Page:Philosophical Review Volume 13.djvu/666

652 but whether there is conduct to which the distinction of right and wrong is not pertinent. Even as thus formulated, the question is still ambiguous. It may be taken to mean, whether the doing or omitting of any act is morally indifferent; and in this sense the question is now answered in the negative by most careful thinkers,—exception being sometimes made of alternative means to a desired end. But this is distinctly different from the question, whether any actual conduct is non-moral. For the fact that the omission of the act may have been comparatively desirable or undesirable is not to the point, when there was simply no question of its omission. Confusion seems to have arisen from the circumstance, that the investigator, in the very process of inquiry, is apt ideally to transform his material. In asking whether such or such an act was moral, he imagines himself as about to commit the act and passes a deliberate judgment about its desirability; he finds that its commission or omission is not indifferent; and, accordingly, he gives his answer in the affirmative. After a careful review of the evidence, we are brought to the old-fashioned conclusion, supported by the general testimony of common experience, that by far the greater part of our more simply impulsive action is not properly moral,—except, indeed, as it may be included in larger moral purposes. We do not imply that moral action is necessarily deliberative, in the sense that the agent previously considers the probable consequences of the several alternatives, or the general principles involved, and acts upon the basis of such deliberation. But it must be insisted that every moral act is a choice,—without some conscious inhibition the conditions of moral activity could not arise,—and that the agent is aware of the choice as right or wrong.

So far we are in accord with the cruder subjectivism. But we must now make explicit the reservation of which warning was given above. It is important to note that an act committed without consciousness of any moral quality attaching to it, may nevertheless upon reflection be recognized as an indirect expression of character, and may accordingly be judged as such. I refer not simply to the acts of men carried away by extreme passion or intoxication, but to the whole host of habitual or