prior to the emergence of that judgment. This is not to say that the judgment upon the contemplated act is the earliest member of the whole group, and that from it all the others have lineally descended. Mental evolution can hardly have proceeded on such lines. It is more probable that the whole group had a common development, facilitated by constant interaction; and that the critical point of this development was the attainment of the distinctively moral phase by the leading member of the group, this phase being immediately communicated to the others through the constant relationship subsisting between them. It is impossible that the prospective judgment should be a distinctively moral evaluation, and the retrospective judgment fail to catch its tone ; or that a moral agent should not apply to the conduct of others the same type of judgment which he applied to his own. On the other hand, there can have been no veritable morality without self-judgment, and, indeed, the prospective self-judgment; for the judgment upon another that does not apply (hypothetically) to the self is a mere expression of gratification or anger; and the judgment of the past act that does not apply (hypothetically) to the future is so much colorless exultation or regret. These are plain facts which are at times lost sight of in recent studies of moral evolution. I feel, therefore, that it is on the whole an advantage rather than a defect in the subjective theory, that it lays such extraordinary stress upon the judgment of the contemplated act.

Non-committal as our language has been, the reader cannot have failed to suspect that it cloaks a strong sympathy, if not an entire agreement, with the theory under discussion. Let this stand confessed. What I would maintain is that ethical subjectivism, if not right, is nevertheless right as against its enemies;